# MYRKANIS RYNFORTH’S # GRAND CHRONICLE OF THE GODS ### VOLUME 1 ### PREFACE This labor of love, my dear young lads and lades, is the fruit of my life-long pursuit of divine knowledge. To travel the planes, cross the worlds, encounter celestial beings, and acquire ancient lore of the Gods is to realize that we are mere pawns in a game of supreme chess. We mortal fools presume ourselves to be the players, but the machinations of the divine lay waste to our imagined thrones of freedom. Yes indeed, we are humiliated and humbled by our insignificance in comparison to the greater realms and beings beyond us. Our hands, powerless when we are most desperate for control. Our life, a trifling speck of dust upon the grandfather clock of time. My very dear young reader, if nothing else is gained by your cursory reading of my scholarly travails, let this work therefore impress upon you the wisdom duly imparted with the right understanding of our proper place in the great cosmology: lucky observers of the blessed brilliant stars. Content to bear witness to the Threads of the Mist. At peace with the Unending Spin. Liberated from the concerns of the Greater Powers. This, my dear young and most impressionable student, is the Grand Chronicle of the Gods. ### PART ONE - AO AND THE COSMIC BALANCE The Cosmic Balance. That which encompasses all action and deed of sentient beings within realmspace. The Overgod, the First God, Lord Ao himself, sees to the eternal task of regulating this balance. Before Ao, we know of no past, no gods, no realm. Some sources therefore credit him the creation of the world, the delegation of divine powers, and even the expanses of the Astral Seas as works of his hands. Ao himself, according to the annals of the demigods, claims the creation of all other gods as Overgod. However, worth mentioning is one infamously lost apocryphal text, Tales Of The Phlogiston, rumored to detail a luminous being which may indeed precede and usurp the power of Ao. Numerous expeditions, including my own, have never turned up this lost scroll. Ao himself is believed to impute a significant portion of each deity’s divine power, in conjunction with the faithfulness and zeal of their followers. This is done at his absolute discretion in service of the Cosmic Balance. To understand further, one must become familiar with the focus points where the balance hinges: good and evil, order and chaos. Neither member of either pairing is allowed to overtake the other, drawing the momentum of realmspace toward true neutrality. The diviners and mystics of our history have longed for enlightenment concerning the balance. Is neutrality the condition for the existence of our realm? Were good to overtake evil, order to overtake chaos, would this be our ultimate demise? Or, perhaps, a new balance could be permanently established as the foundation for a different future? Philosophers and sages have waxed poetic on this subject over the years, yet our varying conclusions prove one indisputable fact, my awfully young lads and lades: the balance remains beyond our mortal comprehension for now. ### PART TWO - THE CIRCLE OF GREATER POWERS The balance is essential to grasp the Circle, and the Circle is essential to grasp the tumultuous history which follows. As Ao promoted, elected, and punished beings into godhood, he established a hierarchy as he slowly withdrew from the affairs of the realm. Above all other deities lies the Circle of Greater Powers. Twelve gods elected by Ao to a council of supreme divine power. These were the gods under which all lesser gods existed. ### The Circle of Greater Powers | Chauntea - the goddess of cultivation | Sune - the goddess of beauty | | ------------------------------------- | ---------------------------- | | **Cyric - the god of strife** | **Talos - the god of storms** | | **Lathander - the god of renewal & dawn** | **Tempus - the god of war** | | **Mystra - the goddess of magic** | **Tyr - the god of justice** | | **Oghma - the god of knowledge** | **Kelemvor - god of the dead** | | **Shar - the goddess of the night** | **Silvanus - god of nature** | In case of a bitter dispute or tie regarding celestial matters, Ao would intervene. The Circle rarely saw eye-to-eye on most things due to the colorful personalities and vast differences between each deity. Ultimately, the Circle would regulate and punish divine beings for injustices committed against the balance - not upholding good over evil, nor order over chaos, but ensuring neither usurped the other completely. The Greater Powers met in a neutral space, the Pavilion of Cynosure. A secure demiplane within the deep expanse of the Ethereal Plane. The age of the Circle is uncertain, but for most of the twelve we can trace their devoted following and relics thousands of years in the past. According to the Tablets of Fate (another lost relic of the gods), for a time it was Ao and the Twelve. Roughly a thousand years ago, the gods were permitted by Ao to expand in number, setting off the violent clash between divine and material for centuries to come. ### VOLUME TWO, CONTAINING: ### PART THREE - THE DESCENT OF DEMIGODS ### PART FOUR - THE INSURRECTION OF AURIL ### PART FIVE - THE DORMANT SPELL ### COMING SOON ### FROM THE WORDS OF THE AUTHOR: *“This contains my latest and most exclusive discoveries about the divine and the dangers our world will face in the time to come.”* *-Myrkanis Rynforth* ADVANCE COPIES TO BE PURCHASED EXCLUSIVELY AT: MONMOUTH BOOKS 235 FLYWELL COURT, MERRIVALE