Proto-History

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In the beginning, before time and matter coalesced, the cosmos was a formless void known as the Primordial Abyss. From the Abyss emerged the Eldritch Forces, vast, ineffable beings that shaped the planes of existence through their wills. These forces were not beings in the sense mortals understand; rather, they were embodiments of concepts—chaos, order, light, darkness, time, and oblivion.

Over aeons, as these forces waged cosmic wars and performed acts of creation, they inadvertently gave birth to the first gods. The gods arose as sentient beings capable of guiding the universe's growth and balance. These gods banded together, seeing themselves as guardians of the multiverse, and created the Great Weave, a metaphysical network that unified the planes and governed reality. Life, death, magic, and time all flowed through the Weave, each bound to its rules.

However, the Weave did not exist unchallenged. A shadow of the Primordial Abyss lingered in the form of Oblivion, a remnant of the original void that sought to consume all that the gods had woven. The gods needed a custodian for this aspect of the universe—someone to oversee death and ensure that Oblivion did not claim too much, and that the balance between life, death, and the afterlife was maintained. Durnstang, originally a god of death, decay, and the orderly passage from life to afterlife, was given this role. He became the Lord of the Dead, a neutral figure who managed the flow of souls between planes.

Durnstang's Betrayal and Frustration

Though Durnstang dutifully performed his role for eons, ensuring that souls transitioned to their rightful places after death, he gradually became embittered. The role he played, while essential, was stagnant. While other gods basked in the creation of life, the flow of magic, and the celebration of their worshippers, Durnstang found himself forgotten and neglected. Mortals feared him, shunning his temples in favour of gods of life, nature, and wealth.

But what troubled him more than his fading worship was the realization of the deeper injustice in the cosmos: the Cycle of Mortality itself. Durnstang discovered that the Weave imposed an arbitrary limit on existence, binding mortals to a cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth. This cycle, he came to believe, was a prison, designed by the gods to maintain their power by controlling the flow of souls and ensuring that life never truly escaped their grasp. Durnstang, as the custodian of death, saw more than anyone the suffering and waste within this cycle—souls trapped in endless loops of reincarnation, repeating the same mistakes, unable to transcend.

In time, Durnstang began to suspect that Oblivion—the dark force from the Primordial Abyss—was not his enemy, but the universe’s true state. Life, he reasoned, was a temporary aberration, something the other gods had imposed on reality to stave off Oblivion and maintain their divine power. Durnstang grew to resent the Weave itself, seeing it as a tool of control rather than the natural order of things.

Durnstang’s Desire to Break the Cycle

Durnstang's ultimate goal is not simply to end life, but to break the cycle of death and rebirth. He believes that by severing the connection between life and death, he can free souls from their endless reincarnation and elevate them to a higher plane of existence, one beyond the gods’ control. This would end the suffering of endless lives and deaths, and in his eyes, bring true freedom to the universe.

In doing so, Durnstang would reshape reality itself—unraveling the Weave, returning the planes to a state closer to their primordial origin in the Abyss. Mortals would no longer be born to suffer, die, and return to life, and even the gods themselves might fade as their creations no longer feed them with worship or life-force.

However, Durnstang also knows that breaking the Weave entirely would invite the return of Oblivion, which might consume all of existence. But to him, this is a just outcome—either souls will transcend the Weave and be free, or the universe will return to its natural state of nothingness. Both are preferable to the tyranny of the current cycle.