When the Lightbringers entered the Underworld and completed their great tasks, they forged a cosmic pact that bound all entities, living and dead, spiritual and physical, pure and unholy, intelligent and inert, into the Great Compromise. No beings responsible for the creation of the world had exemption from this final synthesis. In their pact, the deities settled their senseless and destructive wars, which had precipitated the chaos they now united against. They agreed to accept a common ground of existence to share responsibility for the protection of the realm and to uphold their present status in the universe. They thus bound themselves irrevocably to the spiritual matrix of the new age.
Their vows are the source and cause of Time; the energies of this compromise provided the soul-essence of the new age. The old deities created the will of the new age and bound themselves to uphold it. The more powerful the deity, then the more numerous the commitments binding it into the world matrix, and the more effectively fossilized its role in the Time to come. If the laws of Time are broken by the world, then the impossible has occurred and Chaos will re-enter the world. The most impressive display of this came in the Unknown that concluded the First Age.
Time permanently separates the gods and their world from the destruction to which they had submitted in the Gods Age. They formed the pact to ensure their survival, and the world opted to become stagnant rather than non-existent. The gods sacrificed their freedom in return for immortality. The balance between the extremes of creation and destruction was moderated by cyclical sharing of extremes by the participants. Everything which had been killed in the War of the Gods had to remain dead one-half of Time, yet also was alive one-half. Thus, the world which made up the gods’ bodies was subject to those changes, and the magical energies of the world also followed the flow and pattern. Thus, in the winter the Earth and Fire deities are weak, but in summer the Fire gods are most powerful.
Within the world of Time live other beings, though, which did not share in the Compromise. These are the mortal races that survived. Unlike the gods, the mortals maintained their freedom. They can impose themselves upon the world and change it to a small extent.
The Chaos things surviving the Darkness and Dawning fall into the second category of entities. Few Chaos spirits survived enough to become worshipped as deities. The more important of those who did are outlined in this book. Thus, there are few gods of Chaos left. The mortal races of Chaos are more prevalent. They managed to hide in the forgotten places of the world, or to shore themselves up in a few strong points.
One of the clear distinctions made in the Compromise is that Chaos is not of the world. The deities and powers of the world had touched it, and were still afraid of it, and their continued existence required that they remain apart from Chaos. Chaos became the enemy that must be fought and suppressed. With one enemy recognized by everyone, the squabbling deities found a common theme for unity