The History of Gaia

Dragons

Asia - The Dragon Lord of Fire
Hawaii - The Dragon Lord of Water
Austria - The Dragon Lord of Air
Yurope - The Dragon Lord of Earth

         Dragons were the first race given life on Gaia. They were born during The First Hatching from the Creator’s Tree Of Life and were the only creatures given life during this hatch. His finished creation of the world, Gaia, was unstable and would have collapsed at any time. The Creator realized that it was from a lack of elements. In response to this realization, he gave life to four dragons - each of which was given an affiliation with a separate element - to hold the world in balance. The plan worked. Out of fear of one dragon becoming more powerful than another, he did not provide them with the ability to breed with dragons that did not share their element, for any imbalance could threaten the world. With only four dragons and four elements, this meant they could not breed, and would be the only ones of their kind. However, the freedom and free will given to the dragons, and all other races born henceforth, led to some unexpected events for the Creator.

Immortals

         The Second Hatching gave birth to three new races on the world of Gaia; three disappointing races in the eyes of The Creator. The first of which were the immortals. The immortals were, and still are, the most powerful race to ever set foot on Gaia. They have no need for eating or sleeping, their very souls harness a power like none other, they can affiliate themselves to any element or all four of them, they can be blessed by a dragon or they can steal the dragons blessing themselves, they can be blessed by angels, they can be cursed by demons, they created Witchcraft, and last, but not least, immortals live forever. Their physical skills, such as speed or strength, are far superior to most other races and even more so if they increase the power held within their souls. A human prophet once said “Immortals will bring about the apocalypse, only if immortals do not stop them.”
         The immortals claimed the midland of the main continent for themselves; this claim was not challenged by anyone. They began as a peaceful race. Immortals did not eat or sleep, and with their seemingly unlimited power, they could create just about any cosmetic desire with a wave of the hand or a flick of the wrist. This meant that they also had no need for nations, currency, or government. Of course, cities and towns were built, sometimes even villages, for, the immortals did enjoy the company of each other.
         The quiet, easy life that the immortals had then is desirable - yet unattainable - by some but, the immortals as a race soon grew tired of it. The boredom was overwhelming; these almost godlike-creatures had so much power that they felt they didn’t even need. What was the point of being the strongest or the fastest when there was never a call for it? They found a cure for this though, Dragons.
         At the time, the immortals had not known the importance of the dragons. They did not understand the consequences of the death of just one dragon. They didn’t care. Bored out of their mind, yet too proud of their race to fight amongst one another, the immortals declared war on the dragons. With such immense power though, and so few enemies, they made rules to this game of theirs. A full blown war would end too quickly, therefore, no more than two immortals were allowed to fight the same dragon at once. This kept, at the most, eight immortals occupied and happy at a time, and then even more as spectators. After losing a hundred or so of their kinsman, the immortals had another meeting. Most wanted to raise the number of immortals allowed to fight a dragon at once; a war that ended too soon was boring, but a stalemate was worse. Then one immortal suggested training; he called his race out on being arrogant and suggested that the idiots should learn a thing or two about fighting before charging in against a four-legged, fire breathing giant expecting to win. This immortal was killed, of course, by his now-violent brethren, but his advice was still taken.
         The immortals trained in many different ways. Some developed exercises that they called “working out,” but this did not work. Eventually, though, an immortal realized that for physical exercise to have any effect within a century’s time, they would have to suppress their magical properties that kept them from tiring. It took them a while to get ahold of it, but eventually they did. Immortals became stronger and stronger more physically, yet they still fell two-by-two against the dragons.
         An older immortal, one who had not yet felt confident in his abilities to go die in dragon-fire, noticed that the immortals were getting stronger with each generation. But, he saw no difference in their magical abilities. His theories and ideas were constantly turned away by other immortals, so he refused to fight a dragon until he found out the reason why immortals were being born stronger on the outside, but not the inside. This immortal would watch and monitor the training of the younger immortals, and witnessed as each generation lasted longer and longer in their fights with the dragons. To get a closer look at the development of his brethren, he began training the younger immortals himself, which gave their mothers and fathers much wanted time in training themselves.
         After years of training young immortals, he noticed that by the time they reached adulthood they almost always had surpassed him. This made no sense to him, for he always practiced the same rigorous training that he had laid out for his students. He monitored the young immortals closer and closer, until finally, he discovered what is now called “the prime.” Young immortals developed faster than old immortals, but immortals close to adulthood developed surprisingly fast. The prime of an immortal is, basically, its adolescence or puberty. He found that the sign of an immortal’s prime was the ability to breed. Once an immortal could breed, but had not yet stopped growing, they had reached their prime. If an immortal could gain physical power at an immense speed during their prime, why would the same rule not apply to their magical abilities?
