And on the seventh day...

[Pythagoras]

Virtually every mythology comes equipped with a story that describes how the world came into existence. I have read different versions of several of the most prominent of such stories, and am fascinated by them.

I was wondering, has anyone here ever written a creation story for their own world? What do you think are the important aspects that are common to most creation stories? Did you include these in your own? Or even if you haven't written your own, have you ever given any thought to this subject? Does anyone share my enthusiasm for such things?

 

[Ireth]

I typically write fantasy that draws on mythology from our own world, so invented creation myths haven't entered the picture much. There is one exception, and that is a currently-languishing WIP called Moonhunter, about sapient wolves in a fictional world. I've tried to come up with a creation myth for them, but I've run into a bit of a snag. The wolves weren't always sapient (they became so by the blessing of the moon goddess), so their sense of self-identity and ancestry doesn't go all the way back to the beginning of the world as it does with most fantasy races. I haven't quite figured out how they've dealt with the fact of their non-sapient ancestors either, or if they even remember such things via stories passed down through the generations. I have yet to decide even if all wolves gained sapience at once in the blink of an eye, or over a slower process.

 

[Pythagoras]

I typically write fantasy that draws on mythology from our own world, so invented creation myths haven't entered the picture much.

Does that mean your fantasy takes place in some dimension of our world? Would the peoples in your stories share the cultural and mythological backgrounds of their real-world counterparts?

 

[Ireth]

Does that mean your fantasy takes place in some dimension of our world? Would the peoples in your stories share the cultural and mythological backgrounds of their real-world counterparts?

They're meant to take place either in our world (at least in part), or in worlds that feature in ancient mythology from peoples of our world -- Faerie is a favorite of mine, and a few of the Nine Realms of Norse myth feature or are mentioned in my latest WIP.

Example: in Winter's Queen, the heroine and her family are twenty-first century Earth humans who have concrete evidence of the existence of Faerie and the Fae, and they all enter Faerie as the main plot unfolds -- the heroine unwillingly, and her father and uncle to rescue her.

 

[ThinkerX]

I was wondering, has anyone here ever written a creation story for their own world? What do you think are the important aspects that are common to most creation stories? Did you include these in your own? Or even if you haven't written your own, have you ever given any thought to this subject? Does anyone share my enthusiasm for such things?

Long ago, in the tenative world building stages, I wrote a creation myth for my current world...though I consider it to be unusable now because my concept of 'deities' changed fairly dramatically, as did the world history.

It wasn't just a creation myth, but a tale of refugees, mortals becoming gods, rekindling of smashed hopes, that sort of thing.

 

[Graylorne]

My books all have the same basic, not-published creation story. It started with the Revenaunt books, of which it is the underlaying reason for the protagonist-antagonist relationship.

In the beginning (if there ever was one) there was only one universe. It was boundless, multi-dimensional, and filled with the Stuff of Creation (that lesser minds call mana). In this multiverse lived several races, one of which are the Creators. Due to their multidimensionality, they are to us the possessors of immense power. Among themselves, they are the same simple, plodding everymen as we humans are.

Imagine a Creator, an Archy Bunker-type. It is sexless, formless and a pensioner. And like many pensioners, it had a hobby. Not painting, photography or pigeons, but the shaping of universes. To the Creators, a working, living three-dimensional universe can be as small as it need be, making it a perfect home decoration.

In the course of time, AZZA, our particular Creator, made our universe. It was an experiment, with a closed system, so there was no magic involved. Dissatisfied, AZZA put it away and from the left-overs, it built the universe of Zolastyr. This was an open system, one it could interact with. Not in person, but through the Gods it made to be its fingers.

The Gods then made the details; the trees, the fishes, the humans, still using the scraps of our universe.

But AZZA had a deep internal conflict while creating the Zolastyr universe. An aesthetical conflict. His male half AZ wanted it shaped from matter, his female half ZA preferred antimatter (fitted the color of the curtains, or some such). Both halves argued, but AZ prevailed. Finally, they split in two equal parts, a male and a female half. Az, the male half, was already finished, but still ZA wouldn't give up. She couldn't work against him openly, but in secret she sought tp undo his work and make her own.

For her to work in this universe, she needed her own God. She couldn't make one, because there wasn't enough matter left. So she found a human she could bend to her will. This was an ambitious mage named Gorogan. Just like AZ had done with the Gods, gave ZA her avatar a tiny bit of her own being. But where AZ had shared his bit between all the Gods and Goddesses, did ZA give it to one human. Gorogan, not built to handle so much power, went mad. He had his orders, to destroy Zolastyr, one way or another, and he proceeded to do so.

