This is Part 10 of a series wherein we talk about generating an entire campaign, on-the-fly, for your favorite fantasy role-playing game(s). In the future, it might have a tighter focus on either D&D or Pathfinder, but for now, let's consider this material more-or-less generic.
NOTE: All the usual polyhedron dice are used for DCS, though today, we'll only be using 1d12.
What existed before this world? Was it another world, filled with heroes? An endless plane of energy or thought? Or maybe there was nothing at all?
Nothing
Roll 1d12:
01 -- Truly nothing. No matter or energy. No space or time. No thought or emotion. The gods did not exist yet, though they may claim otherwise.
02 -- Nothing existed that mortals can comprehend. Divine thought and understanding may have been in place, and possibly even spiritual alignments, but creation had yet to occur.
03 -- Nothing existed before this world, because time loops there. Anyone traveling back before the world began, either through magical or other means, will find themselves only in the current world, somewhere along its timeline. Possibly it won't even seem like they traveled at all.
04 -- Nothing existed that was mundane or mortal All was beyond the ken of mortals. The gods (or, perhaps, proto-gods) had a world of their own, where nothing was touched by age, decay, or corruption. It was lost in a great catastrophe, which corrupted the perfection, turning the nothing into something, giving rise to the present world.
05 -- Nothing physical existed, but spirit and thought. It floated freely through the endless spaces of primordial reality, unchained to physical forms. Some say this is the source of all the souls in the world today.
06 -- Nothing existed, not even time itself. Before the world existed, all of time and space to come were laid out in discreet pieces, ordered and sequential. Before the world began, every moment of future history was structured like the table of contents in a book. Some say the gods come here frequently and simply touch a moment in time in order to visit it.
07 -- Unlimited light, space, time, and energy existed. These things filled all of reality, but they lacked form. No consciousness was present to give anything meaning or context. Though all the basic aspects of the present world existed then, it was as if nothing existed.
08 -- Imagination has power. Before the beginning of the world, there was neither time nor space. The only thing that existed anywhere was a pervasive, disembodied idea of the reality-to-come. Some say that artists and dreamers are able to tap into this endless moment of imagination, in order to give rise to new creations and ideas.
09 -- There was nothing, but not in the modern sense, rather, in the classical sense. It was an endless plane of wasteland, part of which was desert, with high, rolling dunes and deadly predators. Other parts were fetid swamps, while still others, the aftermath of some appalling cataclysm. Perhaps the modern gods, or their honored ancestors, were but desperate scavengers lurking among these wastes, no matter what they might tell their worshipers now.
10 -- There was a world before this one. A great trickster/thief among the gods stole it away, locking it in a great golden chest somewhere upon the realm of the divine, and leaving behind nothing at all within this realm. The gods had to remake everything, creating the world that exists today. Some say the trickster lost the key to the chest; and should it ever be found, that early world will be restored, smothering this one in a savage apocalypse.
11 -- The entire world rests in the palm of a great god's hand. There was nothing before this world, because the god had yet to open its palm, revealing all of reality. Once it did, this world was finally born.
12 -- All reality is cyclical. Worlds are born; they thrive; they die. Between these worlds are ages and ages of nothingness, barren of matter and energy. The current world is but one in an endless chain, like the pearls of a necklace, adorning the bosom of an ancient goddess. Nothing existed before this world, and a world existed before the nothing.
To be continued...
Image: Clothing, apparel, helmet and game by Ian Gonzalez, released under the Unsplash License. Modified by David in Inkscape.