         He decided to teach immortals to harness their power long before they reached their prime, so that they would already have an understanding of it when the real training began. Cutting down on the physical exercise just a bit, led to the young immortals still being able to neglect sleep. This meant more time to practice their magical powers. It wasn’t long after his first class of magically-taught students were finished training that he realized a difference in their souls.
         When an immortal looks at a beings soul, he sees an aura. All beings who have souls also have an aura around their soul. Immortals can see this aura naturally, as can dragons, but most other creatures must be taught to see it. The size of his newly graduated pupils’ souls were all the same, for all immortals were born equally. But, they were all exceptionally bright, some even more than others. This reminded him of the dragons at first, for they had exceptionally bright souls as well. But, the dragons’ souls were nearly blinding, immortals refrained from looking at a dragon’s soul for fear of losing their sight. His students though, theirs was nothing like sun, but still very bright. This, he thought, was an obvious sign that his theories were true.
         With the discovery of the brighter auras, he made his teachings public and soon no longer had to ask others to allow him to teach their children; the immortals now asked him to do so themselves. Older immortals from all around the midland would come and ask him to teach them how to teach others. It had been unanimously agreed by the immortal race - after the discovery of these younger, more powerful immortals - that anyone born and not taught this way should refrain from fighting the dragons; their new life was to train the next generations.
         With more power came more powerful spells, and the ability to create stronger spells that were impossible before. Some, who had been trained to the point that they nearly died from exhaustion, could even breathe fire like the dragons or knock mountains down with a single punch. This was not a general practice though, and other immortals would eventually put the mountain back together.
         So much power, yet still not enough. The dragons still killed the immortals. The newfound power was beautiful though, and had almost no limits. Nearly every generation introduced a new spell to keep the others entertained enough to not run in and swarm the dragons. The different spells, each one of a separate element, had different effects on each dragon.
         For instance, when an immortal attempted to breathe fire on Asia, he was not effected in any way. But, when one would breathe fire on Hawaii, she would not allow it to touch her as if she was afraid of it. Yurope had trouble dodging the fire and it did slow him down, but it was agreed that he could sustain more hits than the others. Austria was nearly untouchable, and the effects of fire on her was unknown. Austria seemed to avoid manmade weapons like the plague, but Yurope and Hawaii had no fear of them; Hawaii wasn’t particularly afraid of them either, but she made no habit of letting the immortals whack away at her with them. Earthquakes were, fore some reason, impossible to bring up when fighting Yurope. Hawaii and Asia were very annoyed by them, for one lived in a cave in the sea while the other enjoyed his fiery volcano; in such environments though, they were usually counterproductive. Austria though, the only dragon who had to be hunted down in the sky, was particularly afraid of earthquakes.
         Immortals had not yet found a way to use the element, air, in an offensive manner. Although, when conjuring up storms - usually in an attempt to distract the dragons - the element was used. Yurope was greatly annoyed by these storms, they bothered him in a way unimaginable. Due to environmental reasons, storms were rarely used against Asia and Hawaii. After a few attempts though, the immortals realized that Hawaii relished in the rain and slaughtered any immortal caught in it. The rain effected Asia very little, for he somehow attracted the lightning to him and blew away the raindrops. And, of course, Austria would not allow such trivial amounts of the air element to be used against her. With a sweep of her wings, she simply blew the storms over an immortal town.
         The young ones who fought the dragons did not pay enough attention to notice these peculiarities, but the elders did. These small and almost unnoticeable differences in the effects of the elements on each dragon led to immortals affiliating themselves with separate elements. Most elders allowed immortals to master the element of their choosing by the time they reach their prime. That one elder immortal, however, he who had discovered so much for his race, chose a different path. He saw this as the last bit of information that would ever help them get closer to defeating the dragons; if it failed, then his race had failed.
         This immortal took a wife. His plans were not made known to any other immortals, for his dream was to be the father of the child who killed the first immortal. Adam and Ariel were born. From birth, these two immortals were forced to learn separate elements. Ariel seemed to be unnaturally drawn to water from birth, whereas, Adam showed no particular interest in any one element. Assuming that the man would be more powerful, the elder forced his son to affiliate himself with the power of air.
