For countless millennia, the void of the Ginnungagap was without form, unshaped by life. Slowly at first, then in a rush, the great races of the gods filled the void and created the worlds of mortals.
Travelling slowly from across the Ginnungagap, the gods Buri and Bor found the great sweeping ice cloud home of the Jötnar, and after eventually establishing communication Bor took the Jötunn Bestla for a companion.
Their three offspring, Vili, Ve and Odin, were less willing to engage with their Jötnar cousins, and relations between the races quickly fell into open warfare.
The three travelled deep into the ice cloud and to the far side, where the distant solar winds of the hot stars of Muspelheim laid open a swathe of more temperate systems, inhabited by both Jötnar and their allies the Vanir.
Around one star the brothers found the home of the great Jötunn Ymir, a leader of their race. He had cowed the local Vanir into subservience, and so the Aesir brothers overthrew and destroyed him in their quest for allies.
In a show of strength and power, the three used their combined knowledge and magic to begin changing the star system. They moved the orbits of the worlds and heated the star with their powerful magic.
Eventually breathing life and sentience into the world they most favoured, they created Midgard.
The Vanir were less than impressed, having their worlds moved and awakened by the newcomers, but envoys between the two brokered some peace. The Aesir established a permanent presence in the home system of the Vanir.
After a time, new hostility erupted between these two great tribes of gods. The Vanir took great losses, as they were unused to the tactics of the Aesir, but they were able nevertheless to cause great damage to the defences of the Aesir – after all, the Aesir were unused to the tactics of the Vanir.
A peace was eventually brokered, both recognising their mutual enemy in the Jötnar, and a great cultural exchange began.
It was in these times that much of the life of the Nine Worlds came into being, crafted by the new Æsr Combine.