Creation¶
"It is from the Void that all creation emerged." — from the Terrun Cosmology (S421)
Contested
This page is named in the open questions Material Plane and the Mithis barrier and Origin and placement of the Abyss. The newest account is followed below; the readings it displaced are kept under Earlier accounts.
The planes of Terrun were not made all at once. The oldest things, the Void and the raw elemental energies, had no maker that any source names. Everything else was built in layers by the Einar and their successors: the Material and Fae planes laid over a subdued Elemental Chaos, the Throne of Law forged to govern the whole and then shattered into the Astral Shards, the Abyss carved out of repurposed shards to imprison the Demons, the Mithis barrier set between the Abyss and the living world, and finally, when that barrier decayed, the Rift. This page tells that sequence in cosmological order. The wars and ages in which it happened are History's; the planes themselves each have a page under Planes.
The Void and the first intelligences¶
The Void is "an infinite expanse of nothingness. Wandering beings occasionally arrive and others depart into it (for what reason is unknown). It is from the Void that all creation emerged" (S421). The Terrun Cosmology places the beginning of life in the Astral Plane: "Intelligences separated themselves from the Void and in the process created the Astral Plane. These intelligences formed the Astral Forms of the First Ones, the Einar. Some Einar learned the art of extracting additional intelligences from the Void and used them to form their living creations" (S421). Those first intelligences were what the same source calls wandering souls, beings whose form and soul were one and the same, and therefore destructible; see Souls and Spirits.
The newest treatment of magic draws a sharp line between what was created and what was not. Astral Law "governs all of creation, including the Astral, Material, Elemental and Abyssal Planes. However, its power does not extend to the Ethereal, Shadow or Void Planes; as these were not created by the Creators, and have existed since before creation" (S205, see Nature of Magic). Older scholars reached the same conclusion about the Ethereal: it is believed to be "a fundamental plane and not one formed by the Einar or elementals" (S013). The Netherworld and the Shadow Realm, on this reading, were already there when the gods arrived.
The Elemental Chaos¶
Before the Einar there was the Elemental Chaos. "The Elemental Plane (known originally as the Elemental Chaos) pre-dates the arrival of the Einar and every other plane. The other planes are built on top of the raw Elemental energies brought to order by the Einar" (S001). In that age "Fae magics ruled and great elemental lords shaped, played and created" (S208); the Elementals, "alongside the Eldritch, the only true natives of Terrun", are the beings that "literally create and form matter upon which all other creation rests" (S001). How long the Chaos lasted is unknown, though "many scholars assume millions of years" (S208). What remains of it is the Elemental Plane.
The Einar and the Primordial War¶
The arrival of the Einar ended the Primordial Age. The Elementals resisted them in the Primordial War, lost, and were "subjugated and imprisoned ... to bring order to the natural world" (S001). The most powerful of them, the Primordials, "were imprisoned on the Astral Plane to prevent a resurgence of elemental power" (S001). The Eldritch, believed to be ascended Primordial Elementals, fought beside the Einar in that war (S001).
Only then were the living planes made. "When the Elementals were imprisoned on their plane at the end of the Primordial War, the Fae and Material planes were built on top" (S001). The Fae Realms "were created after the primordial wars and were the dominion of the Titans. Here they stood in between the elements and the material and orchestrated the natural order" (S001). The Material Plane, "also known as the Mortal Realm", "was constructed by the Einar after their victory in the Primordial War" (S001). The Fae magic that had ruled the Chaos "became bound under Astral Law at the end of the Primordial Wars, when the Chaos was defeated and order was brought to the Material Plane" (S208).
The Terrun Cosmology adds that the Einar made the Ethereal Plane during this war for their own protection: "It was during the Primordial Wars that the Einar created the Ethereal Plane to separate their form from their soul. They did this to protect their souls (and those of their minions) from utter destruction" (S421). The newer account of Astral Law (S205) places the Ethereal before creation instead; the older reading is kept here as the Einar's own explanation of what the Ethereal is for.
The Throne of Law¶
With the world made, the Einar fell to quarrelling over it. "For most of the Second Age, Einar (The Elder Gods) squabbled and disagreed on how to bring order to their new world. The Throne of Law was forged to settle the matter and granted uncontestable dominion to 12 High Gods of the Einar" (S001). The Throne of Law was more than a seat: it was "forged to control and manage all of creation" (S420), and its construction "redirected the energies of Terrun into a new Astral Realm under the control of the Einar", which the Eldritch "resisted ... as the betrayal and direct theft of their greatest source of power that it was" (S001). The same forging bound the defeated elementals "in eternal servitude" and made the Titans their jailkeepers, "each Titan ... bound to a host of elemental subjects which were imprisoned on the Elemental Planes" (S208).
The Throne did not last. In the war over how to meet the Demons, a faction of the Einar made a pact with four imprisoned Primordials and "managed to break into the Astral Plane and destroy the Throne of Law" (S386). "When the Throne was shattered, this dominion passed to the Einar (The Younger Gods) which claimed the shards, numbered now in the hundreds" (S001), and "the four Primordial Elementals which assisted the young gods were freed as part of the bargain" (S001). The fragments are the Astral Shards; who holds them, and what holding one means, is told there. The Einar before and after the shattering, and the names Elder Gods and Younger Gods, are Religion's.
