The Dusk of the Gods and the Great War
Gods were made by mortals to control the uncontrollable and to guide a chaotic world, and they ask for worship and deference in return. However, as the gods felt ignored by a changing world they feared they’d become irrelevant and devised a plan to remedy this: become mortals themselves to better understand the wants and needs of a mortal soul.
It’s this misguided plan that broke the heavenly pact. A god’s mind was not meant to fit in the mind of a mortal and never to be burdened by a body. When the God of the great oceans, the wild running rivers, the deep and Great Lakes found itself in a human body it panicked. Cold, it felt cold for the first time and needed warmth, so it bent the living souls of the world around it to give it warmth. It needed shelter, food, comfort, and everyday needs of a mortal’s plight that is provided by community and self-reliance it forced the world to give to it. Those hungry for power and influence quickly bowed to the Noble God and made sure their will was done. The name was bestowed “God of Ravaging Tides” who ruled from their Placid Palace. Over the span of a few years, the North was transformed from a quiet collection of fishing villages where a variety of humble crafts were practiced to a large system where each village was assigned a task that served its new Noble God’s whims and pleasures.
The people first served the god with excitement but trepidation, not knowing what wonder could come from a god among them. Then they grew confused as decades passed with not one boon gained. Then they turned resentful, as a century of serving an uncaring and lazy being. The first to utter the words “Usurper God” was the Loran-keth who spoke out in a rage in the village square of Totindell, having had his hand cut off for the crime of stealing from the God’s allotment of fish, fish that Loran-Keth himself had caught. The God’s guardians tried to make an example of Loran-keth but the spirit of revolt had found its way into Totindell and the people pushed back, so the guardians burned the village to the ground. This turned an isolated revolt into a revolution as the rest of the villages saw this as an act of war from the Usurper god and their forces. From each village rose a hero, a leader in the cause, not trained warrior but labourers, fish catchers and leatherworkers. The Determined Few. Their passion and the support of the people brought them far, but their inexperience in large battles brought them to near ruin. Many lives were lost in the failed attempt on the Palace, in which the God of Ravaging Tides released horrid magic yet unseen by the Northerns and struck fear into their very souls. The resolve for war seemed lost and the Determined Few fled to the mountains to regroup. The spiteful God sent all their forces to destroy the remnants of the rebels and it was then that Hondle Pass was chosen as the last hope and the last stand for the Few. The gambit paid off and the hope renewed as the Guardians lay broken and the way to the God stood open. The final battle at the Placid Palace shook the very ground and the first ever time known to mortals a God died, an act that changed the course of history as all the oppressed in the lands knew the Gods could be defeated.