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Creation Stories

Hey!
So do you have a creation story, and if so, what is it? I've always been very interested in learning others' creation stories as they're usually all very unique. ^^
If you do not have a creation story, why not? Is there a reason why, or have you just deemed it unnecessary?
Personally, my creation story itself is very complicated, but I'll try to make it short for you guys.

In the beginning, there was One, this One was called Ivranar, and his form is unbeknownst to man, dwarf, and elf alike. It is said, or rather was said, by the gods that Ivranar had spun himself into the world as it is, in order to amuse his children, those seven Major Gods: Morundor (order), Forlonin (Chaos), Aerlindor (Earth), Mira (sky), Feylil (Flora), Maeven (Fauna), and Hrindor (seas). One rule was placed upon his children, and that was that no matter the circumstances, they were not to interfere directly with the affairs of all things of their creation, and instead they should let the things run as they would. Thus the minor gods were created (of which there are too many to describe), to which the rule did not apply, and then under the Seven they were to influence all mortal things.

And thus the gods and the world is formed, and it would take me pages more to get to the formation of all the races, so I'll just say that the gods fused their minds together to create the elves, and then the lesser races were created by individuals of the Seven, although those lesser races did not have immortality of age, as that was a feat that could only be pulled off by all of the Sevens' minds combined.

Anyway, there is my creation story, reply with any suggestions, questions, thoughts, and with stories of your own! =D I'd love to hear them!
 

X Equestris

Maester
I've got three decently fleshed out creation myths and mythologies. Sadly, it would take far too much space and time to do them justice here, and I don't have my notes handy at the moment.
 

Mythopoet

Auror
My world has two different Creation Myths, based on two different ancient Egyptian Creation Myths. In my world, both are true, but only cover half of the reality of the world. You need to know both of them to get the full truth.
 

WooHooMan

Auror
For my "Giant's Prison" setting, there's this bundle of nonsense...
http://mythicscribes.com/forums/showcase/13845-creation-myth-worldbuilding.html
To summarize, the "creator" was killed after failing to create and her corpse become all physical matter in the universe.

In that same setting, it is said that creation was not planned or put into action. It just sort of happened when circumstances were right with no creator entity. Afterwards an entity took over creation and changed the universe in its image. Then the gods took over and remodeled the universe into how it appears in the story.

Neither of these myths are true.

In my "Nesia" setting, the Elves believed that the universe is a giant snake which regularly dies and is reborn. As such, time is cyclical with no ending and no beginning. The planets and stars are lodged in the Space Snake's scales and when its current incarnation dies, that matter dies with it. The spiritual plane, however, is eternal and unchanging.
Humans also believed in cyclical time but they believed that nothing really remains of the old universe and the spiritual plane is what gets re-creation going.
Orcs believed that mortals ascended into godhood and went back in time to retroactively create the universe.
And finally the Kobolds believed that the original god (who exists in all time periods simultaneously) created the universe when he split the initial chaos into matter/light and void/chaos. He did this because he already did this in the future/past.

All of these myths are partially true.

In my current, unnamed (and so far, my favorite) setting, the only "creation myth" is the myth of how humanity was created. This is because the people of the setting believe that humanity is the end-all be-all of existence. What happens before and after humanity has run its course is so unimportant that it's not worth discussing. The gist of that myth is that the God of Love/Hate, the Sun and Morality created humans by accident when he tried to create "perfect spiritual beauty" in the mortal world. Then he screwed-up further when he divided humanity into genders. Then he sort of gave-up and decided to rule over humanity.

So, now that I've bored you with my stories, I guess I'll give some brief feedback on your story...
I didn't care for it. Sorry, but it's a little too conventional for my taste; what with the whole "The One creator" and his children gods (each having his or her own specific domain plus arbitrary rules they must follow) and elves as the eldest peoples. I feel like I've seen all this multiple times before.
I'm sure in the context of your actual setting, this myth works great but on its own, it's not my thing.
 

Tom

Istar
Whoo, creation myths! I happen to have a lot of them. Usually they're a tangled mess of Greek, Celtic, and Norse mythology, fused with my own ideas.

The first one, the Yianlai creation myth, can be found here.

Then there's the Barlandic creation myth, which states that everything was created by the Sun God, Vizarok. He created three seperate realms: the city of the gods, the earth, and the underworld, and set three races--the gods, the animals, and the spirits--in place to govern each one. The spirits, rulers of the underworld, became dissatisfied with their home and sought to conquer the city of the gods. They convinced some of the gods to help them. Vizarok discovered their treachery and cursed the spirits, forcing them to wander for eternity without a home to call their own. He also cast the traitorous gods out of the gods' city and onto the earth. There they were transformed into the human race, and took the place of the animals as rulers of the earth.

