The Dawn

The Dawn marks the first known event in all of reality, nowhere near Everwealth or Gaiatia alone. Not a myth, not a metaphor, but the closest thing to truth our oldest bones and furthest stars remember. It was not a sunrise, nor a birth. It was a rupture, when for reasons unknown, The Arcane, that swirling storm of unfiltered magick outside all physical realms, first pierced the cold, dead skin of all the worlds, our home of The Folklands, The Otherworld's peculiar landscapes, even the fiery pools of The Hells. Prior to this, were one-and-all lifeless stone husks adrift in the void, barren of wind, blood, and beauty. But when the Arcane leaked through, drawn to form the way fire craves tinder, the very nature of existence changed. Through stars, not celestial ornaments but open wounds in the fabric of space, magick poured in torrents, blind and directionless, yet inherently creative. Wherever it pooled, it transfigured. Stone became soil, heat, ore, and jewels. Air bloomed. Water sprang forth, carving canyons, rivers, borders. And eventually, from microscopic twitching motes came the ancestors of gods, beasts, and folk alike. Not by design, but by accident. Evolution twisted by unfettered inspiration and new laws of nature magick would write for us. The world did not choose to be born. It simply was.

The Arcane, also called the Impossible Place or the Mother, is no place in any sane sense. It has no gravity, no time, no form. But it has magick. Infinite, wild, and without boundary. Some scholars liken it to a storm made of every element, emotion, and concept in their rawest forms, clashing and merging like blind gods in a sleepwalk. It is from this chaos that the Dawn occurred, an inexplicable breach that allowed a trickle of that unbounded power into Gaiatia. These "trickles" became the stars, pinpricks in the night sky where magick still seeps into our world, or as is the tale whispered to us by the Gods. Even now, every flame lit, every river's rush, every lightning strike or heartbeat is a ripple of that primal cascade. It is why the world changes, why it grows, decays, and dreams. The Dawn didn’t create life, as much as it infected the universe with possibility. While largely mythological in tone, multiple schools within The Scholar's Guild agree that The Dawn offers the most likely framework for explaining the presence of magick as a universal, invisible force behaving similarly even across multiple realms. Evidence includes:

• The universal consistency of star-based leyline radiation.

• Magical resonance recorded in petrified flora and fossilized sedimentary strata older than the first civilizations.

• The impossibility of separating life, weather, and decay from magickal interaction.

Some theorists suggest The Dawn was not a singular event but a long series of permeations over millions of years. Others argue the Arcane itself may not have “punched through” into our world, rather, our world may have condensed from it, like frost on glass.

The myth of The Dawn is virtually universal, known to every race and civilization that has ever attempted to explain the world’s beginnings. Variants are told among the Ursi shamans, Human philosophers, sealed records of The Arcane Coalition, and the fire-singers of the Red-Dwarfish clans. Even The Knights of All-Faith recognize The Dawn in modified form, describing it as the moment a divine voice split the void and breathed purpose into Gaiatia. The tale’s spread is so extensive that it is sometimes used to gauge whether a given culture is native to Gaiatia or some extraplanar colonist.

While the core idea remains the same, magick entering the world and creating life, the flavors of the tale differ wildly: Ursi believe the Dawn was a roar that shattered the sky, from which their god-ancestor awoke. Gnomish claim the first sound was laughter, and that the Arcane was playing a trick on the dark. Aetherial consider The Dawn an act of betrayal, the first defiance of formlessness by form. Mages of The Arcane Coalition and researchers from The Scholar's Guild treat it more literally, positing measurable energetic discharge from an unknowable source through the stars. Some tales frame The Dawn as a gift, others as an infection or a curse that still festers in the veins of the world.

The Dawn is sacred to many, feared by some, and revered as inevitable truth by most. It forms the backbone of most religious and arcane traditions across Everwealth. Despite theological differences, nearly every group agrees that magick is not a mortal invention or even a divine blessing, but a force older than either, first witnessed during this primordial event. Some fear speaking of The Dawn in detail, as if naming it might reopen the wound in the world’s skin. Others recite it as a mantra during spellcasting, claiming it tunes their soul closer to the original pulse of magick.

The Dawn has inspired countless works:

• “The First Flicker”, an epic poem of 200 stanzas recited only in dying languages, said to describe the first star’s awakening.

• “Motes of Unmaking”, a banned treatise by Scholar Althrix detailing the Dawn as a cosmic accident rather than a blessing.

• “Salted Light”, a children’s parable of the Nimblefluff’s ancestor watching stars drip down like honey until the world bloomed.

• A surviving sermon known only as “Verse One”, which begins: “In the unseeing dark, the Arcane dreamed.”

The Dawn is depicted in stained glass in Opulence’s Great Chapel and in the spiral murals of ancient Dwarfish vaults. Common motifs include:

• A yawning black void cracked by blinding gold light.

• Hands of flame reaching down to touch the earth.

• A cascade of symbols spilling from a burst star into beast, tree, and man alike.

Musical interpretations also abound, most notably the orchestral composition “First Light’s Dirge”, which mimics the crescendo of stars igniting.