Coera

Coera exists in both linear and circular time. The defeats of Lil and the successive catastrophes turn the Ages over. Coera is allowed to remain in this bubble of time as long as she needs to produce a viable force in Humanity, one which can, on its own, overcome Baod.

Other races on other planets may develop faster because of the direct intervention of their gods, but they are never allowed near to Coera - it is a forbidden zone.

Coera has seven ages:


1. The Underworld

At the birth of Coera, the lesser gods in the host of Patar-Ori come to live in Coera - they inhabit her labyrinthine halls and corridors, and bask in the glowing warmth of her innards. Many of these, because of her permanently physical form, take on permanent physical forms of their own. But Baod has traitors in Patar-Ori's ranks, and in time these traitors begin to convert more of Ori's ranks. And then there is war.

The war rages for countless time, and finally Patar-Ori puts an end to it by purging the depths of Coera with his soldiers, driving those who will remain to the surface. The surface world is bleak, but the godlings realize they can see their stars from there, and though the warmth of Coera is barely perceptable, they can now feel the warmth of Patar-Ori. The godlings bring with them many of the creatures of Coera they encountered in her depths, and find many more new beasts on her surface, but none of these are as great as the massive creatures and plants of the depth.


2. The Garden

The survivors of the war, those that escaped to the surface (there are rumors and even some examples of creatures that survived below the surface), made a garden of the surface world, and in one great valley, recreated some of their favorite places from the underworld. At Patar-Ori's bidding, they nourished and raised up the animals, encouraging them to be individually rational creatures, to spore off from the gaia of Coera, but even after they bred the animals to a close resemblance of the shape they had taken on (for by this time, the physical gods had settled to the shape of the Elves), they had no mind of their own. So Ori touched a male and female godling, yet incorporal, and bound their spirits to the bodies of a man and woman. These were named Adam and Lil.

But Baod had been waiting this moment; he had hidden to this time his continued connection with Coera, as she was but a part of him, and the last thread of their sameness had never been severed. Baod used this link to possess the least of creatures of Coera - the serpent - and seduces Lil to his cause. Though Baod cannot penetrate the boundaries around Coera, his presence can be summoned in, and this is just what Lil did. Baod urges Lil to keep his secret until both he and she are so far powerful that none can stand against them, but Adam discovers Lil's secret and reveals it, despite her arguments and seductions, causing a new war with the summoned Baod and his armies. Through the course of this war, many great and minor spirits are locked into matter like Coera - these become the planets, comets, etc. These are used to strengthen the barrier between Coera and the rest of the universe, and final blow is struck as Lil is turned to the moon. Patar-Ori plans to cast her out from Coera's sphere, but Mehr stirs to disallow this.

The Age turns as Eva is built to replace Lil, and the boundary is hardened. Those gods that choose to stay on Coera are trapped there until the boundary is broken, and those gods that choose to keep their physical form are trapped as Elves (or their other sundry shapes). The flight of the gods from Coera creates a vacuum that undoes much of the garden, it is though a blight passes over Coera.


3. The Patriarchs

With the guidance of the gods and elves, Adam and Eva raise a race of mindful humans, pushing back the children of Lil and Adam and the mindless humans. The humans build cities and expand rapidly, enough so that the friendship between humans and elves become strained as humans push them out of their territory. As the elves spend more and more time trapped in their bodies, they forget the past, and as they battle the sons of Adam and Lil, they begin to forget the difference between the sons of Lil and the sons of Eva. Again there is war.

But everyone has forgotten Lil, and have forgotten to pay attention to her. She slowly draws up power from Patar-Ori and from the gods who stray too close, including her forgotten guards. But mostly she learns from Couroth, the blind worm-god who hides in the shadow of Coera from Patar-Ori, devouring the souls of those who have died and were not escorted to Patar-Ori for safety before being reborn. She watches him take the shape of some that he's devoured in order to lure in others, and strikes an idea.

She gains enough power to posess a willing body on earth, who at her bidding, finds her corpse and uses the life of others to re-animate it. Lil becomes the first vampire, the Lillich.

Lilith grows in power as she teaches her art of physical survival by drawing out the life of others to her new "children". The gods and elves are sought for support, but their power has waned, and they remember the pain of war more than the reasons for war, and few will take part in it. So it is up to Adam & Eva and their race to counter Lil. Adam and Eva are given special dispensation to have more children, though they are now incorporal, and they have these children as godlings corporeal, rather than as ignorant humans. Their first child is as naive as any other human, however, and he is quickly drafted to Lil's side. This is Cain.

