Zion.

Zion
The First Will, the God-Man, Origin of All

Overview

Zion is the primordial deity of Avalon: the first will, the first mind, and the power from which all other gods, Aylas, lands, and histories descend. Every year and age is ultimately measured against a single act of his—when he chose not to remain alone.

In the oldest surviving theologies, Zion is described as a god-man: not an abstract force, but a being with thought, desire, and intention. He is said to hold “all the power in the world,” yet he rarely guides the world openly. Instead he stands at the beginning of everything and then steps back, watching as the universe he willed into being unfolds.

Names and Titles

Across Avalon, Zion is known by many epithets, but the core name remains almost unchanged in every language:

• Zion – the most common name, used in formal liturgy and scholarship.
• The First Will – emphasizing his initial decision to create a place to live and to make.
• The God-Man – underscoring both his divinity and his personhood.
• The Silent High God – in traditions that stress his distance and reserve.
• Father of Ages – a poetic title used in songs, referring to the calendar that begins with his act.

However varied the titles, they all circle the same idea: Zion is not one god among many; he is the origin from which the very possibility of gods arises.

Nature and Ontology

Zion is depicted as both utterly beyond the world and intimately tied to it.

Personhood

Unlike faceless cosmic forces, Zion is spoken of as a person:

• He desires.
• He chooses.
• He can, when he wishes, manifest as people and walk the world in mortal form.

Theologians describe him as capable of appearing as any traveler, artisan, or stranger at a crossroads. In such stories he rarely displays open power; he observes, asks questions, or nudges events with a word or a glance, then vanishes.

Power

Zion’s power is absolute in scope:

• He stands above all other gods and Aylas.
• Even the mightiest known deity—the Blood King of the Nether—is acknowledged in many traditions as king of all gods except Zion. No oath, pact, or infernal throne rises higher than the one who shaped the world itself.

Yet for all that, Zion is not worshipped as a storm-bringer or war patron. His power is foundational rather than flashy: the laws of reality, the deep structure of time, and the very existence of divinity are attributed to him.

Primary Stance: The Observer

Most texts agree that Zion’s defining trait after creation is restraint. He is often called the Watcher of Eras—one who rarely interferes directly. The world is his work, but not his puppet.

This gives rise to a common theological image: Zion standing at the edge of the cosmos, watching the lives within Avalon pass like pages in a book he has chosen to read rather than rewrite.

The Creation of Avalon

All later histories begin with one moment in eternity: Zion’s decision that he no longer wished to exist in isolation.

The Desire to Create

Ancient myth describes the beginning as a simple but immense desire in Zion’s heart:

To dwell, and to make.

He wished for a physical place to live, to walk, and to shape. Not a realm of thought alone, but soil, oceans, sky, stone, and the possibility of life that could surprise even him.

Formation Over Ages

From that desire, Zion turned his will outward. Avalon did not appear in an instant. Sacred cosmologies describe:

• A long, slow forming of reality over vast stretches of time.
• Seas carving out their basins, mountains heaving up from the deep.
• The first stars above the world and the first fire within it.

These ages are measured not in years but in epochs, when all was still cooling, settling, and learning to bear life.

The First Year

When at last Avalon became stable enough to sustain enduring patterns—land, sky, flowing water, and the promise of living beings—the first scholars and priests later fixed that moment as:

• Year 0001 of the common calendar, often simply called “Year of Creation.”

Every date in later history is counted from that point: wars, town foundings, ascents of kings, and the quiet lives of farmers and traders. All of them lie within the frame of a world Zion willed into being.

Time and the Calendar

Zion is not merely the creator of land and sea; he is the anchor of time.

• The standard calendar of Avalon begins with Zion’s creation of the world.
• Years are numbered forward from that act up to the current age.
• By roughly the eleventh century after Creation, human civilization has emerged clearly, with recorded kingdoms, forts, and early city-states.

To historians, “Before the Eleventh Century” is often called the Deep Era, a time when Zion’s presence is felt mostly as a distant, shaping pressure—storms that set coastlines, tectonic shifts, and the slow movement of climate and continents.

From the eleventh century onward, the world begins to resemble recognizable human history, but always against the backdrop of his original act.

The Divine Hierarchy

Zion stands at the top of a layered divine structure. Other gods and Aylas rule domains, realms, and ideas—but all exist within the world he authored.

The Blood King

The Blood King is the terrifying god of the Nether: a warlike sovereign, lord of flame, ash, and infernal strongholds. In almost every credible tradition, he is called:

• “King of all gods, except Zion.”

This single phrase defines the hierarchy plainly:

• Among the gods who contend, bargain, and bleed for influence, the Blood King is supreme.
• Yet he remains a figure inside Zion’s world, not above it. Even his dominion over the Nether cannot break the boundary of the creation that encircles him.

Avalon, the Land-Goddess

Over time, the world itself awakens a face. The land and sea of Avalon are personified in a goddess often simply called Avalon:

• She is seen as the embodiment of cliffs, forests, and tides.
• Sailors tell of a luminous woman glimpsed on full-moon nights by the ocean’s edge, cloak whipping with the wind and waves.

While she is beloved in coastal rites and harvest festivals, scholars are careful to distinguish:

• Zion created the world.
• Avalon is the world made conscious—a later emergence within his work.

Nelenia and Emergent Deities

Not all gods are shaped by Zion’s direct hand. Some traditions teach that certain deities arose from the accumulated weight of mortal emotion and vice.

The clearest example is Nelenia, goddess (or Ayla) of greed:

• She is believed to have formed as human grasping, envy, and hoarding pooled through centuries.
• When greed became thick enough in the world, it took on a face and a name.

