Elder Stone

The Fall of the Elder Stone. These six words strike fear and despair into many of Craedock's denizens. To most, it was a historical event from generations passed: a meteorite impact that occured on the Spring Equinox of the year 114 ME. To other, longer lived races, many were alive during this time and vividly remember the resultant chaos. This occurrence quite directly destroyed the two largest world powers at the time, sunk over half a continent, and turned the previously fringe cult of Alienism into a worldwide phenomenon by introducing what many believed to be a third god: Thellkaeon.

The Prediction of the Fall

In the year 99, Modern Era, in Poslool, in the sprawling metropolis city of Aqalith, there lived a Human girl named Thyatrenel. She was an initiate in a small temple to Vytali, hidden away in one of the cities many boulevards, training to be an oracle. She was young, aged only 14, and not fully initiated, when she received the most critical vision the world would come to neglect.
Thyatrenel saw a vision, but not one from Vytali whom her temple worshipped. Rather, she did not know its source. It was a distressful image, and she could not offer any physical description, but she detected the presence of something powerful. Claws, eyes, and tendrils, mixed amorphously together at scuttering intervals. The thing vomited a stone, and hurled it through a starscape. Then she saw Aqalith, her home city, being burned in a fire, then flooded, then submerged. She saw black snow and blood red rain in places she had never seen before, including many foreign cities.
Her mentors were unamused at first. They firstly assumed a simple mistake, or that the girl was hallucinating from some mind altering plant or drink she must have consumed. But one monk, named Kana, believed her and recorded her vision in as much detail as possible. The two faced scrutiny for their insistence, and soon faced accusations of heresy. Her elders determined that no such thing had ever happened, that the Duotheism would never allow such a thing to occur, and that the vision was too vague to take action anyway. Others accused her of seeking fame, or a childish craving of attention. Some called her blasphemous. The dispute eventually led to their expulsion from the temple.
Thyatrenel and Kana turned evangelical, attempting to persuade as many people as possible that a great calamity was coming. They eventually gained something of a following themselves, and the group evolved into the Harsher Cult, so named by the city's media for their grim message. They were chastised by the public and in some cases out right ridiculed, even so far as being heckled by mobs in the city streets that more than once grew violent. It wasn't until the year 101 ME that they would be taken seriously by an esteemed figure in the city.
That year they were approached by the astronomer, cosmologist, and scholar Professor Folduin Qisalor. He was an Elf, the senior instructor at Aqalith's largest university, and highly respected by the city's ruling class, considered an expert in his fields. He was working with a research team on a device called the Celestiascope, and he believed it might be able to confirm or deny Thyatrenel's premonition for certain.
He took them to his observation tower, and introduced them to the team's lead artificer, a Catfolk named Kimika, who headed the Celestiascope's design. They explained that the device allowed them to gaze across the stars, into the cosmos, and observe the objects that existed there. They attuned the device to Thyatrenel, and it confirmed the presence of a large meteor. A group of mathematicians calculated the trajectory of the stone, and deemed it very likely that it could collide with Craedock. With that, the neophyte oracle's vision was confirmed.

Before the Fall

Professor Qisalor quickly took the group's discovery to the city's prime minister. A state of emergency was declared, and quickly Aqalith sent ambassadors to the federation's capitol to propose a unified effort to prepare the people of Poslool against the danger. (Aqalith was a member city-state of the Federation of Poslool, a union of states and kingdoms throughout the continent and the largest, most powerful societal entity in Craedock at the time.) The union's Senate convened, and in 103 ME signed an agreement to channel resources into the construction of a number of walled cities with underground bunkers of suitable size as to house the millions of Poslool's residents.
This maneuver was considered highly extreme around the world. The Federation had the world's largest economy, and their sudden jump in purchase of metals, woods, and raw materials caused a huge upset in several industries. The Federation was targeted by the world's next largest entity, the Sanazan Omniarchy, an isolationist empire that claimed dominion over all of Entrophion and was functionally the leftover element of the Obelisk Empire after it's fall. The Omniarchy was the most destabilized by the Federation's construction spending, and was highly religious, arguing against Thyatrenel's initial vision and the findings of the Celestiascope, claiming blasphemy onto both.
The Omniarchy demanded that the Federation return to normal spending habits, or at the very least reduce their construction efforts enough to stabilize the economy and return to normal trade patterns. When the Federal Senate refused, they declared war. This war would continue up until the Fall of the Elder Stone itself, greatly reducing Poslool's preparation for the event, while the world looked unto the to largest countries in Craedock, waiting for a winner to emerge to decide whether they needed to prepare for disaster or not.
The stone fell on the first day of Forespring, New Year, 114 ME.

After the Fall

The Elder Stone was believed to have spawned from the Void, based on the findings of the Celestiascope made by Prof. Qisalor's research team. The resulting explosion of the impact, which struck the opposite side of the mountain at which Aqalith laid, blew out most of the Poslool continent, and the area flooded with ocean water, creating a new sea. The city was entirely sunk. It had, however, been evacuated, but much of the continent suffered a quick fiery death as only a small number of protective cities could be built before the fall of the stone. The refugees travelled to Endertarr in southwestern Poslool, the largest city built during the Federation's preparation, and waited out the storm in the city's underground bunker.
The meteorite sent dust and ash into the sky, and dark grey clouds obscured vision of the sun for the next decade, causing droughts, famines, and perpetual winter. Many small societies crumbled during this time, their populations starving due to a lack of growable food. Flooding and tidal waves radiated around the globe and caused tremendous damage after the initial strike as well. The Omniarchy in Entrophion received damage from these waves, and ultimately was too dependent on trade to sustain itself during the resultant ten years of winter. The empire in the desert finally collapsed as well.
The sheer amount of destruction, darkness, and chaos flung many of the worlds residents into a frenzy. Some began to proclaim that the stone bore not just a dark angel or ill omen, as was commonly associated with such strange astronomical phenomena, but rather a new god. The Alienists, void worshippers, called this god Thellkaeon. The impact led to the largest uprising in Alienist cults in the history of the world.
In addition to the main collision in Poslool, two large shards are also known to have fall and hit the planet. One landed on the western mainland in Nevvalair, and destroyed a small kingdom there. Another landed in the ocean just north of the Black Islands in the Acronian Sea. Besides these larger shards, an unknown number of fragments, much smaller pieces, are believed to have made landfall or landed in the oceans all through Craedock.
Everywhere any piece of the stone lands, no matter how small, the land is said to take on dark eldritch qualities: twisting and scarring the flora and fauna of the region into sickly plants, dire animals, or monstrous beings. The larger the piece of stone, the wider and more intense its effects. Poslool, of course, was the land most contorted by this encounter. This quality is called Voidtaint.

© Dylan Eugene Wheeler 2018
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