As there is a law on Coera that the memories from one life may not be passed forward to the next until the barrier breaks, Eva skirts this issue by bringing her children back in time for their second reincarnation, thus passing back the memories. She concedes, however, that even this is dangerous, and so each son or daughter is only passed back the once before he is called back to Adam's Host.

And so a handful of these children of Adam and Eva are prodcued to to battle Lil. Famous among them is Able, whom Cain slew. The last of these patriarchs finally drives Lil from the earth, and Patar-Ori destroys Coera with ravaging beasts.


4. The Towers of the Gods.

The history of this shorter age is dominated by an Empire of the sea, and the last great domain of Coera Magic and of the Elves, Dwarves, and Prikies. Coera is destroyed by the strikes of meteors.


5. Dafyd's time.

This period is well described in David's section of the blog. After David has defeated Lil, the world is destroyed in a flood, and the most famous casualty is they great city At'alandis.


6. Modern times.

This is the age of Riel, the age of cities and technologies. This may have been the period when mankind broked the barrier out, but they were not ready for what waited beyond, so after Lil was pushed back to the moon, Heaven Descended for a reformative rule.


7. The space age.

The Angels prepared humanity to return to space almost immediately after they withdrew, and so the barrier around Coera was broken and the cycle of ages was ended, for it was forseen that this would bring about the new life, life created by humans but not dependent on a Gaia, a life in physical space but not bound by it, life that Baod could not conquer. In this age, Lil is not only driven back to the moon, but she and the moon are destroyed.

Most people die calm deaths, asleep in their beds, expiring from disease, passing slowly as they bleed to death, or otherwise meeting their end as the the door at the end of a narrowing hallway. In these cases it is common for the soul to fall "asleep" within the protection of the body, where it is hidden and relatively safe. Once the body is dead, the soul cannot be forcibly removed from it, which is for the best - there are many beings who might wish the soul harm, or at least attempt to consume it. It is customary to either bury or cremate our dead; these customs are so ancient that the purpose behind them have been lost.

Some are surprised by death, through violence, accident, or heart attack. In these cases, the soul is frequently shocked free from the body. Many of these ghosts do not immediately realize what they are, and go on acting as though they were alive. Some realize they are dead, but they are too taken with thoughts of vengeance or otherwise obsessed with some aspect of the world to let go. These souls may wander indefinitely, they may find their way to their home in the sun (Patar-Ori), they may find their way to rebirth, or they may meet some worse end.

Along with Lil and her Get, there are other relics of Baod's armies or more recent converts who seek out unprotected souls for a meal. Perhaps best well-known of these is Couroth, the blind Worm God, who hides in the shadow of Lil. Worse, there are nihilists who would simply torture or unmake the souls.

These are the reasons for burial or cremation - each is a way to promote the safety of the soul until guardians arrive to ferry it to Patar-Ori, where it is judged, to be renewed, promoted, or unmade. Burial, or hiding the soul in the ground, is less immediate, and does not encourage speedy re-incarnation. By hiding the soul in Coera, the soul is discouraged from leaving the body to go exploring, and can sleep until it is gathered among the multitudes (such as during an apocalypse) for a return to Patar-Ori. In these cases, thousands, millions, thousands of millions of souls can be led with only a small dispatchment of guardians past the threats and predators to Patar-Ori.

Cremation (when done properly in a large, outdoor blaze), ejects the soul into the ether, but marks it clearly, summoning the guardians to lead it home. Cremation when done improperly (in kilns, or otherwise with no obvious signal) is no better than exposure, which creates a ghost who must fend for itself. Some religions do this intentionally under the (perhaps correct) belief that worthy souls will find their way home, and the unworthy will meet the end they deserve.

Of course, guardians not otherwise engaged (as personal guardians or ferriers) keep an eye for wandering souls, so not all ghosts are lost to predators. Locations likely to produce un-prepared ghosts (battlegrounds, modern funerary kilns, and even the lairs of some serial killers) are often manned by stand-by guardians. Despite the best of intentions, however, Couroth does not starve, especially in times of war or plague.

Each re-incarnated soul placed by Patar-Ori's administration is also assigned a minor guardian as a personal attendant; these oversee the Fate of that person. In other words, they are charged with protecting to the best of their ability the life of the person they are guarding for a set number of years determined by the Fates before the re-incarnation. Even if they fail to keep their charge alive, they are on-hand to immediately escort the soul back to Patar-Ori for re-assignment. It's not especially uncommon for people to die immediately after their fate is expended (the Fates are, after all, blessed with foresight), and the guardian minds often linger a few days for just such a possibility. After that, though, the life of a person is their own responsibility - whether they live a day or eighty more years is up to their own caution and luck, as is the survival of their own death.

