Again.

Having survived the destruction of the previous universe, they came into this new universe as Elders. Oh, there was some intelligent life stirring---the early Maltusians (later the Guardians of the Universe), the Watchers, many others...but the Old Gods had the edge. (It's worth noting that the series TRINITY showed the early gods of the Maltusians/Oans. Whether these were actual Old Gods helping the new race or creatures of the imagination of Dream of the Endless' shaping, like some other "gods" were, remains to be seen.)

Unfortunately, the Old Gods also had enemies---the self-evolving and proliferating biological weapons/horrors left from the old universe. Azathoth and his brood were multiplying and spreading in the universe...

If left unchecked, they would swarm and ruin the new universe the Old Gods found themselves in.

Their war leader, Nodens, son of Koschei, (his mother was Arzaz' daughter, and Koschei preserved both Arzaz and his enemy, the Nameless One, who was Koschei's uncle, after the old cosmos ended. Arzaz and the Nameless One, weary of war, wandered the universe and found peace for aeons) began to fight back against the horrors, leading many an expedition to the Great Abyss where no galaxy had yet formed. But there was a casualty that affected him greatly. His daughter, Narlatha, a female warrior who fought along with him, was captured by Yog-Sothoth, and like Livinia Whateley, aeons later, made pregnant by him/it. (That they were biological weapons, made from genetic matter that was a variant of a humanoid archetype is shown that even a being as drastically different as Yog-Sothoth could get a human pregnant. As will be shown, the New Gods had much the same genetic sequence as humanity.) Narlatha died in giving birth to the child...

The child was ever-changing in form, and soon fled to rejoin the other Great Old Ones and Outer Gods, often fighting against his own grandfather, Nodens. He was dubbed "Nyarlathetop" by Azathoth and became the messenger of the Outer Gods. The most human of the Cthulhu mythos creatures, he often assumed human form, and had a most humanlike sense of humor and irony.

Nodens swore to revenge the torture and death of his daughter, and left Asgaard, the Godworld, so as to not make his homeworld a perpetual target, and taking many of the mightiest weapons with him. Several went with him, waging eternal war on Azathoth and the like, with their unmatched weaponry. He also took with him some creatures he created in a biological lab, called nightgaunts, that served him and him alone. He roved both the outer universe and the Dreaming,(especially a section that had been heavily influenced by the Outer Gods) and appeared in H.P. Lovecraft's THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNONW KADATH, and "The Strange High House in the Mist". Note that unlike most of Lovecraft's characters, especially his "gods", he is portrayed as humanoid, as a "hoary" old man, even often riding on dolphins. Note also that, although Lovecraft is never exact in his nomenclature, Nodens is considered leader of the Elder Gods who oppose the Outer Gods and Great Old Ones....and the term "Elder Gods" and "Old Gods" might be seen as interchangeable...

Actually, I'm going to make a slight distinction---the Elder Gods appear to be a split off small but mighty group of Old Gods, roaming the universe and sometimes recruiting and even enlisting some of the Great Old Ones to their cause. Brian Lumley described Kthanid, a cousin of Cthulhu's, yet an Elder God, in CLOCK OF DREAMS,

"His body was mountainous! And yet his folded-back, fantastic wings trembled in seeming agitation as Kthanid paced the enormous flags, his great octopoid head, with its proliferation of face tentacles, turning this way and that in what was plainly consternation."

This Great Old One had been recruited to fight with the Elder Gods. These Elder Gods had an odd relationship to the Old Gods....like rangers roaming the bad lands, keeping safe a town from afar. When the Old Gods destroyed themselves, the Elder Gods still remained.

The Elder Gods succeeded in at least partially binding Cthulhu on Earth, in the sunken city of R'lyeh, and his half-brother Hastur in the Lake of Hali near Carcosa, in the Hyades, the closest star cluster to Earth, 151 light-years away. (One notes in passing that Hali and Hastur are names mentioned prominently in Marion Zimmer's Darkover chronicles---could the red star that Darkover circles by in the Hyades?)

As the Old Gods turned to fighting the Outer Gods, they also made sure that the new life growing in the universe would not be unduly influenced by them. Already they saw many races created or influenced by the Outer Gods or the Great Old Ones...(and stemming from the same genetic material, able to crossbreed with Old Gods and later, men---see "Shadow over Innsmouth" and the Deep Ones)---so they hit on a plan.

It was shown in JLA #36 that the Old "Gods" had huge robots, capable of dragging Mageddon-like anti-suns around. Bear in mind that Mageddon was bigger than Earth's sun. So we're talking huge. Most of those died in the old universe, but a set of smaller, but still extremely powerful and large robots, were sent out in the universe, to encourage life similar to the Old "Gods". These left their genetic imprint on many worlds---the Skrull homeworld, the Kree homeworld---

And, definitely, on Earth...

These immensely large and powerful beings were known as the Celestials, and Jack Kirby chronicled their doings in the book THE ETERNALS. I still hold that many alien races are actually transplanted earthlings, but I must admit the Celestials hold the key to many other humanoid lifeforms, and to our own legacy. We are modeled after the forms and gene pool of the Old "Gods"....which is one reason we can crossbreed with them.

