As Marvel Earth’s biosphere formed three and a half billion years ago, it acquired a consciousness in the form of the Demiurge, the personification of creation. It diversified as life on the planet became more complex, splitting into the Elder Gods including Gaea, Chthon the Dark Mystic, Set the Destroyer, and many others. These primordial beings roamed the world’s landscapes, shaping it as they saw fit.
The Elder Gods
Gaea nurtured and guided the growth of life within the planet’s seas. Chthon devoted itself to the understanding of mystical energies. Set, though…
Set discovered he could increase his own power by stealing that of the other gods, inciting an orgy of destruction as the Elder Gods preyed upon one another, degenerating into demons. Only Gaea abstained, calling on the Demurge to create within her a being to protect earth’s life from these monsters.
She gave birth to Atum, the first of a new race of gods. Immensely powerful he began slaying the demons and absorbing them, the corruption he absorbed transforming him into Demogorge the God-Eater.
Of the demons Set and Chthon alone survived, fleeing to other dimensions. Chthon left behind the a set of indestructible parchments called the Darkhold as a link to Earth.
Believing his work done, the Demogorge dispersed the energy he’d created, and became Atum once more, merging with the sun itself.
Only Gaea remained on earth, guiding the evolution of life.
The evil energies that Atum released would eventually coalasce into various demonic beings – Mephisto and Satannish among them. These demons would end up banished into various pocket dimensions until human worshippers called them forth millions of years hence.
Marvel Dinosaurs
In the ages followed life evolved into the dinosaurs, masters of the land. Despite Gaea’s best efforts to guide life’s development, Set had created a mystic connection with the great beasts, feeding off of their life energies and creating a brutal age of tooth and claw, violence and death.
Though Gaea loved all living things she saw that the dinosaurs were a dead end, and shifted the balance of evolution to favor the smaller mammals. Set responded by filling the dinosaurs minds with bloodlust for the furred creatures. In this he tipped his hand, as Gaea realized that Set had escaped Atum’s wrath, and challenged him directly.
Set responded by by merging three great dinosaurs into an avatar for himself, far more powerful than that he’d had in the past.
Hard pressed, Gaea once again called on Atum to defeat evil, and once again her son took the form of the Demogorge – the battle causing such destruction that it caused the extinction of the great beasts that Set drew power from. He was banished from this world again, weakened, never again able to return without help.
Set would remain a bitter enemy of mammals – and this would extend to humanity as well.
The Earliest Time Travel
At around this time there’s an attempt by the Leader – traveling back through time – to bathe earth’s early mammals with Gamma energy and change the course of evolution. This was thankfully thwarted by other time travelers from the 20th century.
The Microverse
Other early time travelers are refugees from a far future that has ceased to be – Prince Wayfinder, from a human colony 15,000 years in our future, led by a mystic artifact known as the Sword in the Star. They settle on the prehistoric Earth, thinking it uninhabited, a pace to find peace after being driven into the past by savage marauders.
Unfortunately that peace would elude them, as their settlement was soon destroyed by strange demons. Wayfinder was able to use the sword to transport his people into the sub-atomic Microverse, while he himself bonds to the Enigma Force in the process.
Despite the name and the subatomic means of transit, the Microverse are more properly a series of parallel realities reached by compressing ones atoms to a certain point, rather than a set of nested universes within one another.
The Savage Land
Not all of the Dinosaurs perished, however – during the Triassic the extra-dimensional Beyonders contracted the alien Nuwali to create observational preserves – zoos – on several worlds, saving creatures that would have otherwise gone extinct, so the Beyonders could observe evolution under controlled conditions. Earth’s – later known as the Savage Land – was established in Antarctica, in a volcanic valley preserved by advanced climate control devices.
The Nuwali would continue to stock the preserve with life over the ages. The Beyonders also created the Fortisquians to aid them in their observations – a genetically engineered alien species, set to watch the various planets life had evolved on, including Earth, passing by on a regular basis in ships disguised as comets.
One such finding that would become very important was that living beings were primarily motivated by a desire for that which they lacked, a concept that certain Beyonders would become obsessed with.
