Mainspring's First Year: Prologue

Before Mainspring was The Progenitor, who said "exist" and thus made the land, the sea, the air, and the gods. This is the tale of Mainspring's first year through the eyes of the mortals the gods created and guided through the empty land; the gods' intervention in this year was guided by the rules of a game from another world, called The Quiet Year by Avery Alder. You know how these things can be, where three walls are strong but the fourth easy to break.

Following The Progenitor's moment of creation, Mainspring was empty, without plants or animals or mortals. Together, the four gods made unintelligent inhabitants to serve as resources or challenges for their eventual mortal creations:

• The craftsman god of Fire, Nahor, made forests of trees to grow straight and strong, providing shade, shelter, and lumber.
• The nurturing goddess of Water, Kuna, made schools of water-creatures, varying between tiny and huge, scaly and leathery, predator and prey.
• The communal gods of Air, The Daedo, made all manner of food to be foraged and eventually cultivated, hanging apples in trees and growing wild buckwheat in the breeze.
• The curious god of Stone, Zarin, made land-creatures to assist the mortals or inspire fear in them, the ox to inspire the plow and the boar to inspire the spear.

The fertile and newborn lands gave themselves readily to the fruits and vegetables, which grew abundantly everywhere you could look, but the youth of the world meant lumber forests were sparse and fragile, and the creatures of the land and sea were fearful to spread their territory or interact with anything that moved.

Once the unintelligent inhabitants of the lands had been established, each of the gods privately created a type of intelligent being to be part of the new world. Once they had all finished, they came back together to share their creations:

• Nahor had made a species with an inclination towards gathering and the arts, which stood short and sturdy and grew handsome beards to protect the air-filtering gills in their necks. He called them Dwarves, and like Nahor they were prone to pridefulness in their work.
  
• Kuna had made a species with a love of nature, with bodies untouched by time and hands skilled at tending to plants. She called them Elves, and like Kuna they were prone to controlling behavior.
• The Daedo had made a species of wooden beings that ate only sunlight and loved to share ideas. They called them Dryads, and like The Daedo they were prone to overindulgence.
• Zarin had made a species of stone beings with three faces and six hands each, which were as mute and deaf as their creator but had a burning desire for discovery. It named them Carven, and like Zarin they were prone to inaction.
  

Having decided on the types of intelligent creatures that would populate the land, the four gods decided on a location for their creations to make a settlement. The four agreed that the settlement location should be near an eastern coast so the settlers could access the sea's resources. Nahor made boiling hot springs directly south of the settlement that had a foul odor. Kuna made a deep cave near the settlement to the west. The Daedo decided to make a nest of large worms to the northwest of the settlement, which nourished the soil there but were territorial against the settlers. Zarin carved a river south of the settlement flowing northeast, meeting the ocean in a muddy delta. Finally, the four gods made about a dozen of each of the four species of intelligent creature and declared it the first day of Spring.