Adam One was another robot created by the Old Gods (or perhaps more likely the Elder Gods, with their emphasis on fighting horrors like Azathoth), wrestling with chaos and transforming one of the first worlds of the new universe, Mamord, into Wonderworld, which transversed the edges of creation at hyperspatial speeds, on the lookout for weapons the Old Gods had used and discarded. He detected Mageddon, left in a gravitational "sink" at the outer limits of creation, and began collecting powerful beings around the universe to aid him in watching for its possible return.

As charming as many of the Old Gods found the new universe, some couldn't resist creating more "bubble" universes, as places for relaxation and vacation. These universes were smaller than the universe in which they found themselves, with differing physical laws "designed" by their maker. Many of the effects might be viewed as magical.

John Byrne said that the Godworld, Asgaard, was bigger than most stars. John Ostrander said it was bigger than some GALAXIES. Of course, that's impossible for a real planet, but it might have been a huge dyson sphere around a galaxy or, if Ostrander is wrong, a solar system. Even Jack Kirby notes that New Genesis and Apokolips were "two giant worlds" and they were made from the ruins from one huge world. The likelihood that Asgaard was some kind of artificial world, possibly a Dyson sphere, is great....

And the Old Gods were still---warlike. For a while the war with the Outer Gods and the Great Old Ones kept them from destroying each other, but as the Elder Gods took up that fight, violent quarrels began to occur more and more frequently.

One uprising resulted in the rebels being mind-wiped of memories of Asgaard and dumped into a bubble universe only large enough for a single solar system. There they stayed for aeons, until a wounded Amberite came to their reality. Though he was dying, they nevertheless were able to run enough tests on him to get hints of the Pattern process, and eventually discover how to create bubble, or in their case, pocket universes, albeit with much more extensive equipment. They became known as the Lords, and their history was chronicled in Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers series.

The leader of Asgaard, towards the end, was known as Wodan. He was Nodens' son, and uncle to Nyarlathetop. Wotan had several sons, but one illigitimate son was called Lokee. A prophetess showed up to predict the end of Asgaard---and he slew her. That illigitimate son devoured the prophetess' heart, and soon Lokee, turned more than mischevious to outright malicious, led a great faction against his father. (This according to New Gods #7, the 1989 run.)

Brother clashed with brother, and eventually, the inevitable happened. Asgaard, the Godworld, itself was destroyed. (At least this time they didn't take the universe with them. It's of this latter generation of Old Gods that Izaya said, "We're worse than the Old Gods! They destroyed themselves! We destroy everything!" He was well aware that an earlier generation of Old Gods did exactly that.) They had survived the destruction of their entire universe, but couldn't escape---themselves. (According to COSMIC ODDYSSEY, anti-matter was used.)

Left behind was two huge, molten, cooling bodies---the remains of the Godworld, Asgaard...4.8 billion years ago.

What of the bubble universes?

Largely uninhabited, most inhabitants being drawn back to the Final War, nevertheless, a few caretakers were left in some of them. In one, the heat and cold were being drawn to opposite ends of the bubble. Like the war horse Thunderer, the lone caretaker settled into suspended animation, hoping to be uncovered by his fellow Gods in a future date.

Instead he was uncovered, thousands of years later, in the ice, by the licking of a giant cowlike being and its master, a spontaneously-generated lifeform that formed out of the vast ice, under the somewhat different physical laws of that bubble universe. The name of this Old God was Buri, who was one of Wotan's sons. His long sleep had resulted in partial amnesia, and he no longer knew of any way to rejoin the greater universe outside. He married a giantess, one of the children of Ymir, the giant ice-being, and his son was Bor and his grandson was Odin of the Aesir. (Hence Tigra, according to John Byrne, saying the Aesir had a greater connection to the Old Gods than other pantheons.) This bubble universe became the "nine worlds" of Norse myth, of the later Asgard. (It may be that the eye of Odin that purported to tell Thor of a previous Asgard got the information wrong and confused Wotan, the Godworld leader, with the earlier "Odin" it talked about.) Certainly many of the names of the later Aesir---Balder, after Baldurr, Buri's brother---Loki for Lokee---were kept because of Buri's partial memories of the earlier names. Even to naming the city of the gods---Asgard. It's not a matter of coincidence that the names are so alike, but instead of one linguistic holdovers from a previous version of the language...

We have several accounts that show us that the Aesir have some reality. Harold Shea visited their reality in his universe-hopping. Thor later came to Earth and became an Avenger. (Thor's appearance, like many of the gods, seems optional and variable, so the discrepency between the red-bearded Thor of myth and other stories, and the golden-haired prince of Asgard of Marvel comics should not distress anyone.) This is of prime importance to WNU scholars, for as Philip Jose Farmer asserts, Odin is one of the ancestors of Tarzan and Doc Savage.

It's interesting to note that there was a gate to the Olympian reality from the Aesir's Asgard, and an ancient legend about them, according to THOR ANNUAL #1. Evidently many of the bubble universes had gates that connected them.

