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When a great power is willed into existence, it is normally born from necessity. The universe needed realms to balance out the void, its counterpart. The void in return took up portions of those realms so that it wasn’t completely shut out, as the void is necessary.
When a god is brought into existence, its to serve the realms or the void and universe in some capacity. Life was one of the first gods brought into existence, made to populate the different realms. The void necessitated that Death, therefore also needed to exist for balance. Lady Death existed from nearly the beginning, but life was stagnant. Time began to exist, though whoever they were, they never spoke, perhaps due to the nature of time.
The Universe wished for purpose in life, rather than the creatures growing to old age and dying, and the Void warned of life dying prematurely if purposes conflicted.
And then prophecy existed. Almost simultaneously to prophecy existing, magic also existed, for the first great prophecy of the universe detailed traveling from the overworld realm towards the nether realm to gather materials necessary to travel to the end and the aether realms, though the end realm was the only place where the void and the universe could leave a mark on their shared creations.
It took years of wandering with formlessness, observing how life progressed, for the being known as Joe Hills to gain proper sentience and control, or more like knowledge over the power of prophecy. He wasn’t alone, as Lady Death had been greeting all dead things through death’s gates for eons at that point, or perhaps it was mere days. Without the god of time dictating how much time had passed, it was hard to tell.
Joe watched the players of the world begin discovering all that life had to offer. It took millennia, a unit of time that Joe and Kristen decided for themselves without time to give their two cents, for the players of the overworld to discover what the nether portal was and where it led to. They’d found the remnants of strongholds ages before, but they couldn’t find the missing ingredient to unlock the portal to the end.
It took Joe leaving some remnants of older portals before players actually figured it out, and then they succeeded in travelling through the nether, where the players born there were surprised, and communication ensued.
It was strange, watching these players find meaning in their life through seeking adventure, and it made Joe wish to be amongst them, living alongside them even though he may never die on his own. He watched as the first players made contact with the end, and he celebrated alongside them, and then the Dragon sprung into existence. Sure, avians existed at that point, but the awe of a deity so massive that tried to kill them gave birth to many stories about brave adventurers who traveled to an unknown realm and never returned to crazed lunatics searching for a death wish.
Rumors spread about a great evil keeping loved ones from returning home, so the players geared up for a fight, promising to return home despite not knowing what laid within their future. Joe was touched by their sacrifice, but he knew that the reward would be greater once players returned home. The first time the Dragon died, an egg was left, and a portal back to the overworld came into existence. The netherborn players tried creating portals from the end to the nether, but those portals always failed. It was the end realm, after all, and the universe deemed that there should be no way for travel between the two places lest the core prophecy, the prophecy that brought meaning to everything in existence be destroyed. Yet, the players of the world reached the end, they had no reason to summon more dragons other than for glory. The Dragon then took a portion of magic to create code, ways to manipulate the worlds to create new ones, so that the prophecy could be fulfilled as many times as the players wanted. The Dragon’s caveat to creating code was that their realm be expanded beyond their ending island, and they were granted their wish by the Void and the Universe.
However, with the first prophecy fulfilled, the core prophecy completed, Joe exploded with knew knowledge, new prophecies that that players would soon come to fulfill. They populated an empty room of the original stronghold and created the library, better known in modern times as Joe Hill’s library in Nashville Tennessee, but it contained all knowledge of major prophecies and legends and everything in between to create diversity in how players could live their lives. There were some prophecies that upset the Universe and the Void, but to destroy them would destroy the very things they had wished to create. The most devastating of these prophecies remained in a hidden room of Joe’s library, but that didn’t stop him from spreading those messages to warn the players of dark times.
Despite Joe’s best efforts, the knowledge of these dangerous prophecies died out amongst both the players and the gods, being forgotten even by him sometimes to a point where the gods would become careless and accidentally fulfill the beginnings of some of the dangerous ones, the ones that threatened to throw off the balance that the Universe and the Void crafted delicately.
Joe never had control over how prophecies were created, nor was he able to manipulate or alter them. In a way, he was essentially a keeper of prophecy rather than a god of one, but with the god of magic becoming reclusive as life and time had, he took gifting magic into his own hands for a time, and then gods dedicated to giving that magic came into existence, though some were born player and were elevated to godhood. He never questioned when those events happened.
But then the gods created something. They had good intentions, Joe was positive, but the Watchers that were created to help soothe trauma or pain became more powerful than the gods intended, and the balance was upset. Joe never fully understood what happened that day when the Watchers went against their nature, but it was the gods mistake… and a chilling prophecy came to mind.
If the Watchers pertained to one of the deadly prophecies, than Joe took it upon himself to live amongst the players, disguising himself as one of them to witness how the prophecy took place, no matter how long it took. He bore witness to war and watched his friends struggle to keep said war at bay. He saw the hesitance at first from the gods to create any other type of player to fight against the beings they initially created. But what broke his old heart was watching the players he had grown to care for suffer by his mistake. He was one of the oldest gods, he was the keeper of prophecies, how could he have let this deadly prophecy shed its light upon the Universe and Void?
Joe would not return to the ethereal realm until he saw the deadly prophecy through, though he could not have a heavy hand within it lest he upset the balance and manifest something worse…
Joe never imagined that he would be friends with the players foretold to save the balance, let alone live on the same server as they did. He may not have Bdubs’s magic vision, but the golden lines that surrounded almost every player told Joe that he found himself in the middle of them, and because of the supposed power he held, he couldn’t do anything to help other than restate prophecies.
These players and gods were his friends. Their existence within the balance was more fragile than his own. He’d be damned if he caused their demise any sooner. So Joe sat in his rocking chair within his temporary abode on a server with firewalls never seen before and sipped his coffee, and he prayed to the few beings above him that his friends survived this encounter.