This is one of the most important implications of Zion’s creation:

• He did not craft every lesser god one by one.
• Instead he built a reality where human choices and feelings can, over long spans of time, harden into gods of their own.

Zion, in this sense, is the architect of a living, self-generating pantheon.

Aylas and the Lesser Divine Orders

Below the high gods stand the Aylas—spirits and divinities bound to virtues, vices, places, and ideals:

• Harleen, Ayla of Trust and Bravery.
• Lolana, associated with love and compassion.
• Bethel, tied to the southern lands and their character.
• Aldore, the exiled Ayla, famed in legend for forging the sword Seadon.
• Nelenia, overlapping the border between Ayla and goddess as the embodiment of greed.

These beings do not rival Zion in scale. They are:

• Localized.
• Focused.
• Born from the conditions of a world that Zion built to be capable of such births.

In many temples, the story is told that Zion created the rules—and those rules, over time, allowed the Aylas to awaken.

Worship and Theology

Zion’s relationship with worshippers is paradoxical. He is the most important deity in theory and yet, in daily practice, often the most distant.

Patterns of Worship

Different cultures approach him in different ways:

• Philosopher-priests treat Zion as an object of contemplation rather than petition, meditating on his initial choice and what it means for free will and fate.
• Rural shrines sometimes offer a single candle or bowl of clear water “for the First Maker,” especially on the first day of the new year.
• High temples may reserve a quiet inner chamber to Zion alone—no statues, no lavish altars, just an empty space to signify the unseen origin.

Most people pray, day to day, to nearer gods and Aylas: to Avalon for safe harvests, to Harleen for courage, to Lolana for love returned. Zion’s name is invoked:

• At the start of contracts and oaths (“Before Zion, let this stand.”)
• In the framing of histories (“In the Xth year since Zion wrought the world…”)
• At birth and death, when a life enters or leaves the flow he first set in motion.

The Silent High God

Because Zion so rarely intervenes in obvious ways, many devotional traditions describe him as silent by choice:

• He created a world able to grow, err, and change.
• To constantly correct it would be to betray the very freedom that makes it worth watching.

Some theologians add a softer view: that Zion still grieves and rejoices quietly with the world—its wars, its loves, its small mercies—but chooses not to break the pattern he began.

Manifestations and Hidden Walks

Stories of Zion appearing in human form are rare and often disputed, but they share common threads.

Common Motifs

In such tales:

• He appears as a stranger—an old traveler, a quiet craftsman, a passerby in a crowd.
• He asks disarming questions rather than issuing commands.
• He observes more than he acts, sometimes offering a single remark that later proves pivotal.

These accounts are impossible to verify. Most theologians treat them not as strict history but as parables: reminders that any person you pass in the street might be more than they seem, and that the world is always under the gaze of its maker.

Philosophical Interpretations

Zion’s existence raised deep questions for scholars, mystics, and ordinary believers alike.

On Freedom

If a single being holds all power, why does suffering exist? In many schools, the answer lies in Zion’s choice not to rule every moment:

• He desired not puppets, but beings capable of true choice.
• The same freedom that allows kindness also allows cruelty.
• Zion, as the First Will, accepts the risk of letting other wills arise.

On Meaning

Some traditions teach that Zion’s longing “to dwell, and to make” echoes through every soul:

• The human hunger to build towns, write songs, plant gardens, and tell stories is seen as a faint reflection of Zion’s original desire.
• To create is, in a small way, to imitate the First Maker.

On Other Gods

Since Avalon contains many powerful gods and Aylas, theologians often wrestle with the relationship between them:

• Zion is the source.
• The others are expressions—born from places, virtues, vices, or the accumulated weight of mortal belief.

Worship of these lesser powers is not necessarily seen as betrayal. Instead, it is understood as speaking to Zion through the facets of the world he allowed to awaken.

Symbolism and Iconography

Zion has fewer fixed symbols than other deities, but certain motifs recur:

• An unmarked circle – representing the closed loop of time, with Zion at its unseen center.
• A single open eye against a field of stars – the watching presence over the cosmos.
• Blank stone altars – altars with no image, used to honor the invisible source rather than a sculpted form.
• A hand releasing light – found in a few illuminated manuscripts, showing creation as an act of letting light spill from a closed fist.

Unlike more approachable gods, Zion is rarely carved as a human figure. When he is, the features are often deliberately vague or worn down, emphasizing his unknowable aspect.

Regional Traditions

While the core beliefs remain surprisingly consistent across Avalon, emphasis shifts from place to place.

• Old coastal cities tend to venerate Avalon the sea-goddess more visibly, with Zion acknowledged at the start of festivals but not given a separate cult.
• Inland scholars and monasteries spend more time on metaphysics, copying treatises on Zion’s act of creation, the structure of time, and the hierarchy of gods.
• Small villages may know his name mostly from dates written on documents and stones: “In the year 1893 since Zion,” and so on.

In all these places, Zion’s presence is more felt than directly invoked—a distant, steady gravity at the edge of every story.

Legacy

Every great war, every lost city, every quiet field, every cursed artifact and whispered legend, all of them share one truth: they are only possible because a god-man once grew tired of being alone and chose to create a place where things could happen.

The railway lines, the mountain forts, the ghost-haunted rivers, the bustling modern streets—each is a chapter in the same long history, counted from the moment Zion made Avalon real.

He does not thunder from the clouds, nor demand constant sacrifice. He does not compete with the Blood King for worship, nor walk openly through temple gates. Instead, Zion’s legacy is the world itself:

• The soil underfoot.
• The years that pass.
• The endless stream of lives, each with its own small will, moving within the vast story he began.