The Cataclysm

The Cataclysm is name for 1) the creation event that formed the universe, 2) the destruction event that destroyed all worlds but Halse, and 3) its hibernating creator deity.

Etymology
The first intelligent creations of the Cataclysm named it this after witnessing the remains of the explosion that created them.

Inception, Exile, and the First Cataclysm
Draconic legends say that the creator god of Halse once belonged to a family of eleven gods in another universe. It was the youngest and least-powerful of the deities, and its older siblings looked upon it with distaste for its weakness. Still, the gods lived in harmony until a terrible disagreement broke out among them, leading to the abuse of the youngest god. Its siblings chased it out of their universe and into the outer darkness.

With only its magic for a companion, the youngest god then set out into unknown space to find a place in which to live. Finding nothing, it grew increasingly lonely, missing the company of its relatives in the endless sea of nothing. Finally, in a fit of despair, the god drew its magic close and attempted to destroy itself. However, the spell it enacted was untested and new. It failed to completely self-destruct, merely leaving itself wounded and weaker than before.

But the resulting explosion of magic created an entirely new universe out of the god's cast-off life force. Galaxies, planets, and stars resolved into existence, and the outer darkness was no longer. Halse was just one of countless worlds that came into being in this universe, and like the others, it was blessed with sentient life in an extraordinary universal flourishing. The dual nature of the spell, intended for destruction but resulting in creation, shaped the god's magic as well.

The new living creatures saw the aftermath of the explosion and named it the Cataclysm. Upon seeing the unexpected fruits of its spell, the god was overjoyed and took this word, the first exclamation of its unforeseen new children, as its name.

The Blossoming
While the Cataclysm rested to regain its strength, the universe matured under its watchful eyes. Many forms of life came into being - animals, plants, and others - and yet the god found itself still harboring feelings of loneliness. Using the last of its power, it gave the gift of intelligence to several of its children so that it could relate to them as friends. Among these were the dragons, faeries, and people of the sea.

The smartest and most beautiful of the intelligent races, the faeries, were the first to offer live sacrifices to the Cataclysm. As a reward, the deity gifted them with gorgeous wings and dominion over their world. The gift of flight was a boon to Fae society, and they used their new perspective to create ever larger and more wonderful art and architecture in glory of their god.

Dragons, a hardier and magnificent if more arrogant race, used their magic and brilliance to create wings for themselves without the god's help. The Cataclysm was pleased by their determination and creativity, and granted them earthly power over their own world. They rivaled the faeries in genius. Instead of beauty, however, the dragons focused their talents on practicality, building great marvels of engineering and technology to fulfill their potential.

Lurking in the deep waters of the distant, tiny planet of Halse lay the people of the sea, who were greatly afraid of their newfound intellect and hid themselves away beneath the oceans. Because of this, others called them the Secret People. The Cataclysm took pity on them, seeing its image in them, and guided their civilization itself despite its weariness. It christened them with the title of Kindred, for the creator and the people of the sea discovered a surprising similarity of characteristics between them. The Cataclysm practiced its creation magic on them, enacting subtle, strange magical touches on its favored people, endowing them with traits that no other races had.

These three races were not the only ones to obtain brilliance, but were some of the most notable and prosperous.

Rise of the Unity and First Dormancy
After watching over the development of its children for some time, the Cataclysm grew too tired to continue its work, still weakened by its effort to end its existence. It needed deeper rest to regain its energy. To ensure their safety while it slept, it elevated ten individuals to godhood, calling them the Unity after witnessing their highly cooperative nature. These gods each took a domain to watch over in the ground of being's absence. Their power was not as great as the Cataclysm's, even in its debilitated state, but together they preserved and sustained the chaotic universe.

Seeing that its creation was well-tended to, the Cataclysm swiftly went to sleep in its First Dormancy. It slept so deeply that its cosmic dreams took shape in the form of the Deepskies, mirror planes of reality where its children's souls escaped to upon death, contributing to its healing as thanks for giving them the gift of life.

During this time, civilization progressed in leaps and bounds. Great advancements in culture and technology happened among all races, who were eager to reach the stars that their creator had told them stories of long ago.

Millennia passed, and the Cataclysm's children became spacefarers. Still the god slept, to the point that some now believed that it had died, left them, or never existed to begin with. They began to worship the Unity in its place.

The Celestial Way
As its children began to venture into outer space, the Cataclysm reawakened. Now made stronger by rest and rejuvenating dreams, it presented itself to its children in the form of a mortal walking upon the earth, eager to experience their world as they saw it.

At first, none believed that their god had returned. It was met with ridicule and assault, for which it forgave them out of its endless love. The path it took while convincing them of its divine nature and gifting them with the Flare, its unique charism, came to be known as the Celestial Way. It traveled to the various worlds and met its children, marveling at their advancements and enlightenment. In turn, mortals celebrated its return and reciprocated its affection.

