The Age of the Gods, Volume 1

In the beginning, there was chaos... Reigning over that chaos was a boundless Supreme Being with no name and no form. The crystal sphere containing this chaos was called "Avlis", and for untold millennia the Supreme Being of Avlis wandered through the chaos without any purpose or aim. At one point, no one knows exactly when, the Supreme of the crystal sphere grew weary of the chaos and decided to restore order in Avlis once again. So, the swirling chaos was gathered up and the stars where formed along with the planets, and the world itself. The Supreme saw that this work was done well, and the decision was made to keep the world in existence.

Having completed that task, the Supreme populated the world with primitive gods. These were all peaceful and orderly gods that had limited control over a certain natural formations, such as ponds or groves. Each of them was perfect in every detail, and the Supreme was happy with the way they would attend to their areas while worshipping him. To honor his perfect creation, the Supreme named the world after the crystal sphere in which it was cradled... Avlis.

One day, almost by chance, Avlis received a visitor that would shape its history forever to come. The Negeri, an evil entity from the depths of the Abyss, flew into the crystal sphere on a spelljamming vessel with nine human prisoners. Now this Negerai was extremely intelligent and twisted, like most specimens of his kind, and oddly enough, this individual had a great love for humanoid (especially human) psychology. His greatest fascination was the study of good, evil, and neutrality in humans. Even though he was a vile creature in every way, he still had interest in the mechanism that made people behave in alignment with a certain philosophy. He felt that if he could study these attitudes more in depth, he would be more apt at controlling large numbers of the creatures to do his bidding.

Time was his greatest asset. So, during his travels, he captured nine human warriors of varying belief patterns from various other spheres he had journeyed through. Intending to run a study on how each of the nine individuals interact with the other eight, he searched for a secluded place where no outside influence could contaminate his experiment, and found Avlis.

Most of the experiments he had planned involved bringing two of the warriors together in order to monitor how they interacted. If his experiment were to work, each of the prisoners not in use at the time would have to be kept in isolation. So, just to make sure that no interaction would occur between prisoners who weren't being observed, the Negerai built a separate prison for each human. The nine prisons were scattered all over Avlis. Slave labor was needed for the construction, and he would need guards after the construction was complete. So, the Negerai imported various lesser Tanar'ri to do the work. These denizens would watch over the idle humans when he was elsewhere.

Now after the construction was done, the leftover lesser Tanar’ri who were not guarding prisoners were allowed to roam the planet to do anything they pleased. With hoards of lesser Tanar'ri roaming the planet, the order that the Supreme created was put into severe jeopardy. The dretches were multiplying and gating in larger demons who in turn gated in even larger demons...and so on. Eventually, things got really out of hand on Avlis and the lesser gods of nature were annihilated. So, in order to combat this problem, the Supreme created a Holy Sword made of pure Godmagic and power for each of the warriors. The swords had special powers, which were in accordance with the respective philosophies of the warriors. Late that night, the swords were magically sent down into the cells of the prisoners by the will of the Supreme. When the prisoners awoke, they found their respective swords hovering in the center of their cells.

With the great power given to them by their newfound weapons, the warriors easily escaped from their prisons, all having one thing in mind, the destruction of their captor, the Negerai - although in truth each had a different reason. The warrior Gorethar wanted to eliminate this evil for its own sake and impurity, whereas the warrior Maleki wanted nothing but good old-fashioned cold-blooded revenge. So, cutting through demon after demon along the way, each made the perilous journey separately to converge on the master of all the Avlissian demons.