Baldur, who had been observing the game quietly, said, “I believe they lost their way when they stopped believing in us.  This new god that so many of them adopted was one of fear and revenge, fire and brimstone.  They lost sight of honor and duty, the glory of battle and rightful plunder.  Strength of arm and stout heart were replaced with politics and greed.  Men and women have forgotten the ways to Valhalla.  And I believe that was your doing, Loki.”  He scowled at the deceiver through the mist that drifted throughout the room.  The alien beings preferred a moist environment.

Members of a race so old that none but themselves even knew its name, they were effectively immortal.  Their people were born on a planet that orbited one of the universe’s first stars.  They had long ago discovered the Neutrocosm and harnessed its powers, and they had the ability to alter their forms at will.  But in these casual settings, they preferred their natural, vaguely amphibian forms.

“That may be.” Loki breathed a puff of mist at his brother- the species’ equivalent of a ‘talk to the hand’ gesture.  “But the weak and foolish deserve their fate.”

The three watched the display as Loki spun the view westward into a mountainous region.  “These areas, where fewer cities grew and people lived closer to nature, the humans have fared better.  There are some true warriors here.  With survival instincts that will serve them well.  Some remember the old ways, others have learned from the games we sent them.  The human race is not totally without merit.”

Not true gods, they lacked omnipotence or omniscience.  But to the simpler life forms of the universe, like the humans they visited every few thousand years, the powers they displayed seemed godlike.  And their names became legend.  Creatures of myth in whatever lands they visited.  Most of their race had become bored with planetary life, and either let themselves perish or assumed forms that allowed them to travel the stars, seeking adventure or knowledge of the universe’s origins. Some few had remained, forming the System and gathering worlds into the Nexus.  Fostering younger species with potential.

Loki scanned the scrolling information on the display, then pointed a tentacle-like finger and stopped it, highlighting one section.  “Here is an interesting one.  Abnormally high initial Adaptability of six, and Intelligence of five, yet he seems to have chosen to develop his Strength, having already doubled it in a matter of just a few days.”

They watched in silence as Loki zoomed in on a young human male battling an octopoid – one of the low-level creatures regularly pulled from the Menagerie and transported to newly claimed and overpopulated worlds.  A distant cousin of the gathered beings, they were semi-intelligent and quite deadly.