The Blight

Disaster / Destruction

By the time of Daimus III, the Bechtlarite Empire had grown exponentially, and the reach of the human empire was almost limitless, having set up embassies, trade, and military outposts in every kingdom and every corner of the world, even having traded for a large stake in the dwarven mineral trade from their undersea operations. A deep conspiratal order working together that represented The College of the Arcane Arts, the Divine Order of the Seven Wonders, and the Elk Riders, pushed the already struggling mental state of the Sovereign to a dangerous place in an attempt to further their own agendas for gain. The end result was the Blight, and nearly the end of all things. The Blight itself was a gargantuan undertaking, blending magic both arcane and divine by pooling the abilities and hundreds of mages and nearly two thousand priests. The combined energy pool summoned and appropriated was unleashed upon a single point to a single purpose, to obliterate the only remaining thing standing in the way of the Sovereign.

By the time of Daimus III, the Bechtlarite Empire had grown exponentially, and the reach of the human empire was almost limitless, having set up embassies, trade, and military outposts in every kingdom and every corner of the world, even having traded for a large stake in the dwarven mineral trade from their undersea operations. A deep conspiratal order working together that represented The College of the Arcane Arts, the Divine Order of the Seven Wonders, and the Elk Riders, pushed the already struggling mental state of the Sovereign to a dangerous place in an attempt to further their own agendas for gain. The end result was the Blight, and nearly the end of all things. The Blight itself was a gargantuan undertaking, blending magic both arcane and divine by pooling the abilities and hundreds of mages and nearly two thousand priests. The combined energy pool summoned and appropriated was unleashed upon a single point to a single purpose, to obliterate the only remaining thing standing in the way of the Sovereign.   The Islands of the Seanachai people had long resisted all attempts by the empire to gain a foothold in their lands, and this was to be Daimus III's magnum opus, to succeed where all his predecessors had failed. With his own defeat in that attempt looming, it took very little for the conspirators to manipulate him into lashing out. Their goal was to humiliate the Sovereign and damage the line in hopes of the formation of a more bureaucratic system in which they would be able to wield power. They never expected this, and by the time it had begun, the momentum of his paranoia mingled with his outrage could not be stopped. In a single night, a tear in the very fabric of reality was ripped open in the sky above the Islands of Seanachai and a vast portion of the plane of shadow was pulled through and sent hurtling down upon those poor souls. The impact blotted out the stars, moon, and sun for a week as tendrils of shadow gripped the planet. All those on the Islands were lost, enveloped in darkness and changed or outright destroyed. The blight infected everything it could, with the darkness finding new traction in every environment seeking to expand and feed upon the light and life it found there. The ocean poisoned and the life there altered and twisted into horrible nightmare forms of what once was. The underground was a conduit to all the lands, as the dwarven empire was vast and stretched to all corners of the world. The dwarves fought back as hard as they could, sealing off huge portions of their lands with rockslides and cave-ins, but they sustained unimaginable losses and some are still fighting to contain the growth of darkness to this day.   The Blight fundamentally changed the entire order and ecosystem of the entire planet. Life from an alien land and the energies and magics that resided there mingled with the creatures and energies of Cairne to create a multitude of abominations and strange new forms of life. New sentient races strode out of that event such as the Ougham, and some that were native already were forever changed such as the Volrishtad. While many attempted to contain the sreap of the invading force of change, it could not be contained. The negative energy that was brought down that night continues to devour and change everything it comes into contact with, including the planet itself which is slowly being consumed itself. Many scholars surmise that the eventual entire conversion of all of the matter on the planet is an inevitable event, while others muse that the power needed to continue will eventually fade and dissipate leaving the changed planet a new system of ecosystems and lifeforms in its wake.