User:Swordsofwrathadmin/Time before History

''First a few disclaimers. I am not particularly familiar with the forgotten realms and the early days of the universe aren't exactly imbued with clarity to start with so it's probably best that you treat this as non-canonical however much I love references. The second is that I am an old style Great Wheelist so everything here is vaguely accurate for that and probably not for much else.''

The creation of the world
In the beginning the Prime Material Plane contained nothing but primordial essence. Primordial essence contained no structure to where objects should be: no space and no time. It was a grey mist in which there was nothing light or dark as concepts such as lightness and darkness had yet to be invented. Then Ao decided that he should change it. He created a Crystal sphere in the essence and created a system of planets (including Abeir-Toril) to orbit inside it forming Realmspace. Then he split the essence into lightness and darkness which became Selûne and Shar. And they created life.

But in the process they also created Chauntea the embodiment of the planets. Now this would not be significant hand Chauntea not asked for warmth. While night and day did exist they were made up of starlight and pitch black with the planets merely orbiting around a much larger planet, not a star. Her request divided Selune and Shar with Selune arguing in favour while Shar argued against.

The War of Light and Darkness
Selune took matters into her own hands, reaching into the plane of fire and pulling out a fragment of ever burning flame. She used this to set the largest planet on fire creating the sun and giving light to Chauntea. But this enraged Shar who attacked Selune (who was injured from her delve into the plane of fire) and stated to blot out the sun. Losing the fight, Selune tore out some of her divine essence and hurled it at Shar, nearly killing herself in the process.

The essence hurled through Shar taking some of her own with it. The essences combined to make Mystryl, the goddess of magic (and the weave), who sided with Selune turning the battle in their favour. Unable to defeat the two gods, Shar signed up to a truce.

The Blue Age
Bathing in the light of the sun, life began to flourish on Abeir-Toril. At the time the planet was a single vast ocean and so all life was ocean bound. Lots of new gods came into being at this point, either created by Ao or coming from outside of the material plane. But besides the gods in the Astral Sea and the lifeforms in the Material Plane there was something else. In the elemental chaos the primordials were plotting to take the world for themselves.

To understand the dispute over exactly what Ao created one must first understand what the Prime Material Plane is. The Prime Material Plane is not Faerûn. It is not . It isn't even realmspace. The Prime Material Plane is the plane which contains the rainbow ocean which is dotted with crystal spheres in which many different star and planet systems reside. The prime material plane of course resides in the multiverse, the origin of which remains unclear: Some say Ao created it from nothing but, others argue that it has always existed.

What is agreed upon is that Ao created realmspace along with Abier-Toril. And then