The tendrils between planes. This is what I have come to understand the grandmother of Gods to embody. It isn't entirely known where She came from, if She came from anywhere at all. She did not come from the Astral Sea, nor from the great void beyond, of that I am certain for she is the Astral Sea itself and at the same time She is the void beyond; both a monstrous cosmic creature in her own right and at the very same time the space She inhabits as well. How this is possible, neither any mortal nor God may ever know. 

Ygdraasl is, for all intents and purposes, a being of absolute chaos. Not chaos as we know it, but a deeper more primordial chaos that grasps at all things, chilling them in her embrace. She came from nothing and from the depths of her immeasurable maw, eight Elder God kin were born, violently, into the void that she encompassed. These creatures will be referred to hereafter by the names which we have thrust upon them, for their true names are unspeakable, if they have names at all. 

These eight Elderkin quarrelled amongst themselves as they set forth, slogging, crawling, squirming their way about in the void, spinning pockets of primordial essence in their wake. These pockets, in time, would become the planes. Orbs of life that dot Ygdraasl's vast and empty tendrils, like stars piercing holes in the jet of the night sky - or boils festering on a carcas, however you'd prefer to think of them. 

As these pockets of energy and life grew, so did Ygdraasl. She consumed them hungrily. The more she ate, the hungrier she became until finally these pockets, these planes, were not enough to slake her intangible thirst. She lashed out at her kin - they denied her their essence and the battle that ensued wounded the Elderkin, fracturing shards of them that pierced the planes and created a new form of life; Gods. 

When finally the enumeration of the new Gods vastly overshadowed that of the Elderkin, they set forth and bound the Nine Horrors to extraplanar shackles, confining their power and rendering them corporeal. Many primordial Gods died in this process; gods whos names we have forgotten if ever we knew them, Gods who were reborn, in some small part at the very least and through many generations of divinity, as those that we now worship, but I digress.

The Gods quickly realized the gravity of their errors, however. The power of these beings was such that it twisted their corporeal, celestial bodies into awful abominations so hideous that they drove even Gods to the brink of madness and beyond. They too twisted into horrific beings of hunger and chaos. We now call those beings and their progeny the Astrae, a race of creatures -both humanoid and otherwise- that defy the very logic that governs them. I'll explain a bit more about them in further pages. 

Eventually, over many millions of years, the Elderkin shrivvled away in their respective prisons, unable to break their bonds or perhaps in despair too deep to feel motivated to do so, if they felt such emotions as trivial as despair and motivation. I personally find the former evermore likely than the latter.

Ygdraasl, however, was perhaps more cunning or simply more enduring, more ravenous, than her children. She found ways to manipulate those outside her bonds, ciphoning the ever-changing, evolving power of the Gods and the planes they presided over; the power we now refer to as Magic. As She regained her strength, her bonds grew weaker and eventually they bent and buckled, releasing Her.  

When Ygdraasl burst from her chains, her kin were released with her and the Nine Horrors set about consuming any and every source of Magical power they could find in order to regain their strength, even going so far as to bind miniscule shards of themselves to humanoid forms that walk the planes - or spawning slivers of power within the planes in the forms of plants, beasts, fiends, and all other manner of living creatures. These slivers I will henceforth refer to as Sedim.

The Nine Horrors, free once again, devoured whole many Gods and planes, draining them of the very essence that begot them. The remaining Gods knew that simply binding them to corporeal forms locked away in some deep, disconnected recesses of the Aether, as their predecessors, did would not turn out so well; their predecessors were, afterall, dead. 

Thus a council of particularly clever entities, both benign and malevolent, conveined and, after much deliberation and experimentation, decided unanimously upon a solution. Each horror would be ceremoniously bound, once again in corporeal form, to its own plane. Locked away by many layers of powerful Abjuration spells that would be connected by a series of Aether Seals. These seals would each be held by a powerful entity and tethered to their soul. This way, even Ygdraasl would be unable to influence the planes outside her own and should one of the entities die, influence would be possible, but only influence. Escape would still be exceedingly unlikely, even impossible for some of the lesser of the nine. Then, when that entity is reborn -or a new bearer chosen, should the former option fail- the ritual ceremony may be performed once again and the seal reformed.

The seals were created, the Horrors driven back into their plannar cages and locked away, this time, Gods and demon-lords alike hoped, for eternity.