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War in the Heavens Angels At the opposite end of the spectrum from demons are the angelic intelligences of the Empyrean. These entities are likewise incredibly ancient, refugees of universes that grew cold countless billions of years ago, but they represent the souls that achieved sufficient spiritual enlightenment to transcend the material world and approach the heart of creation. Having shed the limitations of their physical bodies, these beings achieved a form of immortality. Along with it, they acquired wisdom and understanding inaccessible to sentients whose perspective remains constrained by physicality. Unlike demons, the Empyrean intelligences are individuals rather than collectives. The power they wield derives not from the harvested life essence of many souls, but from their affinity with the engine of creation itself. The Empyrean Emanations are young universes still in the process of being born, ablaze with energy and light shed by the Celestial Sun. Whereas demons are entropic by nature, draining life from all around them, the Empyrean intelligences are inherently ectropic: their effect on the living universe is restorative, and healing. Demons are driven by selfish hunger, but the Empyreans are selfless by nature. Some Empyreans, having achieved transcendence, feel obligated to help other sentients follow in their footsteps. Through the aeons, these intelligences have assumed the role of guides, nudging developing species toward the spiritual enlightenment required to attain transcendence. The sentients they seek to teach, still rooted in material concerns, often fail to get the message right. Throughout history, they have labeled these beings gods and angels, ascribing to them motives and agendas based more on the cultural imperatives of the sentients themselves than anything the Empyreans find worthy. Other Empyreans, recognizing the danger posed by the dark designs of the demons, have taken it upon themselves to safeguard creation. Should demons succeed in reaching the engine of creation, they might rewrite the rules as new universes are born, creating realms of darkness where their savage hungers might be sated for eternity. Ignorant sentients, in their quest for worldly power, might unwittingly aid the demons in achieving this end. For this reason, the guardian Empyreans take a dim view of sentients that meddle in occult matters beyond their limited understanding. The Annunaki The civilization that humankind has labeled 'Annunaki' and 'Ur' was in fact a confederation of ancient races, spanning thousands of worlds in the Milky Way galaxy. The oldest races among the Ur achieved faster-than-light travel over 50,000 years ago, and began to explore the galaxy in search of other sentients. Some species, deemed too primitive, were left alone to develop further. Others, more advanced, were invited to share in the technology and wisdom of the Ur. Thus did the confederation grow over tens of thousands of years, until it included hundreds of different species. As Ur technology advanced, they gained a deeper understanding of the nature of creation. They had already discovered long ago that there was more to the universe than what was visible to material senses. Eventually, the Ur learned how to tap into the astral grid that underlies all of creation, fed by the fires of the Celestial Sun itself. The greatest artifacts of the Ur, such as the jumpgates, drew their power from that grid. With time, the Ur even learned how to impose patterns upon the astral grid, turning it into a vast engine that could be manipulated by the power of the mind without resort to technology. When the Ur crossed this barrier, blurring the line between mind and matter, they discovered that living things imposed their own “patterns” upon the astral grid. Those patterns lived on after the death of the physical body. The Ur had unwittingly stumbled upon the nature of the soul. The realization that souls lived on after death had disturbing implications. The existence of Qlippoth, discovered as Ur science probed the inner and outer reaches of the multiverse, was even more troubling. To the Annunaki, the notion of living on after death as a disembodied spirit in a cold, dying universe was horrific in the extreme. Ur civilization became divided over how to deal with the nature of life, and the eternal soul. Most of the elder races, having thrived for millennia, were relatively content with the notion of pursuing transcendence through spiritual growth. Yet some Ur, through their communications with demonkind, became aware of the possibility that creation itself might conceivably be hijacked through technology. If they could penetrate to the heart of the Empyrean, the Celestial Sun itself, they might re-write the laws of nature as new universes were born, thus creating realms in which they could live forever in physical form. War in Heaven The notion of eternal life held great appeal among the younger races of the Ur, who had had less time in the sun than their elders. As the older races bent their efforts toward cultivating enlightenment among sentients, so that all might transcend physicality, the younger races demanded that the combined resources of Ur civilization be applied toward research into new technologies that would allow them to penetrate the barriers between universes and probe the very heart of creation. The rift between these two factions deepened, until Ur civilization stood on the brink of civil war. The galaxy’s greatest civilization was pushed over the edge of that precipice by a disturbing revelation. In secret, the younger Ur had pushed forward a project to build a mighty machine that could turn the power of the astral grid against itself, boring a hole through reality to reach the heart of the Celestial Sun. Powered by the source of creation itself, this machine, which its builders called the Eye of God, could literally rewrite the laws of the universe. The younger Ur hoped to wield that power to create a reality in which physical death no longer occurred. They believed that eternal life was within reach. The elder Ur could not allow this plan to come to fruition. Their own studies of existence, guided by tenuous contacts with Empyrean intelligences, suggested that the Eye of God would not rebuild the universe, but destroy it. Worse yet, there was a chance that the device, if activated, might well upset all of creation. For a hole bored into the heart of creation would lead likewise into the cold hell of destruction that was Qlippoth. The elders demanded that their erstwhile proteges cease and desist. The response of the younger Ur was succinct; they staged a surprise attack against the core worlds of their rivals. The war between the elder and younger Ur would last millennia, and spanned across thousands of worlds. The advanced technologies of the Ur, perverted to serve the cause of violence, produced horrific engines of destruction. Planetary populations were annihilated in the blink of an eye, entire species rendered extinct, as conflict raged from one end of the jumpweb to the other. One side would gain an edge for a time, but neither could hold onto its advantage for long. A civilization that had taken millennia to build was bleeding itself to death, the work of generations cast unto a galaxy-sized funeral pyre. Twilight of the Gods In a quest for new allies, the younger Ur began to accelerate the evolution of lesser sentients, those once deemed too primitive to be tampered with until they had evolved further. The elder races had no choice but to take similar steps, intervening in the development of many species to ensure they were not corrupted to serve the ends of the rebel Ur. These lesser races became pawns as the war raged on. The tide slowly turned against the rebel Ur, their newfound allies unable to shift the balance. Finally, in desperation, they called upon their erstwhile advisors in Qlippoth: They unleashed demons upon their foes. The conflict attained new, unimaginable levels of horror as savage beasts from the dark descended upon unsuspecting worlds, draining them of life essence to feed their insatiable hungers and leaving behind dead husks. Yet all was not lost, for the guardian Empyreans could not sit idly by and ignore this atrocity that threatened to upset the balance of creation. They intervened for the first time, lending their aid to the elder Ur to help them drive back the demons and seal them back in Qlippoth. Even as the elder Ur secured this victory, however, the rebels struck one final blow against their enemies. The rebel Ur devised an insidious weapon based on the entropic qualities of Qlippoth; a weapon able to snuff out entire star systems. The entropy weapon derived from the same principles that had allowed the Ur to impose patterns upon the astral grid. Yet instead of creating engines to be harnessed by the power of the mind, the entropy weapon reprogrammed the grid to drain energy from the universe--from all living things, and even the suns themselves--and dissipate that energy back into the grid. The rebels unleashed their entropy weapon upon the elder Ur, using the jumpgates as a delivery device. By the time the suns of their worlds began to darken, it was too late to avert catastrophe. The machines that allowed them to repattern the astral grid were the first to fall to the entropy effect, and their technology, powered by that same grid, accelerated the drain of energy that was killing their suns. Yet the rebels had sealed their own doom as well, for the weapon began to affect their star systems too. In desperation, both sides sealed their jumpgates one by one, hoping to hold the entropy effect at bay. Those worlds died alone, in darkness, leaving only distant outposts of the Ur to be spared 2
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