It is largely accepted that the essence granted to all life in Tomarev is done through the power of a goddess known as Asha.
Countless eons ago, when the very earth and sky of Tomarev was called into existence by the Great Creator, life was also called forth. Plants, trees, animals, and people, were summoned forth in an instant by the will of an ancient and unknown God. Though this God was occupied with the creation of several important key individuals upon Tomarev, there was needed a God to manage the life of the world, the passing of time, and the natural order of things.
Many rumors and legends exist about the creation of Asha, though this telling has been said to be the most true…
Shortly after the volatile Smokestack was erected, and the woodlands and rivers began to stretch across the world, and plains were kissed by gentle winds, and canyons and ranges were wrought from river and hill, inhabitants began to appear. Organically at first, smaller creatures evolving into larger creatures, then something different. So the legends say, the Great Creator reached a hand down to Tomarev, somewhere in the far East he plunged a finger into the dirt, and laid in its stead a single seed. This seed grew into a sapling over a number of years, and eventually the branches began to reach up to the sun, the sky, the stars. The Great Creator reached forth and bent her branches into arms, tore up her roots to form her legs, and breathed life which hollowed her bark into her. She was no longer a tree, but the mother of the earth. With her touch and stride plants and animals were summoned forth, with her cry and call the winds began to shift and billow, and by her beating heart the wheel of time began to turn.
For an unknown time, she is said to have waltzed across the world, twirling and spinning most often from the north to south coast in the center of the land. Eventually, she grew lonely that her God, her creator had left her alone. She prayed for a brother, and was granted the young Ocan, a being made of the wind and tide she admired so, though his story is his own for another time, know that Asha relinquished control of the oceans and the skies to her brother, who in his naive youth grew rash and chaotic.
Asha worried for her brother, and in their frolics she had left alone the life she was responsible for. The Great Creator, seeing that there was life going uncared for, created another deity; from the rotten and dying remains, Uth’Tama the Matron was born. She tried to care for the world as Asha once did, though she could not. There was too much, too many, and she was not powerful enough. Asha, aware of Uth’Tama’s failed caretaking, began to work much harder herself.
In her own image, from the very branches of the tree and the salt of the earth, she pulled forth the first elves in a time we now call Spring. She instructed them to care for the forests and the land, and soon Uth’Tama was forced to retreat to father corners of the universe, though her story is her own for another time.
Thus the Lifegiver ordered the elves forth to cultivate the lands beyond her domain, meanwhile she dug her roots in deep and grew strong and began to reach far. She ingrained herself into the core of the earth and solidified her position for the world.
Meanwhile the Spring Elves, the first of the humanoids, ventured through what is now called Elder’s Pass, at the Southernmost point of the Rimwoods, to begin to settle the lands they called Tomarev.