The great city of Eloche, the First City of the World, destroyed by the gods in the Mythic Age before the world began.
Eloche is mentioned most in the Book of the Red Sky, itself lost and only known from fragments. But there are references to the First City in everything from the Gahl Bokat to the Aigris Abjura, and found in myths and stories of all the people of Telrhin.
Eloche was a great city of the Antedivisian world, a place of wisdom, culture, and knowledge. The Abantu and Westrons both claim it as theirs, and it may have even existed as echoes in other places, even other worlds.
The goddess of Eloche was Sawalla, the Weaver, the Mother, and she was the Goddess of Shale, the Chimerum world of the city. Eloche stood as a shining beacon to the other gods, an example of how the world could be, of how the Ilrajir (fate of existence) could unfold. It was a place of magic and beauty, wisdom and power.
As the Chimerum came together to form the Great Dream, Eloche was the anchor around which all the rest revolved.
In this new world where the Chimerum merged there was no passage of time, no True Death, and only an endless existence of things real and imagined.
Slowly the Inexorable Drift pulled the world towards Wake. A slow and almost eternal passage from the Well of Dreams. The world was slowly changing.
The gods, immortal creations of the Great Gods Hael and Syr, began to feel the edge of Wake, and with it the slow but inevitable end of their power: to dissolve and be absorbed back into the world. Already other lesser beings were slipping into a True Death, their spark re-absorbed into the world.
T'Hesh, the God of the Wheel, assured them all of this inevitable sacrifice they each had to make, their part to play in the Ilrajir.
But some of the gods had a different idea: leave the world for a place deep in the Umbra, where they could continue the Great Dream free from True Death and the narrowing truths of the world.
Outside of the Aigris that contains the world, the gods would need a source of power and life. They would also need to create this new place -- called Atavis -- this new world deep in the Umbra. They decided they could siphon off the death spark of the world: all its people, creatures, wilderness, stories, magic, all of it was finding a True Death and the gods would divert it into their own selves.
To create the new world itself they needed the creation spark of a Chimerum. Not just any Chimerum, but the one that birthed Eloche.
Not all of the gods agreed. T'Hesh, Sawalla, along with a handful of other gods like Puknet, Bachnel, Hiris, Bel, and Borgia fought to preserve Eloche and the world as it was.
Other gods, led by Falasrion, Ninrandivel, Greslionor, Tyrsinel, Safan, Tala, and the Four Makers argued for a third option: leave for the Embers and the echoes of their original dreams.
In this early time of creation, at the end of the Great Dream, there were demigods like Talon who plotted their own course: let the gods flee to their playground of Atavis, let them abandon the world, and in their absence she would remain to rule it.
Then before anything was decided, Thar Emykl reached into the world and pulled a glowing fiery thread of Shale from the world's core. Other gods joined in. Sarides, Sylas, and then Septar, Gahl, Bendhel, and Tama.
Talon convinced Falasrion to let it happen.
They pulled Shale and Eloche apart, tearing it from the world and throwing it deep into the Umbra, exploding into what would become the domains of Atavis.
The Great Dream ended, the world broken into three worlds: the Prime World, left without gods or Eloche; the Second World of the Embers, adjacent echoes of the Great Dream; and Atavis, the domains of the gods.
Prime, with the gods syphoning the dying spark of True Death, began to lose its wonder and increase its drift towards Wake and the end of all things.