The Demons, the Abyss and the Mithis barrier¶
The Demons are the one great element of creation that the Einar did not make and could not explain. The newest cosmology lists them among the cosmological beings and offers only theories of their origin (S001); the Terrun Cosmology has them "arrive en-masse from the Void" as wandering souls (S421). Their coming ended the Age of Titans (S001) and began the Demon Wars.
To hold them, the gods made a prison. "The Abyss was created by the Gods during the Demonic Wars as a set of prison planes to hold Demons and other outcasts. The Seven Hells were originally Astral Shards repurposed as prisons. An additional barrier plane (the Mithis Plane) was created to keep powerful beings from being able to leave the Abyss. Each shard (one of the seven hells) was initially governed by an Einar Warden, but eventually each fell to the Demons" (S001). The barrier is the origin of Mithis: "Scholars surmise that is was once an Astral Demesne, moved to the Material Plane to form the Abscission (the barrier between the Abyss and Material). When the gods moved/created it, it was called the Worldstone and was bound to all life on the Material Plane" (S419). The Worldstone, the Anthu'Mithis, is Artifacts'; the barrier it made is the Mithis Plane, and the prison is the Abyss.
The Shattering and the decay of the barrier¶
The barrier was undone from the living side. "Over time, the Mithis barrier was repurposed by mortals as a magical power source and slowly weakened. It began to significantly decay shortly after the Age of the Dark Sun" (S001). Long before that, the Worldstone itself was destroyed in the Shattering, "by whom or why ... not known" (S386); its substance "travelled across the planet in the forms of pure Mithis dust and shards" (S419) and became the free magic of the Age of Magic. "The barrier between the Material plane and the Abyss remained mostly intact, though weak enough that small holes could now be punched in it" (S386). The Mithis page follows the particle; the Age of the Dark Sun is History's.
The Rift¶
The last change to the planes is recent. The Rift, or Astral Folds, is "a 5th age phenomenon created from the decaying Mithis Astral Shard. The decay has caused the shard-space to merge with the Shadow Realm and punctured holes directly through to the Material, allowing for Rift-gates directly from the Material to the Rift. Since the Mithis Astral Shard once acted as the Gate to the Abyss, it now acts a primary transit point for Demons trying to escape the Abyss" (S001). It holds "many old fragments of the Prime Material and Astral Planes: detritus and fallout remaining from the disintegration of the Mithis Plane. Things and places strongly tied to Mithis were more likely than not to end up in the rift after the end of the Hollowing Period (this was the 500 year time period during which the transitions took place)" (S001). "Since the destruction of the Mithis Plane, there is no real distinction between the Astral Plane and the Abyss; both exist in extradimensional space and both are made up of sovereign matter" (S001). The Hollows were the face this decay showed on the ground; the Hollowing Period and the Redemption that ended it are History's.
Cosmological beings¶
The newest cosmology sets apart five kinds of being "that as far as anyone knows have always existed. They have no obvious or known creator(s)" (S001). Each is another section's entry: the Einar, whose arrival "heralded the end of the First Age (Primordial Age)"; the Eldritch; the Elementals; the Demons; and the Outsiders, "only a handful of beings [that] have mastered the traversal of the Void" and "visit Terrun, set up outposts and harvest Terrun's resources for their own interests" (S001).
Earlier accounts¶
Earlier accounts have the Material Plane older than the Einar. "The original Material Plane (known as the Prime Material) existed long before the arrival of the Einar. It was a barren place, a physical expression of elemental energies given off by the elementals. When the Einar arrived and began colonizing it, it took the elementals some time to realize the source of the drain on their energies and freedom" (S013); "The Material and Elemental Planes pre-date the arrival of the Einar" (S421). In the 2020 history "the Material plane was an Elemental battlefield, with the elements in a state of constant conflict" when the Einar arrived, and "the Astral, Shadow and Ethereal Planes were forged by the Einar so that they could control and make use of the intelligences that would drift in from the Void" (S386). The 2026 revision reverses this: the Material was constructed by the Einar, and only the Elemental Chaos is older.
Earlier accounts also have the Abyss cut from the Material rather than built from shards. Kalar "forged the Anthu'Mithis (Worldstone, which created the Mithis Plane). The Anthu'Mithis split off a portion of the Material Plane into a separate plane known as the Abyss. This was a tremendously destructive act and shook the foundations of Terrun, triggering worldwide cataclysms" (S386); in the oldest compendium Kalas "formed a new plane (the abyss), and in the process split the earth and did massive damage to the elemental and astral planes" (S384). A 2026 campaign outline places the Abyss differently again, as "a fragment of the Mithis subplane" lying in the Netherworld below the Material (S358); that is the open question named above.
The oldest compendium credits one god with all of it: "Kalar is credited with creating Terrun, the planes and planting the first seeds for all life on Terrun" (S384), and the archive's regional notes make the Elder Gods the parents of "the elder races including the Fae, Titans, Elementals, Giants, Dragons" (S498). The 2017 Fae Magic notes say the Primordials "have been around since the beginning and cannot be destroyed (the gods tried and ended up imprisoning them instead). Most are bound/imprisoned and make up the foundations of Terrun" (S279), which agrees with the newest account that elemental matter underlies everything else.
Gap
No source dates any of these events in a calendar; the ages are given only in order, and S208's lengths for them (almost 50,000 years for the Age of Titans, approximately 22,000 for the Age of Demons, approximately 14,000 for the Age of Dragons, nearly 6,000 for the Age of Magic) are not confirmed elsewhere. No source says why the Einar came to Terrun, or what the Void is beyond nothingness.