The Nine Gods

The Nine Gods (sometimes called the Nine) are a group of nine entities who are sworn enemies of the Reapers - or they have been for the past few years, anyways.

History
It's impossible to separate the history of the Nine Gods without becoming intertwined with their theology, which due to its own ideas is quite unreliable. It is quite messy, considering there are several different sects that worship them with different interpretations. For example, one group claims that the Reapers were created to stop them - even though there's very heavy evidence that Reapers definitely predate them. Needless to say, the validity of their scripture is heavily disputed, and is only seen as a metaphorical twisting of the events at best. At worst, it's blatant propaganda.

A few basic things have been understood about where they came from. The nine gods were once a single entity called M'acra, who held a campaign to take over the entire megaverse, bringing chaos to it in his wake. He got rather far, taking over a handful of multiverses. However, the Reapers ultimately fought back and trapped him, destroying him in some way. Some piece of him was able to survive, however, grabbing onto another Reaper. It's not exactly clear how, but using this Reaper he was able to in some way survive and eventually drag himself back into existence.

But during this, M'cara started to experiment. He discovered, by accident, that he could split himself into separate beings and aspects. Eventually he decided to split himself into nine separate pieces, which would become the nine gods today.