Let's begin from Earth, 2030.

Earth exists in a universe. Not "The Universe". There are many. Let's call it the Prime.

The Prime

The Prime is exactly what it appears: a 3/4(/16?) dimensional physical reality, bound by the laws of Physics. It is about 14 billion years old. It began with the Big Bang. It is explained by 4 fundamental forces and 16 particles. Well...mostly. There seem to be things we can't explain. Like, you know, gravity.

The Multiverse

That's because gravity isn't a property of the Prime, but of something outside. Let us call it the Multiverse: the containing "space" in which the Prime, and all other universes exist. Each universe has its own dimensions, its own physical reality. Everything we know about physics (except gravity) is contained entirely within the Prime; reality itself works differently in each Universe.

And the Multiverse itself has its own rules. It is entirely non-physical. What can exist in an entirely non-physical realm? Ideas. Concepts. Thoughts. Dreams. So you might say the "stuff" of the Multiverse, the "soup" in which universes float, is akin to the Astral. By description, they're a perfect match, although it certainly isn't a "Plane".

Other Universes

All other, "older" universes than the Prime have been destroyed. They "ended". Not just the internal end of whatever they call time, but the whole universe was flushed. Some of the more recent ones exist as shattered fragments, but their time will come...they are being sucked into the Abyss, the essence of pure oblivion, that devours all that Should Not Be. The most recent one, the Penultimate Universe, the least fragmented, the second-most perfect, is a realm some know as Faerie. We'll get back to that in a minute.

Outsiders

All denizens from outside the Prime are known as Outsiders. They share certain properties, such as Truenames, the inability to speak a lie, and the fact that they cannot enter the Prime unbidden (except a special race of Outsiders, the Angels; we'll get there, too). Prime denizens must invite them in (often unwittingly) providing host bodies of flesh or magic for them to inhabit. They can't be killed, ever, but their host bodies can, "banishing" them from the Prime. Why do they come here at all? Because they are unchanging, eternal beings, who are stuck being exactly what they are, forever. And we aren't. We can change. We can grow. We can die. Our actions make a difference. Permanently. They love that. They want that. They come here in an effort to get that.

Faerie

And perhaps none with more malice aforethought than the denizens of Faerie. Some believe that all universes were made by a single Creator, someone seeking to create Order from Chaos, to make something meaningful out of all this eternal meaninglessness. And so he Made. And each creation was flawed, and had to be destroyed; but he learned from each, making the next better, iterating again and again, until he achieved perfection...

Death

With the Prime, that is. The ultimate universe of order. What was the trick? The last puzzle piece? Mortality. A concept utterly foreign to lifelong Outsiders, who are utterly incapable of death or change in any way. Even the Penultimate universe lacked mortality, though it was perfect in every other way. In the Prime, suns, worlds, lifeforms, matter, atoms, and thus the Prime itself may all die. And that mortality, though it dooms the Prime and everything in it, also creates a possibility that never existed before: evolution. That each iteration in the cycle of life, death, and rebirth might exceed the last. Suns will birth planets, planets will birth life, life will evolve into intelligence, and maybe some day, a being greater than the Creator himself will arise. And thus, the Creator will have done something no other Outsider ever could: change.

Back to Faerie

That's all well and good, if you live in the Prime. But what if you're a Faerie? Your Universe is destroyed. The smartest among them are aware of this. The very reality that contains them is being devoured--on a timescale outside of time itself, but still, it's inevitable--so they realize they must find a way to escape it, or they, too, will die. Unaware that death is a good thing (after a fashion), they are terrified, and well-motivated to avoid it.

In the Prime, they found just that opportunity. Their Universe isn't done kicking yet. They are worming their way in, cleverly tricking humans into opening the requisite portals to allow their entry. But there's a snag: they can't just immigrate. They are beings of their reality, and we of ours. Neither can literally exist in the other's world. They can sorta exist, by transforming into a more adaptable form, but then the real, true being isn't actually persisting, any more than a human cloning himself forever is "immortal".

So simple invasion didn't work. But a clever Faerie figured out a better way: they would force humans to imbue them with their realness, to transfer their precious powers to them. Being immortals, they lack Free Will, the capacity for change. But it can be given. In the Prime, on Earth, they found humans already worshipping gods (who? we'll get there, don't worry). So they killed these gods, stole their form, and basked in their glory. The humans willingly gave up their Free Will to their Faerie overlords...thus transferring said precious commodity.

