Divine Creation, Chapter 1
Chapter 1: The Divine Creation
Gnoventian cosmology begins with a single, undisputed premise: all things that live and reason in this world were made by The King, whose earthly throne stood — and in a sense still stands — atop the peak now called King's Mountain. From that seat, The King is said to have shaped Gnovenkind not from earth or breath, as other creation myths of neighboring peoples describe, but from precious gemstones, each stone's nature passed into the character of the race it produced.
The tradition is consistent on the basic mechanism — gem determines race, and race inherits the properties associated with its stone — but the surviving sources diverge on exactly which races were named at the founding, and on the precise fate of one race in particular. Both accounts are preserved below.
⚠ Unresolved Conflict — The Founding Races
Option 1: The King created seven founding peoples in a single act: dwarves, elves, giants, gnomes, goblins, orcs, and humans. From diamond he made the elves, whose near-immortality alone fit them to serve him directly. From emerald he made the gnomes, stewards of everything that grows. From sapphire he fashioned the sea folk. From topaz he made the dwarves, colored by their forging fires. From ruby he made humankind, marked by the bloodshed that would follow them wherever they went. Humankind vanished from the record sometime before the Dragon War; no one living knows where they went, and some scholars have gone so far as to question whether they ever truly existed, since no physical evidence of prior human habitation has ever been recovered.
Option 2: The King created six founding peoples: dwarves, elves, giants, gnomes, goblins, and orcs. Humankind is not named among the original creation, yet the tradition simultaneously holds that ruby was used to fashion "the rest of mankind," on account of the innocent blood shed everywhere such people go. Under this account, humanity's origin is folded into the same gem-creation framework without ever being formally listed as one of the founding races — an omission the Academy has not been able to reconcile.
Compiler's Note: Both versions agree on the gem-to-race assignments (diamond/elves, emerald/gnomes, sapphire/sea folk, topaz/dwarves, ruby/humankind) and on humanity's subsequent disappearance. The disagreement is narrower than it first appears: it is really a question of whether humans were named at the founding or introduced only through the ruby clause. Also worth flagging: the Sea Folk appear in every creation account but nowhere in the later material on active factions, culture, or politics. They are established as extant and blue-skinned and then never mentioned again. Until Ritch decides otherwise, treat the Sea Folk as a race that exists in-world but is simply undocumented rather than absent.
What is consistent across all versions: gnomes wear green in honor of their emerald origin, dwarves wear yellow or orange for their forging fires, sea folk are rarely seen but are known by their blue skin, and elves — though seldom glimpsed — are understood by every Gnoven child to exist, serving as messengers, observers, and occasional instruments of The King's wrath.
Before the Dragon War, the dragons Ichthys (the White) and Dreadthorn (the Black) served as the Arch-Dragons, protectors of The King's celestial castle, charged with ensuring only The King's people were granted entry. It was Dreadthorn's rebellion against this order — born, in different tellings, of boredom with peace and routine, or of pride, jealousy, and greed — that would end the Age of Foundations and open the First Age of war.