In the beginning there was darkness and those that danced within it. At every start, it's always that way. Darkness giving birth to light so every creature can understand the gift of illumination, of warmth, of safety. The Darkness rules for longer than most sentient creatures can fathom and then, The Creator builds new things. To the Straz, it has always been The Gardner: a loving hand spreading seeds without any intention on which will grow to harvest or not. Every seed gets planted, every sapling gets nurtured and fed and eventually, the light begins to bloom for better or for worse. Perhaps that is why the slip of folded time and space beside the collection of all knowledge of all creation is called The Garden: flowers only know things through flower ways.
So, in the beginning, there was darkness and those who danced within it. And when the dancers learned their grace in light, the darkness was an envious thing. Dominant, and strong. It broke with beasts and misfortune. It shattered at the world and took the stars of the heavens and crumpled them whenever it could. The Gardener did Their best to stop this, to build fences and safety, but creatures always get in; that is the curse of tending to too large a field, after all. With every seed unsure, you are never aware of what patch will need tender care the most. Some seeds are stronger than others, though. Some grow wild over the trees and soil. Some fight back, even against the sharpest of teeth. The Straz were like this: dying stars that decided to bite back.
First came
Four undead stars, singularities in their own right, unique through all of space and time. And they would learn to play, to use both light and darkness in the everlasting garden outside of their humble spot in the universes. Moving, as it were, like pollen, always making a home anywhere they landed, the roaming
The Cluster was such a strange thing to those who saw it, not so much a garden as its light seemed more like a "planet" that would be lost to history books under the name of Nibiru. It was a point of transition: a fold in the everlasting sky that sometimes glowed before the gods visited. This made it, to most, a distant planet the gods lived on: a mystical and mythological place no one could ever see or understand. From the first sentient to stumble into a Straz to the last, the stories bloomed: Nibiru, Asgard, Valhalla, Elysian Fields, Irkalla, Summerland, Hel, Avalan and more are all taken from bits and pieces of the stories and places imagined by the first humans to weaves tales together. From Sumer and Akkadia to Greece and The Vikins, Siberia and Mongolia, and even tribes through India and China, the Straz became the figures of stars and forgotten, just as 'Nibirbu' was, but the feelings they left in people built new shrines and temples to be filled by the powers of Earth.
But it was not just The Milky Way the Straz made playgrounds out of: it was an exploration of all the dimensions with which transitions flowed. Of all the possibilities, only five dimensions mattered: the twelve realms. Each of them a triumph of light and power, a flourish of life. But each of them tangled into the tides of war and violence. Mishaps and misadventures plagued the Sumerians, chased the Whakaora, burned the fields of the Emberek. And in the end, nothing came out in new light; there were only victors and losers, the righteous and the fallen. So, the Straz took a chance at doing their own gardening, hoping that one single forest could grow wild enough with life and twilight that nothing would come to a brink of destruction again; death only to keep growth thriving.
It took time. There were seedlings everywhere. Gestures of light and winds, trying to send the right kind of growth where it had to be. They wanted, so badly, for things to work on Earth and then — it seemed nearly impossible for anything to last. So, the Straz did the next best thing: an earlier start somewhere, a place where armageddon could maybe be held back for longer than anywhere else. Worlds of darkness, places the Straz could teach life to overcome the chaos the way they themselves had already done. They slipped into a universe where they could do just that, a dimension connected to the Immense Heaven they were already toying around with: Dast Aker (The Fields). There, the Straz stood their ground, uniting the natural inhabitants of the few sparse worlds growing, guiding them into being true civilizations.
The beasts of chaos and darkness were hardly a trouble, but the Straz knew that becoming actual god-heroes would never suffice. Civilizations rose and fell far too quickly when hung up on the notions of something beyond; people made use too quickly and creatures forgot too swiftly. So, The Straz did the next best thing: each one to a planet, to gather the best that they could, with one simple offer. "Fight, and the power of your lives will spin forever." Onosay was first to be conquered, with eight species and various subsects of them coming together to conquer the grand beasts of chaos: the celove, sormend, sfinga, luontai, morse koje, kitvor, yantam, and the ravarx. Together, they fought with the Straz, listened to the way to overcome the darkness together and for that, a new universe was forged: one bound by the eight nearly-immortal species, each one given their own rules and rights to power supported by the roaming petals of the skies.
Xorsanea was no different, though the central stars of the galaxy meant less species developed enough to want to fight, at first. Just four species stood with the Straz and proved themselves mighty enough to conquer the darkness: the beicud, suungro, poslus and kitvor. It seemed, to The Straz, a good plan. The dimension thrived, grew and bloomed. Planets became habitats of safety and security and even when there were troubles amongst the sentients of the lands, seas or skies, there seemed solutions that were not war and destruction. Armies were for safety from the monsters that rose as the universes spun on; they kept safety and order from destruction, protected all the nations and lands that hadn't yet come to fruition. It was, for better or worse, the garden they had always strived for.
But they would learn, in time, that weeds untended do grow for more than stress. They poison. They destroy.