Chapter 1: The Oni and the Dragon

In the beginning, there was nothing. Not darkness, not light. And out of the nothingness came two beings: The Dragon, and the Oni. At first, they were at peace. Together, they built a world, the Dragon creating, and the Oni destroying. But each of them became consumed with their individual powers, and at their sixteenth creation, they struck out at each other. They fought through the sixteen realities they had created, landing at the first. And they fought. They fought for time out of mind, for millennia. Along the way, they each created their own offspring. And soon it was a war. The Dragon created humans, in hopes that they would help in her fight, but they turned against her. They did not join the Oni either, but went away and hid.

And then, the fighting stopped for a period of time, and the Dragon and Oni had a child between them. but light and darkness cannot be together for long. When the boy was grown, the Dragon and the Oni fought over whom he should side with, and when the boy had had enough, he created a portal to his parent's last project, on which they never finished: Ninjago. From there, he meditated. He thought of power and creation, and destruction, and balance. He, from his thought, raised a mountain: The Golden Peaks. He continued to meditate, and he formed 4 weapons from the golden magma of the planet's core, the four Golden Weapons of Spinjitzu. Using these objects to guide him and his thought, he raised more than a mountain: He raised a world.

It was a world of light and creation. And the Oni sensed this, so he sent a group of his offspring to balance his world. But the boy had learned of the balance in other ways. When he had finished, darkness came out of him. An uncontrollable darkness, with a lust for power and corruption: An evil version of himself. The darkness named himself the Overlord, and they fought a never-ending war. When the group of Oni came to this new land, they were afraid of what they saw. So instead of chasing down the boy and capturing him, they tried to go back. The father Oni realized this, went with the rest of his army to his son's land. The Oni were nearly killed, to the point of extinction. And when they tried to go back to the First Realm, the Dragon mother blocked the way. He was left with no other choice but to escape to his Son's realm's sister: A realm where there was nothing left but an endless abyss with the souls and spirits of the deceased. It is said that they remain there to this day.

Despite this disturbance, the boy and his equal continued to war. They were at a standstill. Until one day the Overlord created an army. And an army of indestructible stone material. Now you may ask how he had the ability to create. The boy and the Overlord were mostly pure light and darkness, but where there is light, there must always be shadow. Each had a hint of the other in them. And because of this is why the Overlord could only create an army with the ability to destroy, and the boy could create much more than crude creatures.

The boy did not know what to do, so he created a weapon. Not a physical weapon, but one of the mind: He named it Spinjitzu. Using this new weapon. He split the surface of the world in two. A great crack spread across the ground, the seas on either side of the island filling it. They continued to move, and still do to this day. The Overlord was on one side of the island, trapped forever...until destiny decided to reawaken him, to attempt to conquer the land once more. And then there was an age of peace. The boy, now fully grown into a man, recreated one of his mother's creations: Humans. But unlike his mother, he did not try to force them to aid him in anything. He let them do as will and develop their culture. But once again, another darkness threatened them.

Three Oni kings, three warlords with the powers of Vengeance, Hatred, and Deception. They each wore a fearsome mask. To battle this new foe, the boy-now a man, considered using the humans. But war is not why they were created. So instead he called upon different beings, - ones whom he had created to roam the land before humans, they were natural fighters - the serpentine. They were fearsome warriors—part man and part snake. They had evolved into five tribes: The Hypnobrai, the Venomari, the Fangpyre, and the Constrictai. The fifth tribe was by far the deadliest, and was often worshipped by a small group of humans: The Anacondrai, the kings of the serpentine. There was then another great war. In the end, the serpentine won over the three Oni, and they left the land to go back to the Departed Realm, but not without leaving behind something that could influence the history of the world: Their masks. They in secret gave two of them to separate tribes of humans, and one they hid in the base they created for their fight. To protect the mask, they put in place a deadly forest with even deadlier creatures: Dead Man's Squall.

And once again there was peace. The man continued to do as he would, and eventually found something he hadn't sensed in his land: an Oni, one who instead of going to the Departed Realm, had stayed behind in the man's land. She had seen the beauty in the land, and took the form of a serpentine, and then a human. Her name was Mystaké. She and the Man soon fell for each other, and together had two sons: Garmadon and then Wu, the descendants of destruction and creation. Sensing that the eldest son had a greater percentage of Oni than Dragon blood, the Overlord devised a plan to use him as his pawn to take over the land and upset the balance once more. A young serpent had wandered its way onto the Island of Darkness. With the energy he had left, the Overlord implemented the darkness into the serpent and transported it to Ninjago. And then he waited.

One day in the Man's home, a monastery on top of a towering mountain, his sons were playing with two katanas. The elder of the two, Garmadon, accidentally knocked the younger's katana out of the monastery's walls. Afraid, the younger refused to get it. He leaped outside the monastery, and there the overlord's plan was set into motion - the young serpent lashed out of a bush and bit young Garmadon, thus creating who will be known in the future as Lord Garmadon. Little did the Overlord know, he had set into motion an age of great suffering to the realms. Many would fall, and many of the realms' inhabitants would perish. The Age of Ninjago had begun.