Places like the Dark Dimension, later ruled by Dormammu, a mystic being perhaps spawned by the Outer Gods, (note his sister Umar was a half-human hybrid by their Faltine father, and she in turn mated with a human male and had a child, Clea.) might have been surreal works of art to the Old Gods. (It's worth noting that there are very few other dimensions or realities mentioned that are as large as the real universe we observe. Most seem relatively small, solar system-sized at best. Pocket or bubble dimensions, seemingly.)

Many of the gods of the non-Aesir pantheons are shown, on the other hand, to be creations of a being who formed dreams...Dream of the Endless. (He appears in medieval France under the alias, Miramon Lluagor, disguising both his form and his true origins. Note that Dream of the Endless and Miramon Lluagor both claim to have created many of the gods worshipped by men, to be able to summon them at will, and to have Death as a sibling. Miramon Lluagor helped conquer Poictesme for Manual with the aid of these dream-gods...)

Certainly Ishtar, who (according to Neil Gaiman) in the twentieth century became an exotic dancer, was a creation of Dream's...

But there is more going on than that. Metron claimed that the final destruction of the Old Gods sent an expanding sphere of very odd energies (in my view, extra-universal energies which might explain how they could expand faster than light) throughout the universe, that bore very strange fruit...the "gods" of various pantheons. Evidently this "godwave" of extra-universal energies interacted with some of Dream's creations, which are usually pretty fleeting, give them a solidity and a life beyond the Dreaming. Many of them moved into some of the abandoned "bubble universes", like the aforementioned Olympian reality. Dream could influence them---even destroy them, with effort, in some cases---but they had a life of their own.

In her autobiography, WISDOM'S DAUGHTER, Ayesha, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, claimed to have been witnessed both Aphrodite of the Greek Pantheon and Isis of the Egyptian gods. Certainly many characters in Cabell's work encountered beings from various pantheons, and note--- that there was a great deal of cross-breeding among them. Jurgen, in his stay with Anaitas, the Lady of the Lake, hears her refer to many of her cousins and relatives from many pantheons...Priapos(the son of Aphrodite and Dionysus), Ba of Mendes (Egyptian), Apis (Egyptian), Hortanes (a Priapos-like figure of early Spain), Fricco(another name for Frey in one of his more, ummm, procreative phases, of the Norse pantheon), Vul (Assyrian god of atmosphere), Baal-Peor (Moab and Midianite god of the same aspect that Priapos is famous for), Sekhmet(sister to Isis, Osiris, Set, aunt to Horus and daughter of Geb and Nut of the Egyptian pantheon), Io (of the Greek pantheon), Hekt, Derceto(Syrian fish goddess), Thoucris (Egyptian goddess of maternity), Diana of the Ephesians (Greco-Roman, anyway...), Tammouz (Another Syrian diety). Anaitas, through a former marriage to Acheron, of the Greek underworld, birthed three Furies. (Also Greek) Evidently many of these pantheons, given a life beyond the fleeting one that Dream gave them, intermarried among each other, and their family trees are intertwined. (Since many of the Greek pantheon have crossbred with human, we may suppose, like the Endless, they are created with genetic codes compatible both with the Old or New "Gods"---and our own.)

In SOMETHING ABOUT EVE Musgrave encountered many gods going to Pseudopolis, a place where gods die or disappear...although many seem to be just shadows or collective illusions. (One, for instance, claimed to be Jehovah, but that is contradicted by Dream's claim that Lucifer and his once-master are far, far mightier than he, among many other objections. Obviously this is someone's fantasy of what Jehovah should be like, and no more reflective of any real Judeo-Christian God than, say, the Heaven Jurgen encountered---created to appease Jurgen's grandmother--is reflective of a real Heaven. However, Dream's statement should not contradict anyone's faith, or lack of same---he has said himself that he is of all faiths, in his fashion.) I suspect much of Musgrave's adventures happened in the Dreaming, a supposition strengthened by an appearance of an Eve who appears to be half-mythical, whom we know is one of the inhabitants of the Dreaming.

But still the two molten bodies were cooling.

According to Kirby, the body that was New Genesis was somehow seeded with the "living atoms" of the noble Baldurr, whereas the body that would become Apokolips was under the shadow of a sorceress. Baldurr was a LEGITIMATE son of Wotan, who feared the growing escalation of hostilities and weapons. The sorceress in question was half-sister to Lokee, not kin to Wotan but skilled in psionics. Evidently two members of either side decided to leave behind cell samples, strategically buried, which could be cloned to create more "gods"...Byrne implies they just naturally evolved on the new worlds, but evolution is too haphazard a process, to EXACTLY reproduce humanoids so exactly---so unless the Celestials came back and molded THEM too, it's more likely they were directly clones of Baldurr and the sorceress on each world. Baldurr and the sorceress, seeing that the war would most likely end in Asgaard's destruction, planted these cell samples in special heatproof containers which are marvels of genetic engineering, which would clone new beings when the outside world had cooled enough to permit new life...

Perhaps hoary Nodens oversaw the growing of the new children...

New beings.

New..."Gods".