Myth

Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, veracity is entirely irrelevant to determining whether a story constitutes a myth, unlike the everyday use of "myth" to mean an untrue belief. The working distinctions: myths usually star gods, demigods or other supernatural figures in a remote world without historical basis, where legends center on humans and on migrations, wars and dynasties, and folktales and fairy tales are not sacred narratives. Stories can also shift categories as cultures and faiths change.

For novelists, myth is the deepest layer of worldbuilding: the pantheon, the origin stories, the accounts a society tells to explain itself. Inventing one deliberately is mythopoeia, the practice Tolkien defended as sub-creation, and a long serial must keep the underlying truth beneath the varying tellings straight.