The first things to exist were the Chaosin, beings of pure chaos. That was before the gods, of course, when everything was nothing and nothing was everything, yadda yadda. They were immortal beings with zero moral compass that warred endlessly between themselves, forming paper-thin alliances broken at the first sign of weakness. But they could not die as death did not yet exist. Their words spoke thoughts into being, and what few we still know are well-guarded magic secrets. Thus, they willed aloud that they could finally kill each other, and so they became mortal. Every single Chaosin died to a person, and the universe was again silent. But their final words had created the gods we know, and so everything else: the stars and the planets and the people.
Six gods were born: Pauria, god of life; Marethyu, god of death; Skyta, god of willpower; Tvenry, god of fear; Klarya, god of fate; and Moran, god of knowledge. Unlike the tales of chosen ones, every mortal born thereafter was chosen by one of the gods, that god then being their patron. The gods were fickle, thus keeping one’s patron in mind when someone wanted luck on their side was good practice. Patronage was almost entirely random—or chosen at least by some system never possible to understand—but one’s patron has some effect on their personality.
Pauria’s chosen skewed to either complete disregard for others, or completely pacifistic towards all life no matter how small. Klarya’s chosen were either always thrust to the forefront of situations, or completely forgettable slipping through society barely existing. The point being, though patrons were abstract, they were always present and important to remember, and they liked to appear at the worst times. People weren’t overly religious, but it was nearly impossible to not be religious at all. The gods made themselves known freely. Klarya was the worst for it, appearing quite a lot to her chosen to give them hints at their future.
The idea aside that determining one’s patron is also a matter of luck, there are some caveats. A werewolf is probably chosen by Marethyu, Skyta, or Tvenri, as only a handful of werewolves have ever been chosen by Pauria, and Klarya and Moran rarely make themselves patrons at all—rare, of course, being still on the magnitude of billions but, compared to Pauria and Marethyu, rare.
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Once the gods arose and took their mantles, there was again a single people. These people spread across the universe and settled in to carve out their own pockets. If they had a name when they were one people, it was never recorded. Moran alone would remember if they even had one.
The people, the first people, spread out. Two groups simultaneously landed on a planet they came to call Ruinea. These become the vampires and the werewolves over time, receiving fragmented powers from what remained of the Chaosin in every fiber of space. Like every people who grew apart, they decided they hated each other and started an all out brawl for a thousand years called the First Shadow War. Both sides rapidly researched everything they could to boost their own advantages and prey on their opponent’s weaknesses. They got to a point where they destroyed the whole planet, blown straight through into chunks. The werewolves found a new planet they called Wolven, and the vampires took one they called Vampiria. Creative names. They played it cold for a while, knowing another war so soon would destroy them both and their new planets, so they resorted to spying. Then that spying moved up through the ranks until most of the common people eventually forget they had an enemy waiting out there. Only the respective governments retained some amount of intel.
Both peoples, now unshackled from the other, developed their own cultures and philosophies. The werewolves chose strength-in-numbers and nuclear armament, and a king. The vampires choose strongest-survive and nanotechnology, and a secret government that was rarely seen but often heard. Something, and it’s a debate what, started the Second Shadow War. They fought for another thousand years, never able to touch the other’s homeworlds but taking other worlds in the process and making allies of the other species they found. On and on they fought, and of course resistance groups cropped up everywhere opposed to the fighting. Eventually the High King Auste Tormanaka got annoyed listening to them, so he stepped in and made them sit down at the negotiation table.
Thus, now there’s the Night Republic, a system that controls most of the known universe, ruled by a council made of representatives from all member species that elect a leader amongst themselves, mainly for diplomatic and mediator purposes. It was awful at first, with mainly the werewolves and the vampires and their close allies being a part, and no one really trusted each other yet. It was a long road, but the Night Republic is still going strong almost a hundred years later with a coalition of thousands of species. And they still answer to the High King.
