History of the Universe

This all started on a plane. A plane at the center of every plane. A sort of intersection point of all planes, all universes, all dimensions. The plane was beautiful and varied, covered in differing mountains and valleys, deserts and tundras, wild wilderness and open grassland. Everything was peaceful in the plane.

A vampire named Renquist once wandered through the cold one winter on the plane and found an empty building. Inside the entrance hall, a small inscription, carved in stone and set into the ice-strewn floor could be read by all travelers:

WELCOME TO THE MENAGERIE''
The man made the building his own and his home, welcoming all travelers inside. He hired many of them and paid them from his massive cache of gold and artifacts. They were happy and content, questing all about the land and mixing their magics and technology. Everything was peaceful in the plane.

There was Renquist the vampire who became Grayell of the Fey; Sir Alexander Ravenhurst - also vampire and teacher of magic; Sir Roland Selkirk the dwarven smithy; Captain James T Kirk; Crazy Chef Old Man Jenkins and the fluffian Ted, Doc Frankenstein and his flarb pet Li'l Frankie; John Harding, the swordsman who never felt content with his current abilities; Azrail the kaiser demon with powered gloves; the robot Celadon who became young human Joey; Semian the elven archer; young Caissa from some strange chess world; Nite the dover; the pets - Tilik, Neko, Harvey, Percy, Achilles; and of course the drunken cat turned elf turned human - Venom. There were others that came and went, and others who lived in the nearby areas, like the Man at the Crossroads and the Lady of the Lake. Everything was peaceful in the plane.

The adventurers and the vampire were quite satisfied until the first war. It was an awful mess and many lives were lost to the undead zombies. They ultimately won, but the cost was great and the building had to be destroyed. The vampire moved his home underground. It was a series of tunnels and caverns that was easy to defend with a single guard tower and a wise tree at the entrance. The defended their land to the death and everything was peaceful in the plane.

The second war was not so encouraging. A queen appeared on the Western frontier. She asserted herself as leader and ruler of the entire plane. The man was pulled to her side and fell to the darkness. The vampires under her command were strong and many. They invaded the land with hordes of undead warriors. The end was inevitable and unstoppable. They had found the Queen's weakness and had stormed her castle, creating a mass of chaos, and vanquished the Queen by destroying her source of oppression. They had won the battle, but lost the war, as they knew she would be back soon. Everything was not peaceful in the plane.

As they licked their wounds, a ship appeared in the sky. Yes, that is right, looking just as it would skipping across the waves of the sea, it sailed through the sky and floated above the underground facility. A pirate referred to himself as Captain of the ship and invited the travelers aboard as members of the crew. The leader of those that resided in the facility, now no longer a simple vampire but something much more complex, was questionable of the new arrival until the captain spoke his name, Renquist.

The two conversed for a while and came to a conclusion. The captain was from an alternate universe, one where the plane was not a plane at all, but a full spherical planet. In his universe, the queen had been vanquished and he had been sent to take up the occupants of the facility because they would perish without his gift of salvation. It was presumed that the leader of the travelers decided to stay and defend his ground, go down with his ship, and fight till the last ball of sweat fell from his well worked brow, but there are whisperings now that he jumped through a portal and landed in another world.

Those that went, went, and those that stayed, stayed. Those that went have survived, and those that stayed are all thought to have perished as the Queen tightened her grip on the land. The ship, known as The Morrigan, sailed through space and explored many planets and places until it flew too close to the planet of TO BE DECIDED. It violently crashed into the planet and caused a brief spit of hysteria. Only a few of the pirates have been confirmed as surviving.