Simply, gods are projections of humanity. They're a kind of wish fulfillment - since they first became sentient, humans have attempted to explain the mysteries of the world around them as the work of higher beings. This sustained belief, coupled with the malleability of magical energies throughout this world, caused the gods to come into existence one by one. However, at the time of the Fall, the gods had been around for at least one or two hundred thousand years - ever since the birth of the human race. As such, there are very few with even an inkling of the true origin of the gods.

The gods simply exist now. That is, they will not disappear if humanity somehow ceases to believe in them. However, it is possible that new gods will eventually arise now that the old guard has begun to die off - either killed by the Fall or hunted down by the Church of the One True God. It is speculated that some of the other sentient species may have gods, but this is largely unknown. However, it does beg the question: if other species have gods, did their gods Fall as well?

Regardless, the gods of man have not fared well in their exile from Heaven. Many died immediately upon their Fall - their divine essences snuffed out by the Void between worlds. The luckiest and most powerful, however, contained their power in physical vessels, manifesting as avatars in the physical world and taking up seats of power in their places of worship.

Unfortunately, this is a flawed refuge, since anything that takes on physical form becomes subject to the limitations of flesh. The gods found their avatar forms unable to access the full breadth of their power, and (worse) subject to death. In older times, the death of an avatar would simply see a god cast back to Heaven. Since the Fall, it kills just as finally as it would any human.

"There in Heaven lay the gods asleep, and in a corner lay the Power of the gods alone upon the floor, a thing wrought of black rock and four words graven upon it ... These words the Yozis read, and sped away in dread lest the gods should wake. Thus the Yozis became gods, having the power of gods, and they sailed away to the earth, and came to a mountainous island in the sea. There they sat upon the rocks, sitting as the gods sit, with their right hands uplifted, and having the power of gods, and at evening foul prayers gathered about them and infested the rocks."

The Yozis were once merely evil spirits, waking into existence as manifestations of the baser attributes of humanity. As projections of human corruption, they were poor cousins of the gods (but they did not have the empowering focus of belief needed for true divinity). However, long ago, the Yozis found a way to match the power of the gods. How this was done is not known to man, but the Yozis somehow set themselves up as anti-gods - writing themselves into the natural order of things.

In doing this, they made their collective power equal to the collective power of their opposites - creating a cosmic balancing act that is now burned into the very fabric of the universe. Thus, each of the three was vastly more powerful than any one of the gods of man. Realizing what they had allowed to happen, the gods made war against the Yozis, embroiling the universe in a vast conflict that raged for millennia. One by one, the Yozis (by their very natures disinclined to work together) were defeated and imprisoned.

This act resulted in the creation of the three Hells - prisons crafted specifically to contain the Yozis and their vast powers. Slowly recovering from their defeats, the Yozis turned their attentions toward freeing themselves. All three arrived at the same solution, which was to begin breeding servants within their Hells ... servants which might be capable of leaving the very specifically tailored prisons and set about freeing their infernal masters.

These creatures are collectively known of as demons, though the horde of one Yozi is quite different from that of the next. The means by which the Yozis create their demonic servants is uncertain, as their Hells lay sealed to the cycle of reincarnation and it should be beyond even their power to create souls from scratch.

The last and youngest of the Yozis is Snyrg, once a spirit of spite but now called the Forger of Souls. His horde is known of as the Demons of Iron and Violence. The second Yozi is Ha, a lord of madness. She is now known of as the Weaver of Cauls, and her horde is called the Silent Host. The first and eldest of the Yozis is Ya, a patron of evil, and he has demonstrated no interest in the workings of man.

There are tales of other things, older than gods - the occasional story told by a distant traveler, the inscriptions on lost monuments, or the rites of ancient cults. They often speak of vast, inscrutable beings of great, impersonal power. Sometimes the subjects of these stories created worlds, or gave birth to gods, or perhaps simply existed when nothing else did. In all cases, such beings have left few signs of their passing, with the exception of a handful of strange, dark places which are generally hostile to the creatures and inhabitants of this world.

Whether they ever existed at all is in question, and how they fit into the rest of the universe (if they do so at all) is uncertain. They are generally referred to in scholarly circles as primordials, or autocthons, but many of them have small, scattered cults which refer to them by different, older names.

"And furtively Time looked him in the face and edged towards him fingering with his dripping fingers the hilt of his nimble sword. Then the gods feared with a new fear that he that had overthrown Their city would one day slay the gods."