The Cataclysm told them its ultimate goal for them - to become like itself, so that they could be free of the limitations of mortality and be closer to their creator. The mortals asked what needed to be done to achieve this, and in response it showed them how to create life in the form of microcosms. These mini-universes were created with sparks of the life-giving energy imbued in mortal souls, much like how the First Cataclysm resulted in the creation of life. It spent much time teaching the mortals to care for their microcosms in the way that it cared for them.

Cosmic War and the Second Cataclysm
More and more of the god's people came to be convinced of its identity thanks to its divine magical acts and loving nature. The Unity began to lose worshipers because of this, even their most dedicated. Accustomed to their important status, the lesser gods felt strong resentment towards the Cataclysm. In retaliation, they falsely told the mortals that the Cataclysm intended for them to take its place as supreme being of the universe. They instructed them that to do so would require incorporating the Unity's blood magic with the Flare to craft a spell that would transform them into gods outright.

The Unity chose the faeries and drakes to create this spell in secret, preying on their constant striving for greater beauty and greater knowledge, respectively. Exposed to the forbidden blood magic, faeries warped into darker, twisted beings with cruel and depraved minds. Dragons started going mad with terrible pride, bloodlust, and violence. The Fae in particular used blood magic to create the High Realm, a parallel plane in which they planned to rule the universe from and carry out sick magical experiments on kidnapped prisoners in order to become stronger.

The Cataclysm, occupied with its many other children, failed to notice the corruption of the two races. When it finally took notice of the dragons' warring against other races, it was too late. The Cosmic War had begun. The Unity used their corrupted faeries and dragons to subjugate the other mortals with astonishing speed, destroying entire worlds and enslaving the god's other children. The pacifist Cataclysm was horrified at the sight of war on such a scale and tried to reason with the Unity. Meanwhile, the faeries and dragons cast the so-called sacred spell to elevate themselves to godhood, greedy for power.

It backfired. The holy magic of the Flare, polluted with evil blood magic, aborted itself on arrival. The resulting implosion was a massive universal event unseen since the First Cataclysm. Unlike that spell, however, this was a purely destructive one, wiping most of the universe out at once. The Unity succumbed to their own magic woven into the Second Cataclysm and were ripped apart in the calamity. Almost all of the Cataclysm's children simply ceased to exist, and the deity itself was gravely injured. Faeries and dragons, ironically, best survived the devastation because of their accumulated immunity to the forbidden magic. Many of the newly-made microcosms were destroyed or corrupted into nests of evil. The very seams of reality tore apart, permitting creatures from other universes to invade and infest what remained of civilization. All of Life's achievements were ruined in one instant.

Second Dormancy
The nature of the Second Cataclysm was such that the fragile faeries were driven nearly to extinction, unable to handle the burst of mana that now tainted the atmosphere. The dragons likewise were crippled, their powers absorbed by the magic storm. The chaotic aftermath played havoc with the laws of nature, which threatened to physically rend the universe in this new period of instability.

Greatly drained of strength once again, the Cataclysm was left to mourn the deaths of its children. Shame threatened to overtake its being. It felt responsible for the catastrophe due to neglecting its formerly-devoted Unity, who were also its children in the end. The pain it faced this time was greater than before, for it now had the blood of its own kin on its hands.

The sole world to survive utter annihilation was Halse, the mana-rich home world of the Kindred. They gathered the remnants of civilization on their blue planet on the orders of the grieving Cataclysm, raising islands for the survivors to live on.

The deity destroyed the lifeless bodies of the Unity in a fit of despair, flinging their remains across the universe. Using the remnants of its power, the god reverted the faeries to their original peaceful form, cleansed the bloodlust from the dragons' minds and transformed their bodies into weaker shapes, which came to be known as drakes, and went into hiding to sleep forever. It sealed itself away by tearing the seams of reality at its resting place, to keep mortals away and let its memory be similarly put to rest. It also sealed the Flare to prevent future catastrophes.

The Kindred mourned their god's pseudo-death and committed suicide en masse to be close to it in its dreams, where they have remained ever since. Faeries and dragons were given dominion over Halse in their stead. New gods known as the Coil rose to prominence. These were the only mortals to be raised to actual godhood by the Second Cataclysm. They shouldered the burdens of holding up the universe, and forbid the use of blood magic ever again.

Attributes
In its mortal shape, the Cataclysm took the form of a Kindred. Its lower half resembled an oceanic manta ray's (M. birostris) body, a species it favored for its peaceful and graceful nature. The entirety of its body shared the colors of one as well. The upper half of its mortal form was masculine in appearance, while its face was androgynous. It had fins for ears, its eyes were hidden by multiple fins on its head, and cephalic horns grew out from its temples. Additionally, the Cataclysm could manifest several pairs of black and white wings on its torso.
 * Water
 * Manta ray
 * Spoke wheel
 * Tears