Folcard and the Iron Throne:
“Folcard appeared in Volport, the capital city of the nation of Greria. Within a week he had negotiated the purchase of an elaborate mansion from a minor noble who had fallen into extreme debt. Within a month he’d established himself as a very powerful independent mage, who’s exact talents and powers remained shrouded in mystery. His reputation grew and he invested wealth from unknown sources into various businesses. He bought futures from merchants, on metals precious and mundane, on grain, on bricks and clay. Profits fell into his pockets week after week. Three months after Folcard’s arrival, the Old God stopped answering the prayers and calls of his priests.
Folcard sat on a very particular chair whenever he conducted his affairs at home. A throne, in fact, seemingly made of a single piece of shaped iron. As one of the few mages in the world capable of construction magic, those who knew could tell it was a work of art in and of itself. Those who were ignorant still spoke in reverent whispers of how he crafted it in a single day, using only magical skill and his bare hands. There was more than a grain of truth to those whispers. They started to call it the Iron Throne. As Folcard continued to perform feats of magic for his followers the stories grew more exaggerated. The Academy’s membership hated him, because he was outside their control. The nobles were wary of him, as he was clearly a power player who could threaten their status quo. Both groups were right to fear him, in the end.
Things got very strange, quickly. When the faith of the people grew, they began to pray to him, to worship him. Within days Folcard was no longer seen at public gatherings. All of his business was conducted through intermediaries. The Cult of the Iron Throne was born. Stories continued to spread of ‘Folcard’s Miracles’. Faith healing. Monetary reward pulled from a heavenly bank. Glimpses of the afterlife. Prophetic dreams about the coming golden age. In the eyes of the common people Folcard was considered divine, and the rumor became the truth.”
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Promyse, The Fountain of Life:
Originally a fountain built by a team of expert masons to be the centerpiece of a town. The running theory goes that algae colored the water red at some point in the early years, which gave its waters the distinct rust-red hue. Rumors and misunderstandings sprang up around this, which grew to superstition in the locals, and led to a folk religion centered around the benefits of making vile sacrifices to the Fountain. Shortly after the start of the Age of War, when the prayers of common folk inexplicably gained more power than before-- the Fountain demonstrated that it was capable of thought and communication by electing a number of townsfolk as its mouthpieces.
The more the Fountain was fed, the more power it granted to those who it permitted to drink from it. A disgusting inversion of a standard communion ritual, the details of which I refuse to pen here. It was a fortunate thing for the neighboring countries that followers of Promyse remained small in number throughout the events of the Age. If eyewitness accounts are to be believed, a score of Promyse’s Chosen on the battlefield was easily worth a company or two of well-equipped and regularly trained soldiers.
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Longtusk, The Boar God:
I had the terrifying luck to encounter the Boar God once on my travels. He is a simple creature on the surface who primarily wishes to protect and maintain the borders of his forest kingdom. He existed even before the Old God’s disappearance, and I presume that the Boar’s insistence on neutrality is what allowed him to exist even in the prior Age.
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Yurth, The Great Flame:
Fire worship is one of the oldest forms of religious devotion. Is it any surprise that those who accepted that praying to fire was normal were so readily accepting when the fire finally took on a will of its own and started to talk back?
Rumored to be a pillar of fire that has taken physical form. Yurth’s desire was simple: burn everything. Those who are opposed to beginning afresh from the ashes will be consumed, those who are willing to serve will be blessed and marked by the flames. Though Yurth’s will is simple and he rarely took to the field, some of his followers proved to be excellent tacticians during the early years of the Age of War.
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Zeth, Merchant-God of the Southlands:
Egotistical. Warmongering. Greedy. Feared by his people and his nation. He rose to power as a dictator honestly, on a pile of bodies and money. His enemies were numerous. His rise to godhood was similarly straightforward. Zeth simply gave a single order, which his tax collectors posted at every home, business, and crossroads in his kingdom: Pray to Zeth for protection, or be executed publicly. When the dust settled and his naysayers dangled from trees and gallows in every city, he was regarded as the most feared dictator in history, and rumors began to spread that he had gained mystic abilities to rival any other demigod.
"He said 'pray' and we learned very fast that it was an order meant to be taken literally." ~an anonymous tax collector
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Portentous, the Great Seeress:
They called themselves the Wroln, and they have always occupied a swath of supposedly valueless land in the far east. A dense jungle where humans have never been entirely secure in their position on the food chain. Among the Wroln, there has always been a great seer or seeress to protect and guide them. Highly regarded, consulted for problems big and small, trusted to guide individuals and families along the path to a better life. A role passed down through generations, a family line going back through centuries. It was only a matter of time, of dice being rolled again and again, before a particularly powerful Seer or Seeress would emerge, one who was born with the potential to become a demigoddess.
Portentous would be both the great pride and the definite doom of the entire Wroln people, unless she could find a path to a future where she somehow achieved either world domination, or world peace. Given the Wroln’s long standing traditions of xenophobia, blood sacrifice and a deep hatred of all objects made of stone or metal, the odds of Portentous succeeding on either front were exceedingly low.
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The Old God:
Where did he go? What was it about his presence that kept the world stable, and what was there in his absence that allowed so many beings to rise to the cusp of divinity? In the wake of this, why were so many driven half-mad, so insistent on destroying anyone who threatened to be their equal or better? The facts are few and the debates are endless. The more I learn, the more horrified I am at the events that took place, and the more questions I have about the why of things. I will write it all here, so that it may be a warning to whoever is left alive when this era comes to a close.
~Histories of the Upheaval, by Marko the Archivist.