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Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Starfinder RPG

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Mastering the Wild / The First World

History of the First World

Source Ultimate Wilderness pg. 128
To account for the full history of the First World is to look back before the beginning of time itself, to a period in history before history when the Material Plane did not yet exist. Ancient legends hold that mortal life began in the First World. If these tales are to believed, in this early pregenesis period of all things, a coalition of deities decided to create a new form of life, but unlike existing servitors (outsiders such as angels and devils), these new “mortal” entities would serve a greater function, acting as filters for the fundamental life energy of the universe. The energy would be translated into discrete, self-directing portions called “souls,” which would use the experience of a finite lifespan to shape and expand the realities of the Great Beyond itself.

Of course, these new beings would need a place to live apart from the domains of the gods, and so the gods crafted the First World—a vast blank canvas where they could experiment with reality and try out different laws for how existence and mortal life could or should operate. After an age of experimentation, they had a fully functional model for the realm that would become known as the Material Plane.

And then, like so many great artists, they painted directly over it.

When the Material Plane came into being, the gods didn’t erase the original experiments. They did not destroy these original “doodles and blueprints” but merely abandoned them. Thus, this rough draft continued to grow and evolve on its own, eventually stabilizing, more or less, into the reality known today as the First World.

Whether these stories are true in totality or only in part, the fact of the First World remains: it is an ancient realm filled with mystery and danger and a reality where vast secrets and mind-expanding truths await discovery side by side with the ever-present opportunity for death and destruction. It is nature unrestrained—a primal and primeval wilderness where everything that exists does so on a grand scale.