         With Ariel already having an interest in water, and women were considered the weaker of the two sexes, their target could not be Asia. Austria could not be the target, for teaching immortals to fly would take to long and would have to be done during their prime, otherwise their skills in doing so would never be great enough. Therefore, the element of earth would not be Adam’s. Fire, although an obvious annoyance to Hawaii, was out of the question, because Hawaii lived under the sea. Yurope, however, live on a mountain out in the open. This is why the elder had come to the decision that Yurope was the only choice now that Ariel had chosen the element of water.
         His plans did eventually change though. Ariel’s skill with the element of water amazed immortals everywhere. Not even halfway through her prime, and immortals were already coming from opposite ends of the midland just to watch her train. Adam, though, he would not show any interest in the element of air, and refused to learn only it. He taught himself to fly from watching the dragons themselves do so. Adam avoided his father and constantly watched other immortals train just so that he could have a decent understanding of all four of the elements. By the end of their primes, Adam had become more powerful than Ariel by far, but his skill in any one element was far outmatched by just her skill with water.
         It was decided that Ariel would be the offensive force in his children’s attack, due to Adam’s juvenile choices. Asia, the most brutal of all the dragons, was now their target. The elder almost disowned Adam in hopes of finding a more promising immortal from the new generation to be Ariel’s partner. But she refused to fight alongside any other immortal. The date had been chosen long ago, and it came to soon. As the two immortals started their walk up the mountain, thousands followed behind them. No other dragons were being fought on this day, for no one wanted to miss the death of the first one.
         The children’s mother followed behind them, she had never had the chance to establish a relationship with them because they were always training. But, she loved them dearly. The elder had shown no love towards his son, and his so-called love toward Ariel was probably just hope that she would make him famous. He made it very clear to his son that Adam was only there to give his life for Ariel.
         The battle began. Ariel attacked furiously. A rainstorm had been conjured, and with the help of Adam there was no wind to blow it away and no fire to bring lightning. Adam and Ariel used earth and water together to create geysers. When Asia tried to breathe fire, the two immortals would meet it simultaneously with jets of water. When he bit at Ariel or tried to swipe her with his tail, it only met a rock wall, conjured by Adam. The battle went on for days, and the constant application of water to his skin was tiring Asia more quickly than ever. Fire was impossible to use against the immortals, and his physical prowess was so outmatched. His last desperate attempt to slay them (and this would have led to all the spectators dying too) was to summon the magma within his volcano. The magma started to rumble, and Adam began conjuring walls. Ariel constantly attacked the dragon, she’d even gone as far as breaking off the blade of her spear and replacing it with solid water. The lava kept rising, however, and Adam kept raising the walls. He was getting tired though; no immortal had ever done so much with the earth element before, and Adam had spent so much time learning the other three.
         With a final spurt of strength the rock walls shot up many feet into the air and then stopped altogether. If the magma did not stop raising, it would soon pour into their small coliseum. With the rainstorms and the geysers, though, constantly raining and spitting water down on them, and rock walls preventing the entrance of the magma, the cave began flooding. Adam had not anticipated this, but it did not slow down Ariel in anyway. She conjured up a whirlpool, but it was upside down. This held her up above the water while she still cause it to rush around the dragon in furious spurts. She was now untouchable; water could move at any speed she wanted it to. No matter what Asia attempted to do, she would be in another spot in their now cup-like cave.
         As the magma finally reached the tip of the walls, Adam shot out of the water by kicking the floor of the cavern. Using the power of the air, he flew up into the sky and swooped down to save Ariel. Asia attempted to jump out of the pool, but the resistance of the water was to much for him to get high enough to beat his wings. As the magma struck the water, the cave below the immortals turned into a giant wall of steam. Asia had not anticipated the effect of not only being surrounded by water, but inhaling it as well. It took all he had to fire one last jet of flame at the two flying immortals.
         The attack was unexpected by the two who had thought the fight was over, as was the attacks from the other three dragons. Yurope, Hawaii, and Austria had flown to the rescue of Asia and fired jets of their corresponding elements towards the two immortals floating helplessly in the air. The elder’s wife acted out of love and shot through the air with blinding speed. Colliding into her children just before the dragons’ attacks reached them, they were thrown out of the way and tumbled safely onto the ground.
         The combination of the four elements all on one object in such massive amounts cause a great explosion. All of the immortals who had been watching, including those who were attempting to reach the dragons and fight, were blown away. Yurope, the only one with enough sense to look away from the blinding ball of light in the sky, conjured an earthquake to empty the  “steaming cup of water” that was still killing Asia. As the light dimmed and the ball of energy faded away, all that could be seen was a baby dragon, struggling to flap its wings at such a high altitude. As the pale-colored dragon fell from the sky, unable to hold itself up, Asia folded his wings so that it would be caught on the soft side of them. He passed out, staring into the eyes of what he felt could possibly be his first child.

