The following excerpt is from notes taken by an Initiate during an introductory study session presented by Pahelis the Lesser shortly after the re-establishment of the Temple of Dunamis Powerhurler at Ringston. The name of the Initiate has been lost, and sections are missing; yet the wisdom and knowledge of Pahelis can still be discerned, and the beliefs of the Powerhurler sect are well presented.

Before there was time, there was only one thing - Dunamis. There was only one place - the place where Dunamis existed. All of the things we know today, all the emotions, all the ideas, all of the physical world - all were contained in this one being. Dunamis was omnipresent, certainly, as he was existence itself, but not omniscient, for many of the ideals and dynamics contained within him were mutually exclusive, and their telling could not be known whilst they remained contained within him.

There is no way to count the eons - for that matter there were no eons - before this dichotomy made itself aware to Dunamis. It would have had to eventually, for Dunamis contained Intellect and Philosophy. He also contained Curiosity, and this drove him to explore the extremes within him. He Wondered at the many differences - wealth and poverty, free will and pre-destiny - and in the act of Wondering, Creation began, and with Creation, Time.

Perhaps Dunamis intended the creation, perhaps it was an accident (for Planning and Randomness are both parts of him), but nonetheless, the Primal Plane, and Erth, soon became existent, and with them, a myriad of new places.

It is a tenet of the Powerhurler sect that Dunamis himself ceased to exist as an isolated being as a necessary part of his act of creation. All things are made of him, and are him, and his will remains albeit in a collective sense only. There are those who argue that Dunamis continues to exist today, and we are only images within him. Specifically, the Reservationist sect believes that...

(the notes are too smudged here to be readable)

It is only to be expected that Man is a reflection of Dunamis himself, capable of all things or none, conflicted by the differing capabilities, both individually as people and collectively as societies and cultures. There is a question whether the first Men were Human, or Mud-men. There is quite a bit of support for the latter theory, particularly when the various races of the Shattered Gods are considered.

But whatever the makeup of Man, it is clear that Man prospered and covered the Erth with his works, and so began the First Age of Man. Many ruins remain of this time, for numerous were the works of Man. Awesome mysticals and strange materials are occasionally found to this day by those who plumb the depths of these ruins.

Yet the will of Dunamis was not enamored of the work of his creation. Many eons passed as the will of Dunamis slowly became aware of it's own lack of satisfaction, but inevitably, it became clear that Man was no more capable that Dunamis himself of illustrating the extreme concepts that caused the creation in the first place. Man is too much the mirror of his creator, too easily able to contain mutually exclusive ideals, too rarely able to distill any one thing into a driving force.

And with this realization, the second great creation occurred, the Shattered Gods sprang into existence, and more places became realized in order to contain them. The Shattered Gods, as is well documented, are polar, containing only extreme ideas and concepts. Among the Primal Shattered Gods, Beneficia contains only Good, Ichor only Evil, Entropy only Chaos, Verite only Law.

In a microsecond, or perhaps a millennium, for Time works strangely amongst the immortals, the Shattered Gods formed many alliances and enmities amongst themselves, forging even more Shattered Gods to embody the shifting alliances of the Primal Forces. And so sprang into existence Lawful Evil, Chaotic Good, and the other forces we now call "alignment". Each was complete with it's own embodiment in the form of a Shattered God, and a new Place. This included for the first time a new Primal Force: Neutrality.

And so began the Age of Godswar as the Shattered Gods strove among themselves seeking supremacy or survival, for such is the inevitable nature of extreme Forces. The Shattered Gods created for themselves allies, and so begat the Lesser Gods. Many new places came into realization to contain the ever-growing number of Lesser Gods.

The conflict could not be contained within the Shattered Planes, or even the Lesser Planes, for such is the nature of total warfare, and soon spilled over into the Prime Plane, and it's center Erth. And so Man was driven from his many places, seeking refuge where and when it could be found, and terrible fury walked the face of Erth.

