Anthropogenesis

The primordials created the world as a place where Creation and Destruction would be in balance. But the two are fundamentally asymmetric. Everything in the cosmos flows from the same primal source to the same ultimate end.

This asymmetry manifests as an imbalance of forces acting on the world. The demons actively try to destroy the world, while the deities sit passively in their heavens. The deities have the power to act within the world, but any large act of power would actually weaken the laws that hold the world together. Any attempt to fight the demons directly would destroy the thing the deities hope to protect.

So it was decided that the deities would fight indirectly. They would place beings in the world. These beings would live according to nature’s laws, but they would act in the service of the deities. Thus they could fight the demons without destroying the world.

The laws of the primordials allowed this divine intervention, but only with severe limitations: Each deity was allowed to add only eighty-one people to the world. Now that the people are in place, they must reproduce themselves according to the laws of nature.

Each person must be free to choose. No law of nature compels service to the deities. People are free to serve the demons if they wish. They are also free to serve nature. In theory, a person is free to live without serving any higher cause, but in practice, a person’s actions usually serve some end, regardless of intentions.

Each person has an uncertain afterlife. Every soul must have a chance to remain in the world after death, either reincarnated or as a spirit. Souls are strongly bound to the originating deity’s heaven, but these bonds are not strong enough to prevent capture by a demon or deity with a stronger claim. Bonds can be weakened or strengthened by the person’s actions.

Under these restrictions, each of the nine deities created eighty-one children. They gave their children the knowledge they would need and added them to the world.