The origins of Rithera are in dispute. Much as in our own world, people do not agree on how the cosmos was formed, who the gods are, and if they govern Rithera still. (For what characters are likely to believe, see "help religion.") But the truth is known to two small groups: 1) the beastkin who keep their Old Faith, or what some humans contemptuously call "the Beastkin Cult," and 2) the human Loremasters who learned how Rithera was sundered from those who were there when it happened. Their story goes something like this:
In the beginning, the gods emerged from elemental chaos. A formless tumult of Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth, the raw materials of the universe, settled into shapes and in so doing brought about the three domains: Creation, Destruction, and Purification. The first taking-shape was an event of Creation, the domain of activity. From Creation followed Destruction, the domain of potential, the reduction of forms back to formless matter. And Creation and Destruction together brought forth Purification, the process of making and unmaking by which forms are perfected. These three concepts of formation affected all of the elements yet were reducible to none of them. That is to say, form transcended matter. And form without matter is what we call a god.
The god of Creation, symbolized by Light, Faleh. The god of Destruction, symbolized by Shadow, Sorion. The goddess of Purification, symbolized by Time, Eradina. These three representatives of their domains set to work giving Rithera form. As they collaborated, they discovered that a being composed of all four elements formed with all three domains could acquire the power and impulse to strive to sustain its own form: they made life. Their living creations grew more complex as they turned from plants to beasts. At last the gods' efforts culminated in a being that not only lived but whose aetherial essence was timeless: this was a soul and the first beastkin. Not only did it maintain itself, but the same complexity that made it resilient also made its behavior unpredictable even to the gods: this was the Will, the freedom to choose a path that even the gods, with their singular domains, do not possess.
Exhausted and satisfied with their labors, the three gods reclined upon Rithera and gazed up at the empty night sky. The sight inspired Faleh once more and, in tribute to their success, he created a shining star, delighting his sister with its beauty. This, the first act that any god had taken alone, was the beginning of the end. The star that Faleh proudly claimed, Sorion coveted and resented. The God of Destruction annihilated the star, outraging the God of Creation, and so began the Primordial War between them. Terrible magics rent the earth into continents as Faleh gave form and Sorion took it, attacking each other. Eradina struggled to preserve what they had made with her power, but she could not match the might of two alone, and the desperate beastkin took sides with the gods and against each other. Only the first beastkin remained neutral and looked on.
As the two gods warred, something was born, distortions neither formed nor formless, bizarre byproducts of divine fury: the eidola, what some today call devils. These too joined the fray, hastening the dissolution of the world. Finally, with form collapsing into chaos again, Eradina could take no more. She used the full extent of her power to freeze Rithera as it was, in perfect stasis, losing most of herself in the process. Unable to fight, the gods calmed and saw too late what they had wrought. What was sundered could not be reformed. Sorrowful and ashamed, wishing only to restore their sister, Faleh and Sorion filled the night sky with stars. Roused by their beauty, Eradina briefly returned to her senses. But all three feared this peace could not last. Thus they departed Rithera for the heavens, three Gates remaining where they passed. Faleh and Sorion created the Sun and Moon as their homes, agreeing that lest they quarrel again they ought not dwell overlong in the same sky. Eradina, smitten with the stars, became one.
To govern Rithera in their absence, Faleh and Sorion each endowed their two mightiest beastkin generals with their power, creating four Great Beasts, one for each element, and placed above them the wise first beastkin, who became the fifth Great Beast and their leader. So the gods left, the power of their domains weakened, Eradina's stasis thawed, and a world without gods proceeded. The eidola withdrew to the Gates, attracted to the remnants of divine power trickling from them. Spirits and elementals emerged naturally from the flow of aether and the Great Beasts ruled over them. And while the beastkin prospered, a primitive creature called the human, a product of the gods' last experiments with souls, slowly foundered its way out of ignorance on its own.
Though Faleh still sheds his life-giving light on Rithera and Sorion coolly reflects it, neither attend to the doings of the souls upon the planet they made. Occasionally a star falls from the heavens, though if this is Eradina's doing, none can say. Yet the Great Beasts cautioned that if the wrath of the gods is ever stirred again, Eradina will lose the last of herself and shake the stars from the heavens in madness, obliterating all. This is the prophecied apocalypse they call Starfall.