In the Dawn of Ariad's Days, before the birth of time, there was only Aradin the Creator. In the world that became Ariad, the world yet to be born, emptiness and stillness were the theatre in which the Immortal One walked in splendour, alone. He knew no beginning. He was the Father of Beginnings. At his call the sun flamed into being, and at his whisper the moons, her daughters, beamed to life. Where once there was darkness, there now existed light.
The First Beginning of the world.
Aradin walked the emptiness beneath the infant sun, and where his footsteps fell mountains rose up in his wake. Valleys marked the places where he wore a frequent path, streams and riverbeds trailing down the mountainsides to follow him. He walked every border, every path of the world, over sunlit mountains and into hidden valleys and the dark places where even the sun herself could not reach. Only when every grain of dust had been trod beneath his feet did he halt in his wandering, to look upon his creation.
The land had been formed, but still it was silent, and stillness yet hushed the young world. Aradin the Creator scooped dust from the earth, and with it he formed the first mortal. He gave this mortal a handful of seeds, and sent him out into his land. The mortal scattered Aradin's seeds over all the valleys, upon the sides of every mountain, and soon the world grew green with trees and leaves, blossoms and fruits and life. This mortal, the first Dryad, was followed by many, and the Green Lands were born.
Then, Aradin wept with joy at his creation, and with his tears formed the first Naiad. He sent her into the lush, Green Lands to fill the valleys and spill from the mountains, and so the mighty river Nelduith and her sister-flows sprang forth in bubbling joy. The rivers and streams and babbling brooks ran laughing across the Green Lands from the north, meeting again where all flows poured together into the Azure Sea.
Aradin then pulled breath from the air and formed a fierce new mortal. He placed the clouds beneath his feet and gave him the winds and the Rains and the Storm, and blessed his descendants with dominion over the Green Lands far below. Into this mortal he breathed great strength, with power and might to govern the Skies, and so the first Skyad came into the world, the fiercest of all mortal races.
Years passed and the three Noble Races, the Duriyal, thrived in the world the Creator had given them. Life sprang up to accompany them, bird and beast, insect and water-dweller, but no dumb creature praised Aradin as did the fair birds of the wood. For this Aradin blessed them; with one of their feathers he formed the first of the Greenfolk: the mortals to dwell merrily in the treetops, beneath the dominion of the Duriyal. He called them the birdfolk, and so they became, singing his praises throughout the green trees, adorned in the feathers of their dumb avine kin.
Where the waters of the Nelduith gave way to sodden shores, Aradin formed the earth-gnomes from the mud of the riverbank. Where the land grew harsh and rocky, he carved dwarves from the stones: stworfs, to delve deep into the earth and rejoice in the treasures they found there. Sand-sprites he made from the dry places where Dryads had not scattered seeds and the sun had burned the dust to sands that stretched for leagues and leagues. Wind-sprites he made from the breezes that sang through the treetops where bird-folk dwelt; Light-sprites and Dark-sprites burst to life at his call, joining the Greenfolk before them.
The Green Lands were teeming and vibrant with life when the last First Beginning was made. With the bark of the trees and the dust of the earth, the waters of the streams and the clouds of the Skies, the sands of the desert and stones of the mountains, the shadows and sunbeams and life of the Lands, Aradin mingled lifeblood from his own very heart, and formed the Adamun. The race of Men. His final creation. The greatest of all the Greenfolk.
Perfection held dominion, for Perfection had designed it, and all the world rejoiced in Aradin's wonderful, beautiful power. He blessed his peoples, one by one, and formed a covenant: that he would dwell with them, among them, between them, as long as their hearts remained truly, wholly his.
Then he gave them a name, to bind them as one and stamp their hearts with his own seal.
He called his creation Ariad.
And history began.