Lil and her Get - what exactly do they consume?

Initially, they consume life, just as people consume nutrients and calories. But as we prefer certain types of food and where one plant may be a nutritious source of vitamins and another might be an indigestible fiber wad, the Get cannot simply consume anything that's alive.

A Human life is radically different from anything else available to the Get on Coera. Animals and plants do not have unique spirits, and eating a living animal is like calorie-less flavored water - you might do it for the taste or variety, but you couldn't live on it. A god or elf, on the other hand, would be more akin to trying to eat a cow. Part of a cow might be tackled by a handful of people, but it is far too much for anyone to fit in their stomachs - since the spirit of an elf is bound to a star, an elf is incomplete, and eating them, while invigorating, is unfulfilling. They're like sugar-water. Some of the latterday elves might be weak enough to be trapped entirely in their body and consumed, but it would take one of Lil's greatest to plan and pull off a coup of the type.

Some prikies and delvers might find themselves consumed like a human, but those species found themselves at a dead end long before even Deyvid's time, and as allies of the Get in the end, they were also handy prey.

Humans are the meat and taters of the Get's diet. The Blood is the life and the soul, so most of the Get are vampiric - it is the quickest, easiest way to consume a life. It's not entirely uncommon for the lower orders of the Get to consume the flesh of a human, or particular organs, while their prey or at least the flesh of their prey is still alive; it is especially common for the flesh to be left to the prolish servants of higher-order get who have already had their fill of the life and either do not want a complete spirit inside them or leave enough resonant life in the corpse.

Though it is the life they need, like it's the calories and nutrients we need, for the both of us it is the flavor and varieties that we enjoy when we eat. A vampire will choose a blood based on the life its led, attitudes or emotions, or even a particular flavor that runs in a bloodline or species, but not on a bloodtype any more than we would the color of a cow. Vampires, who typically go much longer between meals than we do, savor their feedings all the greater, and come to enjoy all the flavors of a human. Most secretions of the human body (excretions are certainly not included) carry some of the life of the body while still fresh, and provide some small nutrition and often a strong emotional flavor. There are stories of a repentant vampire who, with great restraint, survived for many years only by licking the tears from the faces of children. A seedier adjunct is that the lower Get are often prostitutes for whom the job is the appetizer, and "payment" is the small meal afterward.

Where we are often lethargic after a large meal, the vampire is invigorated. A vampire at war will feed as he kills and can fight indefinitely. The exception to this is a vampire who has taken a complete spirit intact - they will recoil within themselves like a hermit crab to digest the shape and emotions of the spirit, and will often display some characteristics of the personality they ate until it has been fully digested, set aside, or lost in the swarm of other past meals.

As with the earliest people, morals among the gods were not formalized, if they exist at all. The gods always had room to spread out, as they were not confined to 3- or 4-space; even after the stars bound the gods in space, only at galaxy cores did they rub shoulders, and that was by choice.

There is some idea of right and wrong as soon as Baod swallows his first soul; arguments of morals are to some degree the battle that continues amongst the gods after the stalemate imposed by Mehr with the birth of Coera.

But it was people that taught morals to the gods. The earliest people also had room to spread, but as people settled into agricultural societies, and then into cities, they had to devise rules that promoted stability and the greatest success for the largest number of people. This was not always or even usually a conscious goal, but, like evolution's survival of the fittest, it was a pattern underlying the development. As Patar-Ori and his cotery led forth the human race from the fauna of Coera, the elf-gods began to observe, along with poetry and mathematics, a beauty to the moral codes of humanity, and helped the humans to develop them more formally and thoroughly.

As Patar-Ori and his godlings give new revelations to their peoples, they incorporate the morals they themselves learned from the people.

As Eva took from the side of Adam into herself, Adam has melded with Patar-Ori, and has become his son, as much as he is the son of Zhen-Mehr.

Adam was the first man, and was also the first new man. He was the son of Man, the Christ bound to the soul of the Messiah conceived within Mary. He has been born in many places and many times, and Lil stays clear of him. His symbols are a bane to her, though she hopes to someday devour him.

Lil has only once had a taste of Adam - when she drank his blood beneath the cross from the cup. She hopes to one day have him whole. But Adam knows that will never be.

He also knows that he will regain the token she stole from him - the keys to the barrier. She thinks she will find the keyhole first.

Adam and Eva did not only have sons, they had daughters. While one of their daughter was a warrior, most are prophetesses, popping backward through time and sharing the secrets of the future with their older sisters. Some sons are prophets, as well, but it is far more common for a male prophet to be in fact the mouthpiece of a woman who does not think she will be believed.