Of course, there was another snag. Some pesky monotheist church came along and started demonizing them. But that's for later. For now, you may be wondering who those gods were....

The Spirit Realm

In fact, there is more to Creation than the Prime, the other Universes, and the fabric of the Multiverse. Earth, and other life-bearing places, has always had a coterminous, adjacent realm of spiritual energy. It isn't a physical place, but a metaphysical one; as such, it isn't made of matter, but of "spirit".

Spirits are just that: the core essence of a thing. What thing? Anything? A man? Sure! A dog? Yes! All dogs? Yes! "Dogness" itself? Yes! Anything that can logically be said to "have a spirit" in English can, and does. The Spirit of America? Old Janx Spirit? Distilled Spirits? Yes, yes, yes.

But much more specifically, the Spirit World largely takes the form of a hyper-naturalized version of Earth, dominated by natural entities (plants, animals, geology), sparsely populated by civilization. Why? Because spirits that have been around longer are more impactful. America, the nation, is a few hundred years old; America, the continent, is tens of millions of years old. An individual mountain might be a billion years old. The Earth itself is four times that. So that tends to overrule the spirit of, say, the Pepsi Corporation. At least for now.

Because spirits are spirits, they can't really die, as long as the physical thing they represent exists in some form. A man might die, but he "lives on" in the memories of his loved ones, and the impact he made on the world. That is a "spirit". Thus, his spirit literally lives on in the Spirit World, to the extent of all that listed above.

Early man discovered the Spirit World for obvious reasons: A- it exists, B- it's very close, C- he was real curious about what happens when you die. It was just inevitable. Those who figured out how to see it and interact with it while still alive were called "shamans". Through this contact, they gained wisdom and power, and used it (mostly) to help their fellow man.

It didn't take shamans long to realize that there were beings in the Spirit World far greater than themselves. That makes sense; man was new, they were old. So they did the sensible thing: they worshipped them. Not in the sense of building cathedrals and taking women's reproductive rights away--they just respected and honored them. They would ask them advice, then take it, because hey: elders are smart. And so, they worshipped gods.

Until Faeries killed them. Not all of them, mind you, just enough.

The Fair Folk

Not all Faeries are the same. Faerie was an entire universe (not just a planet; in fact, it has no planets, the whole place is an infinite expanse of land, sky, etc), with lots of different beings in it. The greatest among them (in their opinion) are those some would call the Sidhe. They are certainly the most human-like, the most "civilized". So it's only natural they would be the most likely to come up with plans involving invasion, murder, deception, and grasps at true immortality.

One of the rules of Faerie (indeed, of all Outer Realms) is that great will dominates lesser will. Thus, any given Faerie can dominate any lesser Faerie, but will in turn be dominated by greater ones. The vast majority of Faeries are known as "wild fey". They are almost entirely less willful than the Sidhe (with a few interesting exceptions; that detail is saved for much later). Thus, the Sidhe, as a race, tend to dominate Faerie as a whole. Internally, they are dominated by greater Sidhe, and all the way up to the Queens, the Horned God, and all those legendary figures. It was presumably they who came up with the clever invasion plan.

Of course, not all invading Outsiders are Faeries. And what's good for the gander is good for the goose, after all...

Other Outer Realms

The Penultimate Universe holds special significance among the "failed" Universes, but it isn't the only one to make contact with the Prime. There are others. A few examples:

Asgard: a lofty realm dominated by uber-powerful humanoids. They have long battled the giants of Jotunheim, a bunch of bastards they are. They have respect and wariness for the Fair Folk of Alfheim. And of course, they invaded Midgard, beat up some old, Spirit World gods, and are happily absorbing worship and Free Will from humans.

Of course, they don't see it the way it's described above. They think they're helping us, not stealing our Free Will. They don't see Alfheim as the 2nd-most important universe, and Midgard as the 1st. Are they deluding themselves? Is it a clever deception from the old, wise ruler of Asgard to make his subjects feel better about themselves? Or maybe the above description is inaccurate? Or maybe reality itself is just that variable? Who knows?

Olympus: you get the idea.

World-Eating Serpents

The Asgardians are convinced the world will end when it is eaten by a big nasty snake. The Sidhe fear the return of a great, unknowable terror that devours their kind. Outsiders, in general, seem aware, to varying extent, of the fate that awaits them, vis-a-vis the destruction of their home Universe: the Abyss.

