Demiurge
The Demiurge is a complex entity. Billions of years old, it is a matrix of magical power that had attained sufficient mass and complexity to verge on self-awareness.
The origins of the Demiurge are lost to dim history. A creature known as the Life Entity-- a primal force in and of itself-- cocooned itself under Earth billions of years ago. The existence of the Life entity attracted flows of magic from The Source at the heart of the universe. Those flows assembled into patterns roughly analagous to a brain, creating a low, dim intelligence.
The First Gods, refugees of an ancient war, would find the Demiurge millions of years before humans evolved. They resettled and formed a home inside the Demiurge's matrix, feeding off the Demiurge's energy and reinforcing their new habitat. They came to call their new community Elder Gods.
Gaea, a benevolent goddess with a maternal nature, would nurse several progeny into existence with the aid of the Demiurge. Grown fat and indolent, several of the Elder Gods began warring with one another. Gaea's son Atum was born a fully formed warrior, and at her behest slew his corrupted relatives. Several slipped through his grasp, disappearing into the many dimensional planes coterminate with reality and located so close to the Demiurge's matrix.
Fifty thousand years ago, the Oa visited the Demiurge, hunting for a magical weapon to fight the aggressive Krypton. A bargain was struck with the Elder Gods, and Oa assisted them in establishing the last critical junctures in the Demiurge's body. With a final push of effort, the Demiurge became wholly sentient, an entity of living magical force millions of light years across.
The Elder Gods would spawn a new wave of deities, called the New Gods. They populated the empty dimensions adjacent to the Demiurge, creating worlds from nothingness. The differences between the realms were both gross and subtle; each new world added a new note of harmony to the Demiurge, attracting spirits from the Astral plane. Of the new realms, Asgard volunteered to repay the debt owed to Oa, and armed with magical weapons the Asgardian legions launched themselves at Krypton.
Oa would betray the New Gods, in time. Asgard's warmongering threatened Oan sovereignity. In response, the Oans trigged a failsafe protocol, called Ragnarok. Ancient weapons from a war billions of years prior had been strategically distributed through the Demiurge's matrix. They were triggered, and huge clusters of magical connections were destroyed. The result broke the flow of magic across the Demiurge and the safe routes of travel between the dimensions. Magic on Earth trickled to nearly nothing and the civilization of Atlantis was obliterated.
Thousands of years would pass before the Demiurge would be restored. By then, humanity had exited the Hyborean Age and entered the Classical Eras. Worship of the New Gods resumed and the connections between realms were made whole. The Demiurge lurched back into sentience, once more a complete entity.
