When the world became round

This story, while it can be read as standalone, was written as a creation myth for the world of the Symmetry Saga, a 3-Season D&D Campaign by D&Dorks. It does contain major spoilers for the series finale, so should you be considering watching this campaign (which I, the author, would highly recommend), I would not read this until afterwards.

Once upon a time, the world was flat. Now I know what you're thinking: the world is round, and surely has been since it's beginning. We know what is beneath the ground at our feet too well not to know if it was once flat. Well, this is also true, and this world, the one that we live on, has never been flat. But once, in a time that never happened, it was.

To begin at the beginning, there was a Place. A Place that exists in secret, outside time and space, before there even was time, or space. In this Place lived people from the first known attempt at our world. Gods had looked at this attempt and found it lacking, and in attempting to save it this group found themselves trapped, alone, in a time and a space that did not exist. To survive, One of their number made a Place: one where time flowed in a way they recognised, and they could exist, which shouldn't have been possible yet, or before, or ever, or now. There they lived while they tried to find a way to fix the world, their ability to exist sustained only by the secrecy of their existence.

One day, which of course was not really a day as those did not exist either, there arrived another group, attempting to save the second known attempt at our world, which had also been removed. This new group found the Place, and a great battle began. Each group had a world to save, but they knew that they were before time, and either group suceeding would mean the other had failed. This battle raged long, or short, never or perhaps forever, as a third group and then a fourth and a fifth came through from new worlds. Each group was desperate that theirs would be the one saved, that those they left behind would reappear to them once more. Eventually, or perhaps before, the One who created the Place had had enough. He drew on his power of secrets to make the Place larger, enough to accomodate all these groups, and proposed that they all survived, without their worlds, creating their own outside of time. Some agreed, equally tired of fighting over which world should be saved, and some did not, feeling too much pain at their loss. The One wiped their minds of this pain, and gave them each homes in his new Place, using the secret of where they came from to sustain the power that allowed them to exist while existence was not real. And slowly, through this secret, they forgot he was there.

More groups came, from worlds that were flat, worlds that were curved, worlds that fit no shape that we recognise, and many more. All came from our world, although our world did not exist. To each group, the One gave a choice: live out your lives here with the memories of those you have lost, or live out your life without memory of that pain. He delivered people, if you could call some of them that, into their new lives, creating new spaces that were more familiar for those from stranger realities, and they too soon forgot who had put them there. Eventually, for in the Place time flows as it does in our world, people from many worlds lived there separately and collectively in an unstable kind of harmony they called life.

On a fateful day, which of course was not really a day as time would not exist, a new group like any other arrived in the non-space outside this Place by accident, in the same way all such groups arrived. To the One they seemed like any other. He had learned over time that it was best not to warn newcomers that losing their memory was a possibility, so he explained the Place as he usually would, and only wiped their minds when they threatened the power of secrecy that allowed the Place to exist. In his confidence, however, he missed one trivial being, who would lead to the creation of our world.

This being was a goblin, from a small part of a lesser town, from a world that was flat, and he had been picked up from his town as his world was removed and knew nothing at all about questing. He was not particularly efficient in his search for his companions, but through a healthy combination of good luck and hard work he found them, and put them back on the path to saving their world. Destabilising the fragile harmony of the Place, this group soon discovered that they were not the only ones still determined to have a world, though others planned to create one to their own ends. In a way, this group did too, and they argued about the best way to create a new world, plans of restoring the old one now seeming impossible in their new circumstances. But their conflict worked to the advantage of all in our world. They re-boarded their ship of time with one of their number bearing the power of space, and sailed to speak to the one who had removed all worlds (although this being had not done this yet, or before, or since) for this was the only being in the non-space before and after time.

This being had no concept of time, or space, or in fact of other beings besides themselves, or of existence - at least not in the form that we know it. It was explained to him rather poorly by this group, but as he slowly came to understand, they led him to the Place, to show him what reality was as they understood it. The being saw this, and another being was created as his balance, his Symmetry. This being encompassed all that was, and how the being of nothing perceived it, creating a balance in power that had never existed for the creation of any of the other attempts at a world, which of course had never happened yet. These beings took the perception of all those who had come to the Place while it had existed outside time, and formed it into time and space, now existing everywhere where there was once & never either. This new thing called Reality eventually became what we know as our world, and those who caused it's creation have never been heard from again - except one.

The one with the power of space stayed with these new beings, an example of all of space, but also of compassion, and occasionally still it is said he appears in the sky. It is said that the Place still exists, but now in Space, and that he visits from his home there to ensure all is as it should be, and that we still exist on this rounded world that he is not from. He says, in his wise and childlike way, that one day the others will be seen once more, and to watch out for the businessman and the frog, but to accept the goblin and the strange one as friends. We know not who the strange one may be, but we use these words as a tenet, to accept the oddities of all in our world, and to keep watch for the frog that may carry you on it's back, but drop you when the businessman makes the right deal.

And such was the creation of our world, a world made not from a single being, but by two, equally balanced, drawing from the minds of many. The many different shapes of the never-worlds now combined to make the only world that ever was.