A brief timeline summary of the Genesis of the Pier Plane as well as adjoining realms. As Pine is very sociable, he often tells about history long since past. However, humans don't know everything, so knowledge is separated into
"Recorded History" "Uncommon Knowledge" and "Unknown Facts".
Aside from the existence of Shard, any uncommon or unknown knowledge is just a matter of circumstance and Pine forgetting to relay this info or not finding it particularly pertinent to mention. Each section is color-coded by how common it is. Human souls being part of Shard is unknown to Pine as well, as well as most of Shard's activities after the split.
Before there was Pier, there was Dreamland. It was a fairly normal world, not much interesting or special to note aside from the fact that the god was named Madolyn.
A malevolent force destroyed Dreamland, sending Madolyn into a coma within their temple and kidnapping their son, Okeanos.
Concurrently to Dreamland's existence, Pine and Shard appear. They are also gods. They live fairly happily, and have a relationship bordering on romantic although neither confess.
Pine and Shard discover Dreamland, and they take Madolyn's human body; assuming them to be an unconscious person in danger.
Pine and Shard create the Pier plane. Pine, feeling rather lonely creates animals and humans. However, this doesn't work as expected, and they do nothing.
Shard tries to help, by giving souls to humans. This allows humans to live and use magic and be sentient.
Unbeknownst to anyone, these souls are made of parts of Shard's physical heart melded into a glass holding magic and memories and feelings and a will to live.
Pine and Shard part ways on hurt feelings due to a misunderstanding, Shard is jealous that a lesser part of himself (human souls) are getting love and attention, so he leaves. Meanwhile Pine is confused, because he thought they both enjoyed humans, as there were plenty of humans that were friends with Shard, too.
Pine regrets not sharing his feelings with Shard and mourns for a while, but doesn't leave people alone because he helps troubled humans recover and collects the souls of the dead to rest within their memories.
Styx is created to help collect souls now that the population is booming and Pine is beginning to lose track of all his responsibilities, causing stress on top of the fact that he was never able to adequately mourn the loss of his love. To house all the helpers he has now, Pine makes the Garden! He originally stores these souls in a room of the castle he has in the Garden, but eventually it becomes too much.
Pine creates Velse: A realm completely devoted to being an afterlife where the souls are conscious and can be themselves instead of being "comatose" in their memories. Velse was originally run by Styx but working for Pine and managing Velse was too hard of a workload for him, so Pine gave him a manager and two other beings to help him in Velse. These are different from humans as they work with the soul. Respectively, their names are Evangeline, Hosanna, and Pandora.
Pandora goes rogue, and goes to the Pier Plane. She uses her abilities to tempt humans and establishes The Sinful Ones. The Sinful Ones are dubbed Devils as they're immortal and their only purpose is to find those who feel any of the seven sins and trick them into giving up a part of their life. The motivations of Pandora are unknown.
The world remains, fairly unchanged for a while. A Well makes some animals human forms on a whim, and over time they become another type of human. Pine is completely and utterly confused as to why someone would just choose to do that, but he doesn't particularly care, they're still his children. These types of humans end up almost identical, even having plenty of different sets of magic and even the capabilities to become Wells, merely bearing some animalistic traits.
Okeanos shows up again! He's freed himself from Dreamland and sealed it off with his powers.
Pine notices Okeanos, and invites him to be Pine's adopted child, as Okeanos is still very young and hasn't aged a day due to being in a time loop. Okeanos agrees, on the condition that the few humans he found and took with him have safe refuge in Pier. Pine agrees and lets them stay, helping to augment their souls to fit in properly.
However, this creates a loophole, allowing the creation of unstable, artificial souls.
Okeanos comes out of the closet and says trans rights! Pine teaches him shapeshifting techniques to allow him a body he's comfortable with, creating the Okeanos we all know and love! Also by this point he's the god version of 18, and Pine introduces him to humanity as his friend and son.
Shard makes some Therapy Buddies in his own realm because he's sad and in pain. Because, y'know. His heart is missing. It's basically an echochamber of calling Pine a heartless jerk, but that actually makes Shard Even More Sad because it's not actually what he wants to hear, but he's embarrassed about how he left and is worried Pine hates him, but he wants to love Pine and humans! He wants to be a part of their world again, but feels that it's too late to reconcile and try and talk it out and learn to not be so jealous of their creation.
And last but not least... The present day!