Somewhere, at the "edge" of all the Multiverse, is a big, black hole. An abyss, deeper than infinity to the infinitieth power, sucks in all that floats free int he multiversal soup, especially those nice, tasty shards of broken Universe. And so Asgard will end. And Faerie. And presumably the Prime, when it, too, dies. All that is created must eventually yield to oblivion. Even if it takes an amount of time greater than the tetration of infinity.

And from that Abyss spews forth beings of unimaginable horror, who are so anethema to Creation itself that merely interacting with it destroys it utterly and permanently. They are generally known as "demons". They do not so much eat the denizens of failed Universes, as the Universes themselves. This tends to make them rather impossible to kill; every weapon, every magic spell, every great work performed by a being within a Universe must, by definition, affect the contents of that Universe...it cannot extend beyond it. The beings die, having no chance to resist. And when space and time alike are devoured, the Universe truly vanishes, having never existed in the first place.

It's a sad fate for any Universe. And the damn Faeries brought it to ours. But we'll get back to that. In the mean time, isn't there anyone who is aware of all this? Don't they want to stop it?

The Host

If a Creator made all the universes, then where is he now? Well, nobody knows. He's not around. Hasn't been seen or heard from since the creation of the Prime. But he left the Prime in good hands: those of the Host.

The Host are beings we might call "Angels". They are Outsiders, yes, but they are not denizens of any particular Universe. They freely traverse all Universes, and the space between. They are phenomenally powerful, and unbound by any notion of time, space, dimensionality, probability, or what-have-you. But they are not all-powerful. Specifically, they cannot defy the will of the Creator. Ever.

It is self-evident that he wanted the Prime to exist, just as he made it: so it does, and so they will fight to ensure that it does. And it is self-evident that the failed universes must be annihilated. So they shall. And so the Host shall ensure that they shall.

Thus, one does not find many realms outside those few that have entangled themselves with the Prime, as Faerie, Asgard, and others have done. Why? Because the angels can't just destroy them; they have, in effect, "penetrated" the Prime, and destroying them would leave a void, which would destabilize the Prime, which they are bound to keep whole and safe forever. Thus, they are in a dilemma, powerless to resolve it. Good thing humans have Free Will; they may yet effect some permanent solution.

Of course, not all Angels are powerless. Long ago, some of their number dared--nay, somehow managed--to doubt the Creator's will, to doubt their purpose. They have always known that they have no Free Will...so how can they doubt their purpose in the first place? Either they do, in fact, have Free Will, or it was the Creator's will that they doubt themselves. Either way, the outcome seemed inevitable: they must fall. Not so much for their own sake, but for the sake of the Host--it simply cannot be that one among them would not obey the Creator's will.

The Lightbringer, First of the Fallen

The first to fall realized this inevitability. Some say the Creator threw him into the Abyss to destroy him, and he pacted with its darkness to survive; forever, he claws his way back up, vowing to take revenge on the Host, the Creator, and all of Creation. That's probably wrong, since it happened after the Creator disappeared.

Others say the Host fell upon him in number, overpowering him and his allies, and casting them down into the Abyss. They could not take him all the way down, since no Angel can resist the pull past a certain point. So they took him to the edge and abandoned him, as good as dead. But being a clever, devious sort, he survived; he whispers to others trapped further up the slopes of the Abyss, his orders ultimately reaching the ears of willing, enslaved demons, who do his bidding: they invade the Prime, trick or seduce humans into giving up their Free Will, which ultimately gets funneled to him. With enough aid from doomed, damned humans, he will eventually be able to rise again, taking his terrible vengeance.

That might also be wrong.

If you ask him, he might say that, in fact, he fell willingly, sacrificing himself for the greater good of the Host, who just couldn't countenance the idea of a willful Angel. But the Creator, or some unknown force, saved him at the last moment. He dwells in the depths, able to resist the pull of the Abyss, but unable to rise further than he is. Looking up at the rest of Creation, he sees all others who fall. He can save his brethren from falling as far as he. He can, and does indeed, dominate the demons of the abyss, but only in order to continue his work--not as a slave of the Creator's will, but as a willing servant, perhaps the greatest of all the Host, for that. His demons infiltrate the Prime in order to destroy the darkest souls of Man, so the Creator's chosen successor might eventually be free of his worst flaws, and might actually succeed in his mission.