Once there was a race of men favored by the gods. These men dwelt for millennia in a city of marble dreamed into being by the gods, but the city fell into ruins long, long ago - a victim of the cosmic war between the gods and the Yozi usurpers. The favored race was scattered, and became the race of elves. Loath to join the lesser races of man, they travelled the earth in clans, settling in remote corners of the world in order to seal themselves away behind walls of magic and geography.

Virtually nothing is known about elves, and the reason for this is simple. Elves are all rabidly xenophobic. Over the last millennium, only about a dozen non-elves have been permitted to enter an elven city - each of which is so well hidden that only the most dedicated searcher stands a chance of finding one. Even if he does, he is unlikely to live to tell the tale. The elves have been honing their sorcerous powers since before the rest of the races of man had even stepped out of their caves, and their spells can be both efficient and deadly.

Elves look much like humans - with the obvious exception of their sharply pointed ears. There are some minor structural variations as well, including a higher muscle density and a few slight skeletal differences. These factors make elves appear thin and somewhat feminine to human observers. The physical similarities, combined with various ancient legends, have led some sages to speculate (accurately) about a common ancestor that the two races diverged from tens of thousands of years ago.

Dwarven cities are awesome places - vast and intricate vaults carved out of the roots of mountain ranges. Every city has a market and 'dock' area just inside the city gates. These central caverns are hubs of activity, as everything else branches off of the docks into more and more defensible onion shells. Merchants - human and dwarven - trade goods in the docks, and the humans are rarely allowed to pass beyond. This politely isolationist stance has long stymied human scholars desiring a closer look at dwarven culture.

The dwarves have been at war with goblins for longer than anyone can remember, with human merchants occasionally forced to leave the cities in order to avoid involvement in the goblin armies that boil up from below. Their blood feud appears to be more than just competing for territory (while they both live underground, dwarves make their cities, while goblins inhabit deeper natural caverns), but the true reason for the conflict appears to be something the dwarves want to keep under their helmets.

Dwarves are excellent craftsmen and have achieved a level of technology somewhat beyond that of the other species. This, combined with both the defensibility of their cities and their unique and ancient magical tradition, has given them a considerable edge in the endless war against the goblins. There are five dwarven cities. According to some tellings, there was once an sixth, but it was overrun by goblins tens of thousands of years ago.

They range in height from about two stories to five or six stories tall, depending on their particular family's lineage. These family groups are scattered around the world in a variety of habitats, tending to prefer mountains and hills. Additionally, they are occasionally found with other, smaller humanoids - their general lack of intelligence making them fairly easy to convince to join an army, group of bandits, or other militant group.

Regardless of their origin, these subspecies are all rare enough that (with certain exceptions) they have little to no impact on human societies.

The animated dead have no souls - they are simply corpses that have been magically animated for use as workers, soldiers, or other simple servitors. (In some schools of magic, it is easier to animate something which was once alive than it is to animate an entirely artificial form.) These creatures are usually called zombies or something similar, and all of them were created by a sorcerer or higher being. However, the creator is not necessarily around, or even alive, since such creatures can continue to exist independently (if mindlessly) until their bones have fallen to dust.

Any corpse can be animated. Most often these corpses are of humanoids (since their corpses may be found in large numbers in graveyards and battlefields), but others kinds of organic life may be animated with a little extra effort. Zombies of animals, giants, and many other creatures have been recorded. It is also possible to animate somewhat more complex zombies, stitching together bodies and inorganic parts to create horrific war machines. Fortunately, such techniques are difficult to master.

When a person dies, their spirit lingers for a time (usually until the end of their culturally defined funerary period) before passing on into the cycle of reincarnation. Sometimes, however, this transition doesn't work out smoothly, and they become the restless dead. Usually this is due to one of three causes. The first is the traditional 'unfinished business.' These spirits are rarely dangerous (or even noticeable), as they tend to linger harmlessly until that to which they are attached becomes irrelevant.

Second, a spirit is sometimes simply unable to accept death. Even after the funerary period is over, they refuse to allow themselves to pass on, often becoming dangerously insane. Last, the funerary process serves not only to deal with the body and comfort the bereaved, but also to help the dead come to terms with their deaths. If the process is flawed or does not occur, spirits will often linger around their bodies or the site of their deaths, often becoming violently defensive of these places.

If a restless spirit becomes dangerous, there many ways in which they may manifest. Some they will become ghosts, poltergeists, and the like - immaterial beings that can attack the living with unpredictable supernatural abilities. Other times, they inhabit their old bodies, resulting in a revenant that 'lives' in order to accomplish some goal, an animal-like ghoul that eats the dead and attacks the living, or some other exploration of the theme of a walking corpse.

