Chapter Text
The Foundations of Paradise
Long ago, people used to live on the island where the kingdom of Paradise once stood. They were an anarchic people with no one to lead them, and strife followed their every action.
The gods were grieved to see these people suffer, and after much deliberation, came up with a solution to remedy their suffering.
They took one among their kind and Forged Him to Perfection. They granted Him Divine Insight and Wisdom into how to forge the Perfect place for His people to live before returning Him to the mortal realm. From that day forwards, He had a single goal in His heart: To lead His people to nationhood and prosperity.
Arctic tundras thawed where He traveled. Trees sprouted and flowers bloomed in His wake. With their glorious leader at the helm, His people went from a small group of starving foragers to a thriving town. And eventually, they would grow into a prospering kingdom.
Crops flourished, businesses prospered, and all were happy under His reign. In gratitude for all that He had provided and managed to help them accomplish, His people constructed a grand castle and pleaded for Him to live there where He could look down upon the people and feel proud of what they were all able to accomplish together.
Their society was Perfect. And soon it would be given its rightful name: Paradise.
Everything changed when the Outsiders came.
The Outsiders sailed to Paradise from distant lands, saying that they wanted to learn about Paradise and its ways so that they could enlighten their own people across the great seas. But this was not entirely true. While some of these Outsiders truly did wish to be enlightened by the citizens of Paradise, their superiors came with a different purpose in mind- they were jealous of all that Paradise had accomplished and sought to destroy their civilization and its people.
First, the Outsiders assimilated into Paradise to the joy of everyone. But as the years passed, the Parasites among their ranks began to poison the minds of the people of Paradise with fear and doubt towards their leadership and His regime. Once planted, this doubt and fear spread like a virus until it infected just about every person living on the island, which the Parasites were able to quickly stoke into outrage against Paradise's leadership.
Before the Divine Leader could speak to His people or find the source of the outrage, Paradise erupted into war. The Outsider Parasites were successful. Paradise was divided and would soon be destroyed by its own people. They were certain that only thing they needed to ensure that Paradise would never rise again was to kill the Divine Leader Himself.
However, what the Parasites didn't know was that the Divine Leader was able to pass His Insights and Wisdom down to a successor that He Forged to Perfection. This Successor was sent away from the island with only the most unquestioning and loyal citizens of Paradise and the few Outsiders that truly understood His divine leadership. The only possession they carried with them were the clothes on their backs and a compass that pointed them home. They fled the war, island, and Paradise, seeking refuge in the lands beyond the great seas, never to return.
Despite His divine gifts and forged perfection, the Divine Leader would be found by the Parasites and His own outraged citizens. He was sentenced to death. He was never charged with any crime, for He had never committed any.
But before the killing blow could be struck, He was granted a vision of the future which He spoke to His killers. This was not the end of Paradise. The island Paradise called home would be wiped clean. All those who questioned His divine leadership would perish. And when the castle His people made stood proud once again, no longer frozen in time, the Successors of His Successor and their people would be able to reclaim their homeland and Paradise would be able to flourish anew!
When the Divine Leader was struck down, a curse was unleashed upon the island and all that had ever inhabited it. The Name of the Divine Leader was wiped from the minds of all who knew it, proving His godly Perfection. If His Perfection was to be questioned by those unworthy to understand it, then they were not fit to know Perfection's Name.
The death of the Divine Leader was followed by plague, starvation, and strife. Crops withered. Citizens and Parasites fought and killed one another for what few resources remained on the island. And when the people thought that it couldn't get worse, the skies went black, the island set itself ablaze, and searing, liquid rock and boiling mud wiped away any sign of civilization, somehow leaving the castle untouched in its wake.
The few that survived the catastrophe were then forced to live in an unforgiving, frozen wasteland as the island blanketed herself in ice, going to sleep as she waited for the time when her rightful heirs could return.
All those who didn't flee the island would die an unforgivingly slow death. Ice and snow would consume the seas around her, making the island nearly impossible to travel to. Even if one did brave the ice, wind, and cold to visit the island, they would find nothing there but death.
And so it was for eons upon eons until the story of Paradise became legend and a myth, except for the descendants of those faithful few that had fled the island alongside His successor. And so it is written, and so we wait for the time when we may return home to Paradise once more.
At long last, the time for our return may be at hand…