A grandiose claim, to be sure, one that essentially gives him personal credit for making the Creator's plan actually come to pass, where it wouldn't have otherwise. Which of course implies that he is, in fact, greater than the Creator (despite being stuck forever in a pit, surrounded by infinitely evil, infinitely horrible monsters that hate him).

There are even others who suggest that he IS the creator, and his claim is true--he is personally overseeing the implementation of his plan. His seeming disappearance is explained by A- being stuck in an inescapable pit, and B- being thoroughly masked by the unimaginable horror of the Abyss, a face the Creator couldn't possibly wear. Anyone who suggests this horrible blasphemy is typically hurled into the Abyss immediately and summarily.

Man's Road

So what does all this mean for Man? You know, us? We're the center of the Universe?

Well, yeah, kinda...as far as we know. Does that mean God intended for us to be? Not necessarily. The Prime is important, but the specific galaxy within it, the specific planet, the exact time frame; we have no way of knowing if it was intended by God or not. Probably not, in fact, because the whole point of the Prime was to be a living (and dying) system, one that evolved and changed. He introduced a little Chaos into the mix, allowing it to do unpredictable things. By making it unpredictable, he rendered it immune to his otherwise infallible ability to see the future of it--an ability which, by its nature, precludes any creation from ever actually exceeding his expectations.

So why here? Why now? Were we "chosen"? Did he intend Man to be his successor. Probably not, specifically. But here we are, right? Shouldn't we be proud? We were precipitated by an experiment to produce, in general if not in specific, exactly us. So we are, at least in spirit, the "chosen people"? Right?

Right...assuming nobody fucked with the experiment.

And you know what happens when you assume.

So someone did? Who was it? The Faeries? demons? The angels? They all did, but not in ways God couldn't predict. Refer to earlier point about being able to see the future of everything everywhere before it ever happens. The Prime is the only thing in Creation with a Chaos element (besides, you know, the Abyss), so everything else--including Faerie, the Host, etc--is by definition entirely predictable, at least to Him.

So that of course leaves only one option. There is only one intelligent being in Creation capable of eluding God's predictions, and therefore truly interfering with the experiment.

Yep, you guessed it. We fucked it up.

But who, specifically? Ten points if you saw this coming.

Atlantis

Atlantis was, as a matter of fact, a civilization of humans, on Earth. This Earth. The one we live on. Same dimension. Same time stream. Real humans. Evolved from monkeys. The whole nine.

They were not, in fact, based on an island in the middle of the Atlantic. Not exactly. Although they did live on islands, and many of them were within the bounds of the ocean...

That's because they lived on flying islands. At least in the end. They were so magically badass that they levitated land-masses. Why? Because they can! We're talking about Man here. That's what he does.

They even, in a fit of pique, altered the climate of Antarctica, the coldest land on Earth, making it nice and warm. Just to prove they could. Though it wasn't their only settlement by far, it was ironically the only one to survive, by virtue of being quickly sealed in ice as nature rushed to settle Atlantis' debts after the fall. You can still find it, assuming you have some amazing ice-drilling equipment.

When was this? Nobody knows for sure when it began, but it ended around 12,000 BC. That would imply that its entire history takes place before man was known to have been civilized at all. How is that possible? Simple enough: the flood, the massive diluvian event that marked the end of the last Ice Age, and was ultimately caused by Atlanteans fucking with the world's climate (or, more specifically, them suddenly stopping, as it wasn't the climate that destroyed them, but their own magic), had the nifty side effect of wiping out just about all of human civilization, including their relics. Humans tend to congregate on coastlines, rivers, lakes, and the like. When it rains for 40 days and 40 nights --really, really pours--every body of water ever overflows. Every town, every village, every city was flooded, and their relics swept out to sea. Also, the sea level rose, with all that melting ice, so even if the coastal cities had survived the rain and the rivers, they would be hundreds of feet below the water nowadays anyway.

And it's not like they were making plastic or styrofoam--you know, things that can actually last 14,000 years. Had they been, surely *some* bits would have survived here and there, tantalizingly revealing some advanced civilization older than we thought civilization was. But there wasn't...because they weren't really all that advanced.