The sky mother

         The small dragon proved to be much more than any mere child, however. Using an immense power drawn from what seemed to be the world itself, this pale creature broke through every barrier in every immortals’ mind and instilled in them the importance of the dragons’ combined existence. From this knowledge alone, the immortals almost unanimously agreed to end the war. Any protestors were slain immediately; the immortals were no longer the quiet, peaceful race they had been born as.
         Dragons themselves are immortal. As such, their growth typically takes course over hundreds of years - The Creator, an ever-so wise and understanding creator, had given the original dragons time to fully grow before giving birth to the immortals - but, the pale dragon who was soon given many different names grew to her full form in only a few months. Refusing care from the other dragons, The Sky Mother proved to be a more skilled flyer than Australia herself and an even more adept hunter than the great Asia! Before even reaching its full size, this new dragon was of a greater mass than Yurope and a more profound swimmer than the water-born Hawaii.
         This Divine Dragon, untrusting of the majority of the immortal race, proceeded to breed with the four original dragons. Having been born forth from the corpse of an immortal and the combined force of all four of the elements, this genderless dragon found no trouble breeding with the others of her kind. Although, The Sky Mother showed no true interest in anything other than the preservation of their lives. After each of the four dragon lords had given birth to another dragon - each one being the opposite sex of the dragon who bore it - the pale dragon disappeared from the eyes of all that breathes, constantly watching over the world, waiting for the next time it will have to intervene.

Angels and demons

         Shortly after the time of the immortals’ birth, and not before the end of the war with the dragons, the Tree Of Life bore two more races:  Angels and Demons. Having happened so closely to the time of the immortals, these two gifts of life are considered to be a part of The Second Hatching as well. Immortal, like the dragons and the immortals themselves, these two races each have their own peculiarities.
         The dragons were created to hold a balance. At the time, no one understood why the immortals had been given life (at the present time, however, it has been agreed that they are the Creator’s tool for the apocalypse). Angels and demons, though, they are presumed to have been given life for The Creator’s mere enjoyment of war.
         From birth, the angels and demons had a remarkable hate towards each other. Having been born from the tree and descending so closely to each other, the Creator feared that they would obliterate each other too early or that the immortals would not approve of one race or the other and do it for them. The time of these creatures’ birth was the first sign that The Creator would not hesitate to modify or influence a race to his liking. Despite being mere miles from their enemies, the angels flew north and claimed Heaven as their domain, whereas the demons marched south to seize their Hell.
         Angels and demons were supposedly meant to fight one another to preserve yet another balance. The balance between light and dark. Although, these thoughts are instilled in the heads of the members of both races, immortals believe this to be untrue. Regardless of the state of either army, the sun still rises in the morning and sets in the evening. More evidence proving this so-called balance to be farce would be that angels can certainly have evil personalities. Demons, despite their number of defects, can have good qualities as well. Therefore, they are not a completely evil race just as angels are not holy and divine.
         The Creator had made a mistake in his choice of sending the celestial beings in separate directions though. The demons who loved fighting and completely hated the angels, never felt the need to trek through dangerous immortal lands to fight the angels; the angels felt the same of the demons. Immortals were, at this time, the most powerful race alive and as long as they were oblivious to both races’ existence in their war of dragons, neither was in any imminent danger.
         Having seen the cowardice of his new creations, The Creator once again felt he would have to ‘push’ them. This time to fight, rather than to avoid fighting. His first thought was to do as he had done last time:  put a thought in their heads that they all ‘knew’ as truth. This could be dangerous though. When each race was given the belief that the immortal lands were dangerous and living there would be a stupid thing to do, they took it so literally that a wall was effectively built between them. This time the Creator did something new, he gave life not to a new race, but to two beings. Only two, each with power that surpassed any individual immortal’s, yet still could not match the dragons. God and Satan were the new rulers of the angels and demons. Each ruled and led their respective race into the field of battle only to accomplish what they called “preserving the balance.”
         The first few battles had gone quite well for both sides. Immortals watched curiously from the sidelines but had not bothered to interfere (The Sky Mother had been born and the war with the dragons had ended by now). Eventually though, the now battle-hardened and war-mongering race of immortals chose to step in. At first, the immortals would always help the side of the angels, assuming that the ugly and grotesque demons were, in fact, evil. Satan met them, though, and attempted to explain to them that in doing so they would upset the balance.
         Furious at being shut down time and time again by preaching of balances, the immortal race was becoming impatient and ever-so bored with their all to easy lives. After the birth of hundreds of new dragons that roamed Gaia threatening of a war that would devastate their entire race if they even thought of laying a finger on them, the immortals had agreed that dragons were still not an answer to this boredom. Angels and demons were not very powerful, and balances were never completely perfect when held together by war. Immortals decided to have fun by naming what they called commanders in each village, city, and town. If a skirmish between the celestial races broke out near a town, the commander would flip a coin. Heads meant the angels would fall, tails meant the demons.
         God and Satan continued to lead their people to battle in hopes of being able to preserve the balance, despite the immortals’ reckless tampering. Meanwhile, the immortals grew more and more power hungry and barbaric with each passing year. With the Sky Mother refusing to show herself this only gave the immortals more doubt that the angels’ and demons’ so-called balance was a farce.