Sons of Eve acheive various levels of success against Lil and her Kith.

Some, like the famed Lion, only manage to drive her back to the fringes and into hiding. But those that drive her completely from Coera (and back to the moon) also "reset" the world, bringing on a catastrophe (like the flood, or Heaven Descending, etc.) that wipes out much of civilization and brings on a New Age. These catastrophes are carried out by the gods (the Flood was the work of water spirits like the Nymphs, but these gods are birthedd and stored specifically for this purpose). The purge erases the corruption introduced by Baod through Lil, and allows the gods to guide the development of mankind, but it also allows Lil a perpetually naive victim in humanity.

• Coera is the name given to the goddess pulled from the heart of Baod.
  
• Cohira
  
• Gohira is the secret name known to the Ancients of the Duckworks.
  
• 'Ohira
  
• Ohida is name of the Earth given to people by the Angels when Heaven Descends.
  

The Elves move long distances over and through Coera before there is any equipment to do it for them quickly. When they are "of Mind", it is easy to flit wherever they'd like, but when they are bound to their bodies, they are forced to follow more conventional means. To speed their journeys, elves follow lay lines, or "The Ways", convergences of spiritual fields. The Elves learn that the physical world creases at these lines, and it's possible to slip into the crease and move from place to place much more quickly.

The Ways were at first temporary and shifting, but continued use cements them in place - neglect allows them to dissipate.

Finding the crease by sight alone is impossible - even standing in the crease, if you are not looking down the crease, you will not see it. When looking down the crease, you see the right and the left a bit more blurry, and a wide, gently-curving path in front of you and directly behind. As long as you stay within the crease, it is typically wide enough for large parties to pass each other, but if you step outside of it, it's only a hair's breadth.

The creases can pass through mountains, rivers, over valleys, etc, with very muted effects - mild temperature changes, increased humidity, spongey firmament beneath, etc. - as long as you stay with it. Stepping outside the crease in a mountain will kill you.

The Elves can find the creases because of their sensitivity to spirit, though most who can feel a crease can only generally tell when one is nearby. As the Elves leave the world, the creases begin to fade with them.

In each age that Lillith descends to Coera, she builds a great city, the greatest in the world, and rules it under the flag of the crescent moon.

Though the location changes to suit her needs, the name is always eerily similar: Babal (Patriarchs), Bil'Obal (Towers of the Gods), Bal Abillion (Dafyd's world), Babylon and New Babylon (Riel's world), and again Babal (Tuk's World). The city is vaunted as a metropolis, a melting pot, a place where all people may come together to establish that which has never been established, to be great as gods.

Lil does not fashion herself Queen, Empress, Regent, or any such petty titles. She is called the Jezebel, the Whore of the city. She rules, in fact, as a whore, quite literally - it is a function of her suzerain. That many of her johns become her meals is often rumor and sometimes established as public ritual, but the sacrifice and sex service the whole city and the world, and is a tax the city gladly pays. (Of course, for every one sacrifice Lil takes, there are a thousand more by her coterie).

It is usually the fall of this city that occasions the destruction of Coera and the turning of the age - the city's razing is the goal of the Apocalypse.

Adam and Eva have had more sons and daughters than will ever be mentioned here.

During their incarnation in the Garden Age of Coera, Adam and Lil had 12 but one child, and Adam and Eva no less than 40.

The Patriarchal age produced Cain, Abel, Seth, Enoch, and another son at the end of the age.

The Age of the Towers was supposed to be the age of Men, and though there were worries when the Towers began to emulate Lil's Babel, it wasn't until Bil'Obal was named and the Jezebel was its ruler that another son was produced to bring Lil down. In this case, though, it was twins - these were the only two sons of Eva in this Age.

The Age of Daethan had seven warrior sons, most notable among them Deyvid and the Lion. Others were less effective and only cleared the way for the Lion. Note that Deyvid's return to the Lion marks one of the few instances of a son returning to tutor the son directly before him. It is more typical that sons skip backward between ages and across each other's lines.

The Modern Age has Riel, of course, and the wandering Jew. The Jews were the Chosen people of Patar-Ori, until they killed Adam, at which point his favor extended across the globe. So before Adam came as Jesus, all sons of the age were Jewish or of their ancestry, but the wandering Jew was the last from that line. Note that the Wandering Jew was at the crucifixion and lived for several hundred years after, but was large without a war to fight, since it was not Lil behind the death of Adam.

The Age following Heaven's Descent had two sons and a daughter. Tuk, the last of them all succeeded in the destruction of Lil.