They began as primitive, stone-age hunter-gatherers. Somehow, they figured out magic. We don't know how. We do know where that would lead. They build great stone towers, and statues of themselves, and flying islands, and lord knows what else. And they did it all with magic. Easy, consequence-free magic. Free-flowing magic on tap. No need for chemistry, physics, and all that...they had magic. Thus, the stuff of their empire was surprisingly simple: stone, glass, wood, etc. These were people who hadn't yet discovered bronze and iron, and would never need to, because they could make things out of crystal, or even light.

Of course, as anyone can predict, they inevitably fell, and for the obvious reason: hubris. After all, given unlimited power, man will generally endeavor to do only one thing: acquire even more power. Despite having all his temporal needs met, despite becoming demigods in the flesh, the Atlanteans wanted to press further. They wanted to achieve Ultimate Power. Just to prove they could.

They didn't even know what it was. How can you? I mean, what is "Ultimate Power"? The ability to do anything, of any scale, with no effort at all? Like, destroy the entire universe in a nanosecond? Instantly create a quadrillion lightly fried eggs on every planet in the galaxy? Even such preposterous things are not truly "Ultimate". What, then? Meta-achievements? Creating a mountain so big you can't destroy it? Striking an immovable object with an unstoppable force? Dividing by zero?

They didn't know. But they tried. They had to try. They couldn't not try. That itself, perhaps, ironically enough, might be the true definition of Ultimate Power: the power to not pursue Ultimate Power, even when nothing is stopping you.

In any case, they tried. And succeeded. For one instant, someone, somehow, achieved Ultimate Power. And then he found out what it was.

God.

The Creator.

The ability to create a Universe. For all we know, it isn't "the" Ultimate power, but it meets one definition: it is the greatest application of power ever known to exist in the whole tetratedly infinite "history" of the Multiverse.

They created a Universe. Inside a Universe. That Universe is our Universe. And is contained within our Universe.

You see where this is going.

That's just not right.

Talk about unexpected outcomes, God. Nice move with the whole Free Will thing.

The Fall of Atlantis

And so Atlantis fell. Sparing you the boring detail, their flying islands fell, the world flooded, the climate changed, the last ice age ended (was the whole thing their fault, or just a coincidence?), and magic was destroyed.

And then magic *really* started taking off.

In their blunder, they fractured the Prime. They destabilized it. Nobody else has ever been able to do that. It's outside the power of any Outsider, even the Host--even the Lightbringer. Presumably, perhaps, the Creator could do it, if he wanted to. And thus, Man did, in his brief moment of playing God.

And through that crack came everything. Every possibility. Magic.

The hole was small, but big enough for a dying universe (like, say, Faerie) to try to squeeze through. Big enough for demons to worm their way in. Big enough for the boundless possibility of the Multiverse to begin to undermine all those unbreakable Laws of Physics the Prime was built on.

Which of course explains how the Faeries got here. And the Asgardians. And the Olympians. And magic itself.

Yes, magic.

The fall of Atlantis allowed magic to exist.

Magic. The thing that made Atlantis powerful. The thing that led to its downfall. The thing that should not have been possible, due to the Laws of Physics.

So they kind of created themselves. Retroactively in time. That is, of course, impossible. It violates the Laws of Physics. Ah, but the invader Universes brought their own time streams, perpendicular to our own! Perhaps the event propagated through alternate time flows, circumventing our time stream!

But still...it's impossible. The initial event could never have happened in the first place.

Ah, but they created a Universe within the Universe! Perhaps we are in that Universe now! And thus, only in that Universe is magic possible, and time travel, and all that. They did, in essence, "create themselves".

No, because in the original, outer Prime, they still couldn't have done it in the first place.

Sigh.

Nobody really knows how Atlantis had magic in the first place. Some suspect that, in order to know, we have to understand such deep and perplexing mysteries of reality that we, too, would wield the power of Atlantis, and thus inevitably re-create their fall. Others suspect...that that has already happened, and that is how Atlantis rose in the first place.

Still others suggest that, simply by knowing the answer to the question, we collapse a probabilistic function, forcing reality to finally enforce the paradox, destroying the entire Universe.

And, you guessed it: a few crazy weirdos suggest that even *that* has already happened, and we are merely experiencing the infinite, final moment of a doomed Universe.

A lot of people do a lot of drugs and think some really weird things.

In any case, humans are going to find the ruins of Atlantis sooner or later. When they do...well, that'll be an interesting day.

The Quantum

Or is that really everything?

Come on, there's gotta be at least ONE secret that's really a secret. ;-)