Man himself began to change as the Shattered Gods enlisted his help against one another. Sometimes this was voluntary but just as often not. Some gods warped man into an image that was more reflective of the ideals of the god. Others "enhanced" Man, often to help him escape the wrath of Godswar, yet the result was the same regardless of the intention, and soon where there had been only Man, there were many races. Man, and the new races of Man, was ill-equipped to survive the raging but random storm of Godswar, and became scattered, hiding away in rare hidden pockets of safety. In their mingling they strove amongst themselves as well, yet often interbred, and created yet another new race that contained the differing attributes of all.

Yet even the new race could not survive forever the tempest that had engulfed the Erth, and the will of Dunamis slowly became aware, and with awareness, concerned. The various gods, both Shattered and Lesser, were still Dunamis, of course, and he still them. And it was the will of Dunamis that had created the Shattered Gods in the first place. Yet they now threatened to destroy his first creation, and the will of Dunamis found that it was not pleased by this prospect. Over centuries, the will became focused, and that focus became embodied by the aspect Dunamis Powerhurler.

Theological debate recently has centered on whether the Powerhurler is actually a true and previously-unrealized aspect of Dunamis, or is in fact just another form of Shattered God with a non-alignment domain. While it is clear that someone or something is providing Powerhurler Clerics with Divine spells and abilities, Hadrill of Mikhail once hypothesized that...

(several paragraphs here are unreadable).

Regardless of the nature of the Powerhurler, there is little controversy over his actions. He cast all of the gods out of the Primal Plane, and set each into their own Planes. He set in place a New Order that would bind the Shattered Gods, the Lesser Gods, and even the New Gods that were yet to come: no god may enter into direct conflict with another. No god may enter the Primal Plane.

Dumamis Powerhurler then set the Erth into differing locations, one for each of the new races so that they too had a place to contain them, and one for Man, which he called "Human" to differentiate from the other new races of Man. He named the realm of Humans "Alannis", for though it is very large it is surrounded on all sides by the seas. He found the best of Humans, and set him above all others, and named this king of Humans the "Archon", and the Powerhurler gifted the Archon with long life, that his wisdom would grow beyond Human norms, and also gifted him with the Orb, the Scepter and the Crown, setting forth his promise that Alannis would know peace for as long as the Archon held them near to his heart.

He set into place the Archipelago so that the ideas behind the Primal Forces would have a natural home on Erth, and set them far apart from the other realms and hid them with mystical bindings that would only allow those who are called to find them.

He separated the realms of evil races from the realms of the other races, for it is their nature to ever contend one with the other, and so the Axis Mountains were set between East and Waste, and the River of Pain was set into the Axis Mountains and began its dichotomous flow from northern ocean to southern ocean and back again.

And when all of the races had been safely set into their Places, he acclaimed over all of the gods a Great Accounting: from this day hence, no god may exist without worship, for a god without worshippers is not a god at all, merely an idea. Those gods that had worshippers were set over their worshippers, and given domain over their realms. Those that had no worshippers were gods no longer, and in this, even some of the Shattered Gods were no more.

And finally, he set his Seal over the Erth, and the Ring of Dunamis sprang into being between the land of Humans and the rest of Erth, binding all gods to the new order, and as a sign to all Men, races old and new, that no god would ever again directly hold their collective fate.

The new order set by Powerhurler forever changed the manner in which gods relate one to another. The more worshippers a god possesses, and the more devout the worship, the greater the strength of that god. Conversely, gods who lose their worshippers cease to exist, becoming once again ideas rather than supernatural physical embodiments.

It is the nature of Man to create new ideas. Some of these ideas began to generate worship, and so the New Gods sprang into being. But the old order was done: no new places became realized to contain the New Gods, and they instead took up residence among the places of the surviving Shattered Gods and the Lesser Gods, choosing among them those that had the most similar ideas. And so the ranks of gods became bewilderingly large and varied, and began to form themselves into Pantheons, each contained within a Place or a few Places, and often receiving worship as a group as well as individuals.

And so began the Age of the Ring, also called the First Age of Peace, for Erth is very large and Man, even in his many races, was very few. The quarrelling of the gods remained, for such is their nature, but it was greatly abated, for the Ring of Dunamis prevents direct conflict; only indirect battles could be carried out and these required proxies to perform the actual strife. And these proxies, the worshippers of each god, were widely scattered one from another.