It is usually to a reader's advantage to start at the beginning of a story, and so that is where we will begin. It is interesting that the Flan, whose moral tales vary widely, have a single creation myth which has remained virtually constant throughout the history of the people. All of creation began as a mass of effervescent mush - I would characterize it as a molasses-like consistency with huge, planet-sized air bubbles. This mush was a sentient being in the sense that it was self-conscious and had thoughts. According to an inscription on an old stone tablet:
The mass swirled about, shifting as the pockets [of air] moved about within it. It thought, "This is unsatisfactory and I have no form." The mass desired order, for without it could not identify itself. The mass collected the air within it; this took fifteen thousand, six hundred, twenty-five years. The mass then separated the solids from the liquids and created fire to dry the solids; this took six hundred, twenty five years. It thought, "I have distilled four elements. This is unsatisfactory and I have no identity." The not-mass found the solids the happiest of its elements since it could have many identities and many forms. There was air, formless; fire, fleeting; and water, ever-shifting. The solids were unique in their many representations, so the not-mass distilled a soul from them and occupied it; this took five years. The sphere-soul-mass called itself "The Firmament".
It is interesting to note that eori (as in Beory, or more properly B!eori), or firmament in Flan, is the root of the Flan name for our world, Eorit. In fact my ancestors, the Oeridians, apparently stole their name from the Flan. We have since added a permutation, but even the simplest child can see the influence. Indeed, it is amazing how much every culture has taken so much from the Flan, as we shall see.
But this is all beside the point, the Flan creation myth tells us more about the Flan than the Oeridians. The first and most important point one should make is the emphasis on the superiority of the solids. The Flan have never been seafarers; their boats are at best fit to take on Whystil Lake (they did at one time) and this seems to be the reason: the Oerth is sacred. Water is not, strictly speaking, part of the Oerth but is its own entity: a demon, a blemish on the Oerth. Not surprisingly, the world-view among many of the ancient Flan tribes was that the planet, a sphere, was mostly land with the water-demon (demons to the Flan are not what we think of, but rather spirits of the cosmos which are not solid-based) Iyliuz separating the continents with a full day's swim between them. This separates the cultures of the false gods who will not conform to the organization of the cosmos set forth from the beginning. This is getting ahead of ourselves, however, more about living creatures later.
In this myth we also see the basis of the Flan number system, based on the number five (our system's 73 = 243 in the Flan system). In fact, everything in the Flan system is oriented around the number five; five elements (solids, liquids, air, fire, and the soul), five limbs of the human, five fingers per hand, five children of Beory, five sacred animals of the hunt, and so forth.
The next myth in the path to the creation of human beings in the Flan mythos is Beory's (here I will begin using her name in the quoted text) creation of governesses - the ancient Flan always used the feminine form when speaking of gods in plural, even if they are all males. Notice that the first gods are created after the first life forms:
Beory existed alone in the now air-filled sphere [the universe], but because of the principal of change, she could not be alone forever. So she distilled souls from other solids and made the trees, covering herself with these things. But they too had to be governed by the principle of change so she created their keepers, Nperul [Nerull] and Pnelur [Pelor], and their soul, Obad-Hai. Next she took Pnelur's ovaries, making her a him and from each she formed B!rei [Berei] and Z!dul [Zodal]. Nperul kept the night and the dark, Pnelur kept the day and the light, Obad-Hai kept all below, B!rei and Z!dul kept the reproduction and the thought together.
I have heard, at late night gathering of the finest sages on this continent, scholars drone endlessly about this particular passage in the Flan creation myth. It was first found and known for what it is in the first century by an Aerdi sage (in a cave on parchment no less) whose name has been lost to time. Nonetheless, its significance did not escape him and it became the most widely translated document ever recorded by the Flan. Numerous independent copies from all over the continent have confirmed its accuracy. I will attempt to keep my discussion of it brief.
