Old Testament

The Dawn of Creation; YHVH Cleanses the Abyss
In the beginning, there was only chaos and darkness writhing madly in an endless void. It was a realm of inchoate oblivion and infinite suffering. Humanity as we know it did not exist, and all that existed was suffering and madness. From beyond this realm, came a being above and superior to it - YHVH, the Lord Almighty, who would come from there to define the spiritual realm and shape a world worth living in.

He labored for seven years and seven days to craft a realm worthy of Himself and created many spirits to aid him in this task - shaping them from his will and his soul, gifting them sparks of the light He had brought with Him by His very existence. These would be called his ‘Angels’, His servants and His messengers, and His holy army. Vessels of His will and echoes of His radiant spirit, these beings set forth to aid Him in the grand task of creation.

They waged a primal war against the chaos of the void, beating it back so that new and better things could take its place. And as they fought, YHVH toiled to create something to inhabit the world He was building. The first to be created were the many plants of the world, which He saw were good- where before there was nothing but madness, a world had been brought to order.

Next came the manifold animals of the world, and these too did YHVH judge as good. These ranged from the humble dog to the majestic dragons, and all beings which are natural in origin, but that are not of mankind. Finally, He set to the creation of mankind, but in this He was sabotaged.

The First Sins, The Corruption of Man
The angels known as Lucifer and Satan saw what their creator was doing and felt separately pride and wrath for the first time, having been tainted by their long war against the chaos and madness with the vestiges of its unholy force. Satan, one of the firstborn of the angels and the mightiest of their warriors, felt rage at the idea that he and his were to be replaced- an irrational fear planted in a once perfect being by the hateful shadow he had been warring against. Lucifer, one of the great creators of God’s legions and a master of their forge-fires, was called to aid in the creation of these beings; and discovered God’s plan for them to rule the world that was being forged.

Together, they both joined in quiet and secret rebellion, tainted by darkness. Their jealousy of beings not yet finished grew and thus they aimed to sabotage God’s creation; their intent to retain God’s need for them was carried out by rendering the creation of man imperfect. Thus, under Satan’s guidance, when called to aid God in the crafting of mankind, Lucifer introduced into them shards and fragments of the black abyss from before.

In these fragments were the roots of all mortal sin and imperfection, and the source of all mortal evils. YHVH beheld his newest children- and saw that they were flawed. Bearing the shadow of the void within their hearts yet bearing the forms that mirrored his own divine self, they were the highest order of blasphemy.

Yet, The Lord Almighty, in His infinite wisdom, knew whom to blame; for He had realized Lucifer’s deception in this moment, as well as the prideful motivations behind it. He set the angels who remained loyal to bring before Him Lucifer and discover the why of it; yet as He did this, Satan had begun to fall deeper and deeper into wrath; for even though he had ruined the creation of Mankind, God did not love him any more than before. God did not cease his efforts to create man and aimed to punish the being he thought solely responsible.

The War of Heaven
This drove Satan into a mad fury and he became lost in his irrational hatred and taint yet retaining the guile and wisdom he had been made with. So, he sought to subvert and corrupt a host of other angels to agreeing with him, before gathering these forces in open rebellion. A long and brutal war followed, during which other mighty angels who had been tainted by the long war against the shadow fell into the hordes of Satan’s mad fury. These greater beings, existences who had been created to co-ordinate their lesser kin, were known as such: Asmodeus, once a great artist subverted into hedonist pleasures of vile lust witnessed within the depths of the roiling wild chaos. Belphegor, a mighty warrior who grew weary of the battle, and fell into sloth as he despaired of any purpose, lost to the mindlessness of the Void. Leviathan, a warrior of great physique and stature who learned from the abyss how to envy the grace and beauty of others and forget his own gifts. Beelzebub, who learned that though his divine body had no need for sustenance, it could still enjoy it- and fell into wretched Gluttony through this. Finally, there was Mammon, who had been commanded to aid in the creation of the metals of the world, and came to love and covet them overmuch, falling into Greed.

Together, these seven vile beings waged war on God, and upon their Kin, to prevent mankind from being finished and born. They stole away much of humanity, to give them over to their own dark ways, to steal them from God. This war at the dawn of creation permitted the abyss that otherwise would have been totally destroyed to creep back into the world as well, tainting it and eroding it.

God, the Almighty, was furious- and took to the field Himself. The war ended in time, but God was not willing to so easily kill His firstborn Children, and so He crafted from what remained of the abyss the realm that we know now as ‘Hell’. A place of torment and suffering, sealed from the rest of creation, He cast the seven fallen ones into it- those who had accepted Satan as their chief and lord instead of God. With them He cast also those who had followed them willingly, and the dark creatures left in the world.

But the fledgling humans who had been taken and corrupted by them, He left to their own devices, as He retreated from the majority of his creation; the war of heaven had ruined much of His beautiful world, but not all of it.

The Birth of Arcadia, and Ordering of Man
He retreated to the realm of Arcadia, the last holdout of his perfection. This realm, which had been defended by the mightiest of His loyal children, the angels Michael, Uriel, Remiel, Gabriel, and his voice amongst them, the Metatron, was preserved from the chaos- and it was there that He set down the perfected form of humanity He had managed to salvage- those untainted by Satan and Lucifer’s foul works, and not claimed by any of the other lords of sin.

And thus, was born the divine kingdom Arcadia, and all the wretched and unclean realms without. As the seals of Hell were made, and the kingdom of Arcadia’s foundations laid, YHVH chose then to return to his own realm of ‘Heaven’, and left tenants with those who would rule in his name amongst men, establishing the divine order of righteous rule to which Arcadia still holds. There he judges, and awaits the souls of the righteous and pure, and from there he casts down the wicked unto the realm of Hell.

Under him are the Angels whose loyalty defended our realm, under them are the Seraphim whose souls have been ascended unto the same state, under them are those who maintain his holy rule over Arcadia, under them are the priests who bear his light, under them are the righteous knights who bear his blades, under them are the goodly folk of Arcadia, under them are those who have fallen from grace, beneath them are the unclean of the outside world who may devote themselves unto his light and be purged of sin through pain, and beneath all are those who dare to wield darkness and filth.