The Sundering and the Long Slumber of the Gods

Disaster / Destruction

After the cataclysmic events of The Sundering, the primary deities of Gothenya mostly fell into a seemingly permanent "dream state" or fugue, making it difficult for their followers to properly commune with them.

For thousands of years, since the dawn of modern civilization, those of faith made pilgrimages to Mount Celene, the holy mountain. It is said to be the ancestral home of the very gods themselves, and for all those long years, the gods seemed to directly commune with their faithful, though they never left Celene. The pilgrims risked the brutal lands of the North in order to get closer to their divine patrons. In fact, those priests with magical abilities seemed to significantly grow in power the closer to Celene they traveled.   The mountain itself was (and still is) protected by the "moat" of The Churn, magically infused waters in a constant whirlpool of motion. The Churn is deadly to mortals, and even has the ability to magically mutate any who touch its waters.   It didn't take long for the students of the arcane Arts to realize that all magic, both divine and arcane, originated from the mountain. Before Celene, there is no record of any magical activity on Gothenya. These students also made pilgrimages to Celene, in an attempt to learn from or even plunder her natural resources. In short time, the conflicting interests of the devoted priests and the "profane" students of magic led to conflict. For the last thousand years before the Sundering, the conflicts grew in frequency and even violence. It all came to a head, nearly two thousand years ago, when a conclave of practitioners of the Darkest Art, blood magic, decided to strike the mountain hard. Their intent was to create a rent in its stony flesh, so they could enter the home of the gods and demand its secrets.   The faithful discovered this plan and massed an army of the devout to combat it. Mount Celene became the very battleground for a bloody conflict between the blood mages and the united priests of nearly all deities. The only holy people who aligned with the blood mages were the devout followers of a minor deity, Krytuss, Lord of Corruption and Decay. The conflict raged for a fortnight before the blood mages managed to penetrate the mountain. The result of which was a fantastic explosion of magical energy that rocked the entire continent of Hariel Majour.   The servants of the gods, the elves, the goblinoids, spilled forth in waves, attacking all they came across. With them, the sky turned to fire, and meteors showered the region. All in all, countless thousands of people, both those warring and the innocent, died in mere seconds.   After the dust settled, it seemed the blood mages had lost. Instantly, repercussions came in the form of the Magical Scouring, where mages of all sorts, even innocent practitioners of benign Arts, were rounded up and exposed to mob justice. They were forced to flee for their lives, heading south. Many eventually crossed The World Sea to Golthien, where they established the nation of Lentokk. Others (mostly mages that did not practice blood magic) fled to Hariel Minuta, where they founded Varuum.   The direct result of the Sundering, for those of faith, was that the gods seemed to be "injured" by the explosion, almost all of them entering some form of deep sleep (or coma). The immediate effect being that they could no longer directly commune with their followers. When the priests reached out through prayer, they were only answered by the disjointed dreams of the gods. In fact, they had to relearn how to use divine magic, with the crux of it being the interpretation of dream logic. So, to this day, any divine magic culled from the gods comes not only from prayer, but through the interpretation and manipulation of the dreams of the slumbering lords of Celene.