1 VISION OF THE VOID

  In a distant era, an oracle had a vision of oncoming strife. The king of the gods, Theranis, clothed himself in humanity to inquire of the future. It was revealed to him that the ruler of the gods must take up the Perfect Weapon to drive away a tide of void-formed beasts.

  So he went away, shedding his mortal cloak. He mounted his flying chariot and travelled across the molten desert until he found the wandering Forge Mount of the maker god. They spoke of the vision and they worked together for a long time to shape the Perfect Weapon. When it was done, they declared it the deadliest thing in all of creation. So frightful it was in fact, that as soon as Theranis held the weapon, a fragment of doubt poisoned his mind and the weapon slew both him and the maker god in an instant. Thus ended the reign of King Theranis the Great.

  There the weapon laid for an age until the prophesied emanations of chaos, slung by the callous void, almost overwhelmed the realm. The gods, without their martial king and their armourer and terrified by prophecy, offered no ease to mortal suffering. They fortified their own houses and prayed to their distant MOTHER for deliverance.

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  A distant descendent of the said oracle had risen to be a champion of the people, guiding them from lost lands to sanctuary, however temporary. She decided she had seen enough suffering and went in search of the Forge Mount. Guided by her ancestor's cryptic writings, she found the Mount and avoided its traps. She seized the Perfect Weapon and tamed it with a new name, the Shadowless Blade. She then went forth and strove against the darkness and defeated them by the score. Then she walked into the city of heaven, took their throne unhindered and lambasted them for all the realm to hear. There she sits still, Queen Ahlum, wielder of the Shadowless Blade, Sovereign of Star Vium and all the Realms within.

  The void born however ironically adopted new means of entropy. The great beasts could not match force against the Shard of Infinite Light and their titanic bulk worked against them. So they hid about the world, calcifying into hateful beacons. These towers could hide themselves from perception and shed hordes of smaller beasts to plunder the world. Worst of all they released plagues of malice upon things of rightful creation. Hate, doubt, ignorance, apathy and the greatest of all, fear, were whispered into the minds of plants, animals and sentients alike.

  The gods, led by their new Queen, sought out these towers themselves and laid waste to the few they found, but the beasts hid themselves particularly well from them. Most of them remained, in the sky, on or below the ground and deep within the seas. Hidden this way, their sin plagues abounding, the realm entered a Dark Age that lasted until the coming of the Wrights.