The official timeline is something like this:

- The stars/elders fell from the sky (stars in the intro are confirmed as the elders by the devs)

- People who lived in the lands in the cloud found the elders and made them their leader

- Something happened, is related to the*

- The people who lived in the clouds die and became spirits.

- The elders either fled or gets locked inside a place outside of time and space by a deity named **

- Skykids are born (current)

Isle: Daleth (ד)

Prairie: Ayin (ע)

Forest: Teth (ט)

Valley: Samekh (ס)

Wasteland: Tsadi (צ)

Vault: Lamed (ל)

Prince: Alef (א)

King: Resh (ר)

PLEASE NOTE: These names have appeared in concept art and are often used when referring to the elders. They are not canon. They're used by the devs as placeholder names. They are fanon. Some theorists from the lore chat has stopped using these to prevent confusion for the newer lore moths, but they're still used by people.

From Japanese livestream 2, translated by Mochi-Daifuku

"The lights fallen from the sky in the opening cutscene were the elders."

"The elders know each other because they came from the same place as shown in the opening murals."

"The elders were elders from the beginning, and children of light will not grow up to be elders. Children of light are of new generation."

"Elders are very ancient. We don't know their age or birthdays, gender, or if age & gender existed."

"It's not that the elders are in the temples now when skykids visit there. The elders are deeply related to those places but they are not there now."

"The locations of [their] cutscenes are somewhere beyond space and time." (hage's observation: yet still affect the world, more below)

"The diamonds (hage's note: power diamonds/what we refer to as darkstone) [are] related to their downfall."

"The masks of forest and vault elders look similar because they are related."

"Valley was the center of an era when civilization flourished [...] the valley elders are twins."

"The current masks of elders represent what each of them is related to. E.g. Isle: Boat, Prairie: Pot, Forest: Diamond. The valley twins have simple comfortable masks because they are athletes."