The first thing (aside from the note preceding the passage) that should draw the reader's attention is its matriarchal tone. The Flan society was, prior to the great Oeridian migration, matriarchal in structure; the women, especially the mothers, governed the tribes. Not chasing game around on horseback (a skill which the Flan mastered over a millenium ago with unmatched competence which they retain to this day), but rather preparing the food and rearing the children, they were stationary for the most part. This was the ideal stable environment for the governing of the tribes. The myth reflects this social organization; indeed, the role of the women as creators of life and all things is glorified and raised to near-godhood. This is similar to the matriarchy of early Baklunish society, which we will investigate in a later volume.
This matriarchy died when the conquerors marched across the continent. The Oeridians, coming in huge numbers, killed the plentiful game and thinned out the herds. Without the plentiful game, the Flan became increasingly nomadic - a phenomenon suffered universally by the tribes. As might be expected, the males, who were the equestrian savants, became so central to the survival of the family groups that they and their ritual hunts gradually became the center of the culture. Oddly, with this change in lifestyle, the focus of the Flan religion did not change.
The second thing that one should note is the duality of Pelor and Nerull. One might even believe that without each other, they would have no reason to exist, something which their modern priests would, and have, vehemently denied. They are odd creatures compared to Beory: she is a self-contained entity while they are necessary to one another. I will not speculate about Pelor's gender change here (it has been treated at length in many other works), but the casual reader should note that both names are gender-neutral, something so unusual in the Flan language it can only be an intentional construction.
While it has been noted many times over, it should not escape mention that the name Obad-Hai is clearly not of Flan origin. Some have postulated that it bears a resemblance to a word meaning "of age" or "mature" in modern orcish, but given the absence of corroborating evidence, this is not a conclusion which one can rely upon. Others have hypothesized that it is of Olmish origin, but this seems equally implausible since worship of the descendants of Beory spread from north to south at some distant time in the past (see the next chapter for more details). This is a terrific enigma for which no solution is immediately apparent and I will not make any attempt to delve into it further; suffice it to say, we see here evidence of some foreign (or perhaps even more ancient) puzzle piece fit into our puzzle.
Moving back into our literary analysis of this piece of text, we should consider a very important phrase: "because of the principle of change," which is also translated "due to the Change Principle." The Flan mythology has presupposed certain principles, morals, and ethics to exist before the actual gods, that is, there are ideas and concepts which have a primacy which supersedes even the Creators. We later learn that there are five such Principles: Change, Existence (or rather, the conservation of existence), Weight (or mass), Space, and Luminescence. All things obey these Principles which, to oversimplify the Flan conception of time, exist outside of time and each Principle is of the same value as the other. The second, third, and fourth are evident in the first quoted text: everything is made from some pre-existential matter and this matter must occupy some three-dimensional volume. Some scholars, who are too narrowly of one frame of mind, propose that numeracy (of base five) constitutes a meta-Principle, but since no such Principle is concretely indicated in any known Flan text, it is better to simply think the number five as an abstract, magic number.
To the average reader, the whole issue of primacy may escape them; "Why is it important" you may ask. The issue is simply that there are morals which even the gods must abide by. These ethics (a more accurate term) exist in all "time" and indeed make time itself since everything is measured in terms of time. This is fundamentally different from the views of the Oeridians, for whom time is a cycle of recurrences but is its own manageable feature, and the Suloise, for whom time is but a bleak thread which brings no happiness. These views are elaborated on other volumes, but certainly the brief comparative summary is illuminating. The Flan, above all, see the world as an ever-changing but entirely consistent components.
Along these same lines, we should note that another constant "meta-Principle," which is conveniently ignored by those scholars who search for one driving singular Principle, is that of the division of responsibility. Remarkably different from the Baklun theology of One Truth, we have here the "Principle" that all things are divided into constituent parts. At this point some argue that this is intimately connected to the number five, but since parts are created sequentially (and sometimes together) there are discrete, definable times at which five parts do not exist. So we have here that all actions are put upon differing individuals (be they gods or ideas). This task-allocation is also a feature of Flan society and always has been, and we have here something resembling the Baklun-Suel concept of caste. This will be apparent in the chapters following the next... which brings us directly to the question which I am quite sure the reader is begging for:
What happened to Rao. I have intentionally excluded from this chapter the variant creation myth involving Rao because our good brother of peace deserves his own section. Indeed, more than one tome has been exclusively dedicated to him. He is indeed the Mystery Man of Sheldomar.