ORPHAN

It started with a death.

  Nobody is quite sure how it happened. The few surviving accounts of the event are fragmented, third- or fourth-hand, and rife with baseless speculation. After all, what can kill a god? What injury, what illness? The only thing that is certain is this: the all-powerful Demiurge died, leaving behind a rudderless reality and a power vacuum of infinite size.   The world, once a place of perfect order, was plunged into utter chaos. Mortals ascended to godhood, then were overthrown and erased from reality, all in the span of an afternoon—or they would have been, if concepts like “afternoon” had still held meaning. Savage magics washed across reality, and tore like wild dogs at the very axioms that define it.   The situation was untenable. The fighting threatened to tear reality apart. Eventually, the two sides that had coalesced out of the initial free-for-all—the loyalists of Heaven and the heretics of Hell—signed an accord: not peace, but a surcease from hostilities. A cold war.   The conflict has warped the world, shattered it like a clay vessel. The existence of the forces of Heaven and Hell is not a theological hypothetical; they walk among humanity, demonstrably real. The whole of reality, once as lovingly tended as a garden, has become their battleground.   The true name of this wounded world has been lost. Its people have given it a new name—a name in memory of the architect it outlived.  

Welcome to Orphan.

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(Suggested reading order: start here and here for a crash course on the workings of this setting. After that, skim the Splinters and Countries categories for more in-depth information about the world. Finally, use this article to make your guy.)