The undead are the rarest form of dead monster. Ranging from the 'disease' of vampirism to the complex task of creating a mummy, it is possible for a person to enter into a strange middle ground between life and death. This is a decidedly unnatural state (even more so than that of the other types of dead monsters), and it often requires that the undead tap into external sources of energy merely to continue their existences.

Many magically created entities are not truly alive - they are artificially constructed forms that have been animated through magic. These things are typically called constructs. They do not have minds, and are only capable of fulfilling commands as stated to them. Constructs are usually crafted from clay, stone, or metal, but there are some variations, including those built with more bizarre substances such as ice and glass, as well as those invested with magical powers. Some potent sorcerers have created some truly strange constructs, such as fluidic constructs made from water, air, or sand, necromantic constructs made of bone and flesh, or ephermal constructs that do not really exist - moving only as ideas, or dreams.

Similar to constructs are golems - constructs that have been given sentience. Creating a golem is an extraordinarily difficult task, and may only be accomplished by the most skilled workers of magic. Still, they are quite formidable servants - in addition to the physical might granted by their artificial bodies, they seem to have some limited control of magic. This has not been well documented, as golems are extremely rare, but it is believed that the magical nature of their existence grants them a closer connection to the flow of magical energies than that enjoyed by humans. They do not seem to have the talent needed for sorcery, but their lesser magics are far more potent than those of men.

Lastly, there exist abominations. These are unique, living creatures that have been created purely through magic. Sometimes they are fusions of other, more natural creatures, and sometimes they simply spring from the imaginations of the sorcerers that created them. Usually, these entities cannot reproduce, but some go on to establish a new species. Many of these creatures were created as weapons, but the most dangerous also tend to be the most freakish (and the least likely to breed true).

"But Snyrg leaned forward and whispered, and the baboons went down upon their knees and clasped their hands as men clasp, and chattered prayer and said to one another that these were the gods of old, and gave the Yozis their worship - for Snyrg had whispered in their ears that, if they would worship the Yozis, he would make them men. And afterwards men could not discern what they were, for their bodies were bodies of men, though their souls were still the souls of beasts and their worship went to the Yozis, spirits of ill."

There are vast numbers of worlds, universes, and planes of existence beyond the physical realm, and each of these worlds has a different palette of inhabitants. As such, it is quite impossible to describe all otherworldly entities. However, the following provides a cross-section of entities more commonly encountered in the physical realm:

Demons are the creations of the Yozis, and the term encompasses all sentient life that comes from their tainted hands. The only purpose of a demon is to serve its master - this is built into their existences, and is very much non-negotiable. As such, while the short-term profits of dealing with demons may be attractive, remember the motivations of your business partner. Essentially, never trust something that sees you as nothing more than fuel for its true master's engines of war.

The first demons came about in the days before the imprisonment of the Yozis, though these are believed to have all been wiped out. In those days, the Yozis harvested souls by the thousand, remaking them into demon hordes to send out against the peoples of the gods. Modern demons come from a less certain source - the Yozis require souls to create sentient life, but their Hells are cut off from the cycle of reincarnation. With the souls of the dead inaccessible to them, they must have found an alternate supply. That, or they have found a means of creating souls from scratch (though this should be impossible).

Elementals are residents of the myriad elemental planes. There are many kinds of elementals - one for each elemental plane, with a range of subtypes within each of those groups (the exact number of planes is debated heavily by mortal scholars). Some examples are fire, and rock, ice and soil. Elementals are basically sentient manifestations of their elements, taking on forms that are composed primarily of the stuff of their plane. They are relatively easy to summon, and are thus the most common otherworldly servitors found in the employ of sorcerers.

Djinn are most common in the elemental planes of air and fire, but they have outposts in most of the elemental planes, as well as in the physical realm and a number of smaller worlds throughout the universe. They are powerful magical entities, with considerable control over air, fire, and illusion. They are also efficient slavers, taking slaves from the physical realm in order to maintain a labor pool for their empire. It is rumored that the God-King of the Empire of Sand is arranging some kind of alliance with the djinn, but little evidence of this yet exists.

An example can be seen in the peculiar animals that swim through the skies over certain surreal regions of ocean far to the west of the continent. Or, more peculiarly, in the bubble fish of Whimsy Lake, which maintain a nonreactive, oxygenated, zero-gravity bubble of water around them as the waters of the lake spontaneously disappear and reappear around them - a trait that the Lake has had for as long as the locals can remember.

In a world swimming with raw magic, things can get a little weird.