To be clear: ZA wasn't an evil being. She wasn't consciously aware of the humans on Zolastyr and if she had, she'd consider them as parts of a piece of art, something to make or unmake, of no individual value.
The evil was Gorogan, later the Revenaunt Emperor, and all his minions. They knew what they were doing, and didn't care.

And that's how it all came to be.

NB. Remember AZ wasn't content with our universe. For the moment he retains it, but with the price of basic materials as they are, he could decide to re-use everything.

 

[WooHooMan]

I haven't quite figured out how they've dealt with the fact of their non-sapient ancestors either, or if they even remember such things via stories passed down through the generations. I have yet to decide even if all wolves gained sapience at once in the blink of an eye, or over a slower process.

Something that I think is important about myths is that it doesn't have to be the true explanation of what happened. The wolves can say that they gained their intelligence instantly but that doesn't mean they did. You can keep it vague if you aren’t sure. In fact, I think having some ambiguity in the mythology helps give worlds a little more depth.

The creation myth of my constructed world is based around the concept that everything is a part of nature and that nature is kind of random. There are no gods, spirits or creation deities; all creation is the result of natural forces that exist today. That’s kind of what makes writing a creation myth hard: I can’t just say “the gods did it”, I have to think of an actually pseudo-logical explanation. And explainations a less interesting that stories about gods doing incredible things. So my creation myth comes across like people from the Bronze Age trying to explain the Big Bang and evolution. They get quite a few things wrong, of course, like they think the Earth predates the Sun and Moon (both of which broke off of the Earth).

Eventually, once human civilization comes into the picture, it starts resembling a more traditional mythology with heroic demigods, monsters, divine intervention and all that stuff.

 

[Devor]

I've never written a creation story. I always find them forced and limiting, like they're included because you feel like they have to be there. Somehow I feel like it dispels some of the setting's wonder.

But I've written one or two stories about the-day-the-world-changed. I think that gives me more material as an author, and a chance to shake up reader expectations. After all, if the shape of the world changed once, it can change again, right?

 

[hannibal41]

I based my creation story on the big bang and added fantastical elements to it.

The birth of the realms began with an explosion. No one knows how the explosion happened( apart from small cults and religions), but all the varying stories say it was an explosion of a material called Corbus. The Corbus shattered into hundreds of pieces; the larger pieces began to change and turned into the gods. The gods then took the other pieces of Corbus and moulded them into the stars and planets. Each god took their own piece of this new realm and moulded it into their liking, with them as rulers of it.

Friendships and rivalries grew between gods and in fights some of them died. To try and create piece between the gods some of them decided to create a shared world using Corbus from their own realms and mixing it with the other gods Corbus.

In this fantasy setting, i have two types of deities creators and gods. Gods are real, but creators are religious explanations for the creation of the universe, they may or may not be real.

 

[Shockley]

I have one that heavily references other mythologies.

There is a cosmic creative force that lives on a mountain that has always existed (the mountain being Egyptian myth), who then creates two other gods to fashion animals, man, other races, etc. (Greek myth). They create a particularly powerful race of early men, who are essentially the pantheon that is worshiped. Other gods would be ancient tribal leaders, war heroes, etc. created through a process of apotheosis. Gods representing concepts (war and peace, order and chaos, etc.) arise from conflicts between the early gods.

 

[mbartelsm]

IMO The most important things are:

• How life came to be
• How sentient beings came to be
• What powers natural phenomena
• What was before the sentient creatures
• What will come after the sentient creatures

My creation myth is like this:
Out of the void, the nothingness, emptiness, two all mighty entities came to be: The titan sisters of Light and Shadow, Order and Chaos, Time and Space, keepers of balance. The titans saw that there was nothing but themselves so they created seven elements, and seven gods to reign over each one. And so the world was born, but it was empty, devoid of anything interesting, unbalanced, so they made the mana, the element of souls, capable of creating life and controlling the elements reigned by the gods. And so came to be the first mortals. And the rest, as they say, it's history.

Here I explain the origin of the universe (through the titans), the cause for natural phenomena (the gods that reign over the elements), The origin of sentient beings and what was before them (mortals and an empty world), all I'm missing is the end, but the end has no space in a creation myth

 

[Ophiucha]

My world has a few different creation myths, but I leave it up to the reader to decide which, if any, of them are the actual origin story of their setting. One of them is sort of a variation of the Hades and Persephone story, except with the creation of the world being a major aspect of that and a bit of an 'era' idea (like every 3000 years) instead of the summer/winter thing. The world has gone through some ice ages, so that's sort of the justification for that. The other major one is more of a Lovecraftian horrors who ooze life and death and our world is but a drop of sludge that grew and mutated into life as we know it, with our creators neither knowing nor caring about it.

There are even a handful of people who believe in both, that the ooze birthed the gods who in turn created life on their planet.