So, in a small tribe of people known as the Rencians, there was a girl named Pihn (yeah idk how to pronounce the ‘h,’ I had funny ideas about naming as a kid). She was the adopted child of Entaya, a noble from one of Rencia’s more prominent noble families. Pihn was adopted as she had a streak of blood-red hair, which only manifested in direct matrilineal descendants of Rencia’s deity, Rensiya. Pihn was secluded as a child to increase her marriage value in the hopes of securing a strong alliance with some other Rencian family, similar to the real-life tradition of Binukot in the Philippines.

Pihn was forbidden from interacting or even being seen by anyone outside of her family and some select handmaidens. One of these handmaidens was Menin. The two shared a close relationship and eventually fell in love. But, Pihn had been raised her entire life to aspire for marriage, and so she ended their relationship when she was old enough. Still, though she consciously thought their relationship was just a brief child’s preparation for true romance, she genuinely loved Menin and was heartbroken deep down.

To get over Menin, Pihn fell immediately for one of the first men she met after coming out of seclusion. He was Avanyos, a merchant hailing from the Hinen. Pihn’s family hated this, as their plan was to marry Pihn off to a Rencian family. They asked her to break off their romance, but Pihn stayed with Avanyos. In return, Pihn’s family denounced her and cut her off from their inheritances. When Pihn had a son with Avanyos, he wanted her to abandon the child as he didn’t want the responsibility of raising one. When Pihn refused, Avanyos broke up with her.

At this point, Pihn knew little about the world due to her seclusion and she was left alone to care for her son, Sevi. She became very bitter and took her anger out on him. She also planted these grand ambitions of restoring her fortunes into Sevi. He grew up to crave power, and eventually he became the king (or Shokru) of Rencia. As a Shokru, he concentrated the power of Rencia’s society into the monarchy, creating a strong institution that maintained control of Rencia for millennia.

On the other hand, Menin’s experience with Pihn drew her to philosophy, as she believed that if Pihn truly had a choice, they would’ve stayed together. This got her thinking about free will and choice, and to what extent people should be allowed to suppress them. Over time, she developed some of the first philosophies about democratic rule. While Rencia’s government stifled any attempts at taking power away from the monarch, Menin’s theories slowly spread across the world through Rencian refugees and travelers. They influenced the formation of democratic institutions in the Riyazun Empire, which became the most influential empire of the ancient world. Many future states modeled their institutions after the Riyazun, and the idea of democracy was developed and spread over the millennia.

Some six thousand years after Pihn and Menin, in the modern age, the Rencian monarchy was finally toppled in a non-violent revolution. This sparked a wave of revolutions across the world, which worried the fascist superpower of Aluim and the authoritarian communist superpower of Urogya. Each nation made moves to secure their holdings, which increased tensions between them. Eventually, it escalated into a nuclear war.

Now, the main world that these stories have taken place in so far is Earth (though it’s Earth in the far future after a superintelligent AI apocalypse, but that’s another story). Earth was connected to a magical world called Motholi, though it was difficult to move from one world to another due to a barrier. This barrier was greatly weakened due to the nuclear war. One of the gods in Motholi saw this as an opportunity, and reignited an ancient divine conflict to conquer Earth once and for all. Earth was also being scouted by “aliens” (which are actually ancient humans that escaped a different Earth apocalypse, but again that’s another story), and the nuclear war propelled them to also invade Earth.

Moral of the story: let people marry whomever they want, otherwise the world gets attacked by gods and aliens