Elder Gods (Marvel Comics)

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The Elder Gods are fictional characters from the Marvel Comics universe. They were the first generation of Earth's gods, apparently inspired by Greek mythology and the Cthulhu Mythos.

The Elder Gods first appeared billions of years ago, when organic life was beginning to evolve on Earth. The first of them was a being known as the Demiurge, born from Earth's natural magical energies. It then decided to spread its substance over the planet, creating the rest of the gods. The full number of the Elder Gods has not been revealed, but among them were: Gaea, goddess of the Earth; Chthon, god of black magic, and Set the powerful serpent god.

Gaea took to nurturing living beings. Chthon wrote his spells down in an industructible set of parchments that would be known as The Darkhold. Set discovered that if he ate the weaker gods his own power would increase, so he started to do so, becoming the first murderer in the history of the planet. The process also caused him to degenerate into a demon, but he didn't care. Most of the other Elder Gods, with the exception of Gaea, began to imitate him, so that, eventually, whoever wasn't devoured was now a demon.

Gaea, concerned that the actions of her peers would harm the life she was protecting, summoned the Demiurge and mated with it, in order to create a champion: Atum, god of the sun. Atum proceeded to kill the other gods in battle, absorbing their energies afterwards. But the energies eventually caused him to mutate into a demonic form of his own: Demogorge, the God-Eater. Demogorge continued to devour the rest of the gods. Even Chthon and Set working together were unable to defeat him. Soon, the last of the gods realized that their only hope laid in escaping from Earth, which they did, though it meant they would be trapped in other dimensions. Chthon, however, left the Darkhold behind, hoping someone would summon him back someday. Set, too, kept a mental link with the plane.

After finishing his task, Demogorge released the energies he'd absorbed, returning to his form as Atum. He then left Earth, to live within the sun. Gaea continued to guide the evolution of life on Earth.

Billions of years later, during the age of the dinosaurs, Set managed to return to Earth, by feeding on the mental energies of reptiles. Gaea, however, summoned Atum again, who somehow transformed into Demogorge again. The two Elder Gods battled until Set was too weak to continue, and returned to his extradimensional prison. This battle could have been the cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs in the Marvel Universe's Earth (except those in the Savage Land.) Atum then returned to the sun.

The energies released by Demogorge gave birth to the next generation of demons (Mephisto, Satannish, Thog, Marduk Kurios and more). They may also have given rise to the assorted pantheons of gods that currently populate the Marvel Universe - Atum himself is said to have a connection to some of them, such as the Egyptian one - but this isn't certain. It is known, however, that Gaea, under various identities, began to mate with some of the new deities, becoming the mother goddess in all of Earth's pantheons.

With the exception of Gaea and Atum, the surving, demonic Elder Gods are still imprisoned, though they continue to affect the Earth indirectly, through their worshippers, or evil artifacts.

[edit] The Elder Gods in Warcraft

The story of these Elder Gods bears striking resembalence to the lore of the early ages in the Warcraft universe created by Blizzard Entertainment, in Warcraft lore the old gods whose names are mostly unrevealed (thus far only one of them, C'thun, exists in World of Warcraft) it is known however that there were four of them and that they ruled over the world of Azeroth which is the world in which much of the warcraft story takes place, until the coming of the Titans a race with godlike powers obsessed with making order of all the worlds in the unverse. After an unknown time of battle the old gods were defeated and cast into the elemental plane with the exception of C'thun, who was cast into the desert lands of Silithus.