The Tower's Creation and the Genesis of the Ten Families

Lore & Background

According to the widely accepted lore within the Tower, the structure itself predates all known history, its origins shrouded in mystery—some whisper it was born from a dying star's tear, others that it is the skeleton of a primordial beast. The Tower already had inhabitants (Regulars) before the Great Warriors arrived, so the Irregulars were not the first beings in the Tower. Among the Irregulars, Zahard emerged as the most ambitious and powerful, leading a group of fellow Irregulars on a legendary climb that shattered floors and bent shinsu to their will. Zahard stopped his climb before reaching the summit and sealed the upper floors, declaring himself King. With his closest companions, he then established the Ten Great Families, each named after its founder, granting them immense power and authority as the pillars of the new Zahard Empire—but those pillars were hammered into place with blood, betrayal, and the bones of those who resisted.

In Their Own Story

In the silence before the first step, the Tower stood alone, a needle of light piercing an endless void. Then came the first Irregulars, their eyes burning with the fire of the outside. Among them, a boy named Zahard looked up and saw not a prison, but a throne. He climbed, and with him climbed ten others, each a titan in their own right—Eduan with his lightning-charged spear, Ari with her blinding grace, and V with a fury that could crack the sky. They did not know that their footsteps would echo for eons, that their bloodlines would become the very walls of the Tower. On the final floor, Zahard turned to his companions and said, 'This is ours now.' And so the Genesis began, not with a whisper, but with the forging of a crown—and the first, secret shattering of a promise.

Reader's Guide

The Tower's Creation and Genesis of the Ten Families is not a single arc but a recurring backstory element, most prominently explored during the 'Hidden Floor' arc and through flashbacks involving characters like Jahad, Eduan Khun, and Gustang. Key events include the Irregulars' arrival and climb, the sealing of the Tower's top floors by Zahard, and the establishment of the Ten Families as ruling entities. This era explains the origin of the Princess system, the Great Warriors' contracts with Administrators, and the deep-seated rivalries and alliances among the families. The impact is immense: it sets up the entire power structure of the Tower, the conflict between Regulars and Irregulars, and the mystery of what lies at the top. The Genesis also reveals the first cracks in the Empire, such as the betrayal of V and Arlene—a wound that never healed, later fueling the rise of FUG and the story's central rebellion.

Did You Know?

• The Ten Families are named after their founders, such as Khun, Arie, Ha, and Lo Po Bia, each specializing in a unique fighting style or shinsu quality.
• Zahard stopped his climb before reaching the top of the Tower and sealed the upper floors, preventing further ascent; it is not confirmed he ever reached the summit.
• The Genesis period is often romanticized in Tower society, but hidden histories suggest it was marked by conflict and betrayal among the original Irregulars.
• The Ten Family Heads are considered the most powerful beings in the Tower, second only to Zahard himself.

The Two-Source Composition

The creation narrative in Genesis is not, as traditional reading suggests, a single seamless account. Modern biblical scholarship identifies it as a composite drawn from at least two distinct literary sources. The first account, spanning from the opening verse through the first sentence of chapter two, is attributed to the Priestly source, commonly abbreviated as P, and is generally dated to the sixth century BC. The second account, comprising the remainder of chapter two, is traced to an older non-Priestly source, traditionally called the Jahwist or J source, which scholars place in the tenth or ninth century BC. These two narratives were eventually woven together into the text as it survives today. The first major comprehensive draft of the Torah, theorized as the J source, is thought to have been composed in the late seventh or sixth century BC and was subsequently expanded by the P material into something closely resembling the received text. There remains no full scholarly consensus on precisely when the combined narrative achieved its final form, though some scholars, including Francesca Stavrakopoulou, place the written creation account in the fifth century BCE while acknowledging its dependence on older mythological traditions.

Theological Divergence Between the Accounts

The two creation accounts present fundamentally different portraits of the divine. In the Priestly narrative, the creator is identified by the title Elohim, a form of the generic Hebrew word for god, and brings the heavens and Earth into existence across six days purely through spoken command. No physical effort is described; the deity simply declares things into being, then rests, blesses, and sanctifies the seventh day, establishing the Biblical Sabbath. By contrast, the Jahwist account employs the personal name Yahweh and depicts a far more hands-on creator. Here, God forms the first man from dust, places him in the Garden of Eden with dominion over the animals, and later builds the first woman from a rib taken from Adam's side to serve as his matching companion. Traditional scholars such as C. John Collins interpret the shift in divine nomenclature as a single author's stylistic variation emphasizing God's transcendence, while critical scholars like Richard Elliot Friedman read it as clear evidence of multiple hands, noting that a later redactor likely inserted Elohim into the J text to smooth the transition from the P material.

Mesopotamian Roots and Monotheistic Purpose

The authors of the Genesis creation narrative did not work in an intellectual vacuum. Biblical scholars recognize that the text was shaped by Mesopotamian mythology and broader ancient Near Eastern cosmology, from which it borrowed several thematic elements. However, the combined narrative is not mere imitation; it functions as a pointed critique of the polytheistic creation theologies prevalent in the surrounding cultures. Where Mesopotamian accounts typically feature a pantheon of gods engaged in conflict or cooperation to shape the world, Genesis insists on a single, sovereign creator who acts alone. The text affirms monotheism and explicitly denies the polytheistic framework of its neighbors. This theological distinction is central to the narrative's purpose: it reinterprets familiar mythological motifs through the lens of Israelite faith in one God, adapting and integrating borrowed themes into a framework that is recognizably distinct from its sources. The result is a creation story that simultaneously engages with and subverts the religious traditions of the ancient Near East.

Authorship Debates and the Persian Imperial Theory

The question of who wrote Genesis and when has generated centuries of debate. Orthodox Jewish and fundamentalist Christian traditions attribute the book to Moses as a matter of faith, yet the hypothesis of Mosaic authorship has been questioned since at least the eleventh century and has been broadly rejected by scholarship since the seventeenth. Modern biblical criticism concludes that the Pentateuch is a composite work produced by many hands over multiple periods. One particularly intriguing proposal is the Persian imperial authorisation theory, which has attracted considerable interest and controversy. Two powerful factions within the Judaic community—the priestly families controlling the Temple and the landowning elders—each possessed their own origin narrative. The Persian promise of expanded autonomy reportedly provided a powerful incentive for these rival groups to cooperate in producing a unified text, merging their competing traditions into the Genesis narrative as it is known today.