The Kirithian creation myth states that the universe was formed from a formless substance called Chaos. Over thousands and thousands of years, life evolved, much like it did in our universe. Three powerful beings came into existence--the Three Gods. They saw the universe forming around them, and helped shape it with their magic, until the earth and all life on it were formed. Humanity evolved from the animals, and because of their ability to think and reason, the Gods saw them as kin. They formed souls like their own for humanity, and offered them the gift of wisdom. Humans rejected it, however, and fell into ignorance and savagery. Only by striving to find perfect wisdom can humanity achieve unity with the Gods.

All three myths are true in certain aspects, but none are completely correct. Each contains bits and pieces of real events of the ancient past, such as humanity's transformation from merfolk to land-dwelling mammals. The gods (or god) of each culture are all simply facets of the true god, and each are true when seen through the lens of the culture they belong to.
 
I'm always stumped with creation myths. I don't know how others manage to make theirs so interesting and unique. I enjoy reading about them but can never seem to come up with good ideas on my own. Anyone have any tips on where to start?
 
I really appreciate your work, and I enjoyed reading about your myths, they're supper interesting and sound like myths as they would appear in real life.
Also, I apologize for the really rough version. I do have one super expanded but it would take forever to type up and almost as forever to read. And yes, it does work a lot better with context, and more history, facts about the world, the gods etc. [In actuality, elves weren't the first sentient beings, they were just the first successful ones. First the gods tried with Sprites, ents, giants, Finlyl, dragons, trolls, gnomes, Mreyhar, Voren, etc. But they never really got them right until elves, and then elves became the architect for the later species. (except orcs, which were originally created by man sorcerers) ].
Also, I forgot to mention many of the minor creation myths, as each race and geographical area has a different set of myths that they follow, lest they be very similar to the one I stated above or entirely different (to the point of being monotheistic). The one I posted is specifically that of the Ilian Empire (one of the two major warring factions of elves).
 
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I'm always stumped with creation myths. I don't know how others manage to make theirs so interesting and unique. I enjoy reading about them but can never seem to come up with good ideas on my own. Anyone have any tips on where to start?

At first I came up with the gods and goddesses and their order of importance and what they do and such, then I started on my creation myth, and it became much easier to work with ^^ But there are very many ways to creatre them, especially if you do some research on Earth's creation myths, or other writers. My favourite has to be that of Terry Pratchett, and his myth of Tak.


The first thing Tak did, he wrote himself.
The second thing Tak did, he wrote the Laws.
The third thing Tak did, he wrote the World.
The fourth thing Tak did, he wrote a cave.
The fifth thing Tak did, he wrote a geode, an egg of stone.
And in the twilight of the mouth of the cave, the geode hatched, and the Brothers were born.
The first Brother walked toward the light, and stood under the open sky. Thus he became too tall. He was the first Man. He found no Laws and he was enlightened.
The second Brother walked toward the darkness, and stood under a roof of stone. Thus he achieved the correct height. He was the first Dwarf. He found the Laws Tak had written, and he was endarkened.
But some of the living spirit of Tak was trapped in broken stone egg, and it became the first Troll, wandering the world unbidden and unwanted, without soul or purpose, learning or understanding. fearful of light and darkness it shambles forever in twilight, knowing nothing, learning nothing, creating nothing, being nothing...
 

WooHooMan

Auror
I'm always stumped with creation myths. I don't know how others manage to make theirs so interesting and unique. I enjoy reading about them but can never seem to come up with good ideas on my own. Anyone have any tips on where to start?

My advice: look at what other people are doing and do something different. There aren't any rules to this so don't feel obligated to include conventional elements like gods or a single creator entity or "at first, there was a void" or any of those cliches.

Further advice: Define the setting's present and then work backwards. A creation story should fit with your setting's personality. The Norse creation myth involves killing a giant, the Greek creation myth involves incest and power struggles and so on and so forth.

I love the Iroquois creation myth, and I actually drew inspiration from it when writing out some of mine.

Same here. Good stuff.
 
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Gurkhal

Auror
At present I have a Greek and Mesopotamian-inspired one. Since I don't like to read long walls of texts I won't force you guys to do it either.

First there was Tyrannos in the Waste, he labored long to create a Second Generation to be his servants. By sleeping with the women of the Second Generation Tyrannos created the Titans, but when the Second Generation in secret lay with each other, they made the Third Generation.

In time the Second and Third Generation rose against Tyrannos and threw him down, after which the Third Generation betrayed their parents to throw down also the Second Generation into the abyss with their maker. Then the Third Generation and the Titants warred for Tyrannos' inheritance and where the Third Generation were victorious thanks to support from some of their parents who had sided with them and internal division among the Titans.

After these wars the Third Generation established itself to rule the heavens and the earth. After their victory they made contact with four other races of gods; those of death, the sea, the sun and time. They formed pacts of marriage, fosterings and oaths. Together they made many servants and slaves of lesser spirits. Yet in time these spirits grew restless and plotted rebellion against the Third Generation and their allies. In order to prevent this the King of Heaven and Earth, gav order to create humanity to be the slaves of the gods and spirits of the world. And so the order of the world came to pass.
 
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