Lore - The Bard's Tale

The tale of a world-weathered but hospitable bard in a tavern in your travels, lyre paused resting on their knee while they orate with a familiar tone that says this is thier most popular fireside tale.

Nothing is permanent. Not even the gods.
This world was once if not governed by, at least overseen by gods. We once had that connection to them. Maybe since Ostelliach's creation or maybe only since creatures could come to perceive the forces around 'em and name them well enough to categorize, group, acknowledge, praise.
The gods as we knew them were not "good" or "bad" or really even dual in nature, so much as the natural organization of forces that made up our world, qualities that were harmful with too little OR too much. The god of life, was also the god of death, for example, the god of the forces that animate us, the vibrancy but also the stagnation, the decay. Put another way, the god of necromancy, but also of healin'.
We did, in fact, divide them up (roughly) according to the types of magic that shaped us, for what are gods if not magic incarnate? Or, maybe, what is magic but our connection to the gods? But, then. We have magic now, don't we? So how do we have magic without gods?
Well, I'm getting to that.
All things in moderation. Too much growth can be a cancer, can strangle out the sun, but not enough, you starve. The gods represented that, and for a time, so the story goes, that was enough.
Through the gods, people learned how to tap into the great wellspring of magic that flows through our entire planet, harnessing its power to learn, to challenge, to grow. To prosper. They taught us to tap into what is called The Web.
This was the way of life for…who can say? Eons? Definitely generations, far as written word would stretch and prior too probably. Maybe that's the problem, the real thing that bugs me: knowing how long they’d been there would make it easier to understand their end, put a mathematical point on divinity to understand the “why” better, like "at least they lived a full life" or "that was a very long time to exist indeed."
But were the gods even personified enough to be called “living” anyway? People tell tales of having seen the gods in person, met them, walked with them…even slept them, of course, 'cuz people always have to brag, right? But who can say if those tales were to be believed, tinged as they are with everything we know since then, with the tales being told by the people of today, in the position they are in now? Tall tales to make us feel better, stories to humanize 'em, bring 'em down to our level. Maybe it's less scary to think gods can die if you tell yourself they were close to us, just slightly different.
But I'm getting away from the point again. Regardless of the length of this time period, this god-time, it like all things came to an end, and like many things, it came to an end suddenly. Abruptly. Violently.
The day itself was not so long ago, compared to how long we can assume they were around before then. Such cataclysmic events have a way of crystallizin' into the consciousness, even if the little details of how it all went down may vary. Some rare few may even still exist that remember it all firsthand.
As the tale goes, at a singular point that day—the golden hour, when the sun is sinking slowly and the three moons rose to meet it—every temple in Ostelliach exploded, all at once. All of 'em, and believe me, there were a lot. The sound was deafening, enough to make your heart seize up, heard in every district, every town, every farmstead, as if the land itself ruptured. But, no, it wasn't the land. Not yet. That part would come later.
From each temple, each holy sanctum, or the rubble left there, as the story goes, decidedly unholy screams erupted, as if every dead thing ever to face our lands were awoken and in anguish. Tales say this was every bit as devastating to the soul as the destruction of the temples themselves.
Wizards, sorcerers, clerics, and all manner of magic user sprung to action in response to what they perceived as an attack, a threat. But not only could they find no enemy to face, but in fact they could find no reason magical or physical for the destruction. Worse, though: they could find no connection to the magics they’d always known, that this land had seemingly always known. No healing words, no wards and shields, no enhanced senses or illusions or world-walking. It was as if whatever had devastated the buildings had also devastated their ties to the gods, to The Web. And it had. Or, maybe put another way, the temples going up was a symbol of greater loss--the gods--and no gods, no Web.
As the first inklings of horror and wrongness of the situation, the loss of magic, began to spread through each party attending to the damage, as the saying goes, shit was bad but shit got worse.
'Cuz here's the thing. The Web was still there. We just had no access to it. The Web was still very much there, and folks said it was like it was angry. Or maybe it was freed from us. It's always been there, it'll be there long after we're gone.
Across the land, every manner of horror started to crop up, like every god's manifestation at its strongest, its worst. Like the schools of magic were showing us they couldn't be contained. Storms. Plagues. Giant, rabid, maneating plant growths (yes, really). Earthquakes and madness and rampaging beasts. A full toolbox of apocalypses burst up, as if each temple had been a repository of fears being held in place that were now breaking free without the god to tether 'em.
This feels like an understatement to say in such simple words, but many died that day. Many died in the days since, immediately after it all. The world changed. The structure of the soul changed with it. After all, how can one survive that much trauma, that much pain and death and loss and not feel it in the deepest levels? Folk say people were kinder before then. S’pose that has to be true, since kindness doesn’t get you far here. Then again, kindness is all we've got keeping us from collapsing entirely. That and hope.
'Course, you lot know, the land has not been fixed. It hasn’t gotten any safer, storms and disease and mutated monsters still abounding. So how, then, are we still here? And how do we still have warders and healers, spellswords and alchemists, artificers and auguries?
In the time after what we now call The Breaking, cleaning up the rubble of the shattered temples, the depressing ruins, each one was found to have an inscription writ into the very foundation, though people were fairly sure they hadn't actually been there before. They can be read no matter your language; matter of fact, even those who can’t read at all still walk away with it on their tongues, the same inscription dotted across the map:

All things must pass.
Like flesh, like earth, like tired bones.
Like hope, like pain, like desperate quests and worn-out stones.

For power amassed, a greater end
And with its weariness expire
For no power is immune to time and even gods may tire

What’s that to mean? What’s that to say? To most, it seemed to rule out foul play, some evil plot; and what’s more, weren’t all of our gods beyond concepts like that, and who could kill a god besides the other gods? Nah, for most historians, it reads as an ode, a resignation, a suicide note all in one…A farewell, apology, explanation, admission. “It was only natural,” it says.
The loss of our gods was felt far and wide, and not just because their powers had dispersed in such a fantastical, violent way. There was a deep loss o' hope, of creativity, of unity, of passion. All of our best and worst had come from and been put into something that had abandoned us, cursed us, curled up and died on us with dangerous corpse-ly emissions as an insult to injury. (Sorry to the squeamish types for the analogy.)
The loss of the people’s magic stung as well, though you can bet some celebrated this, “away with all that trifling with blasted forces.” Always somebody glad something bad happened, always somebody throwing a fit about other people's joys, I guess.
As far as folks could tell, it seems the gods had been tamping down The Web, or anchoring it. The wild strength of the Web whipping through Ostelliach in the time Post-Breaking was like a dog without a master, and it bit with every amount of force that its masters’ ghosts did. Wild magic rampaged through the world, creating anomalies of life and death, warping the earth, contorting the people. And true, there were none to stoke the fire, no evil sorcerers or reckless mages making things worse, but there were also no healers, no alchemists, no artificers, no one to staunch the flow of ravenous arcana, build shields, mend the worst things broken.
The world seemed destined for ruin, the end of gods the end of days.
But! People are nothing if not stubborn. Those who had been the strongest magical talents before it all, those who'd studied the most or been most favored by their gods, got together, far south in Illuvia at what we call the Scriptorium Soiram, seeking to find a way to reharness the Web, stop what people were calling the ghosts of the gods, or save the people of the world through some other grand method, some escape, some last gasp.
This conclave, this study group we now call the Final Architects locked themselves up for 342 days and nights--almost two years!--before coming out with a plan, a proposal to get folks by on. Some people didn't like it, but it was better than nothing and, well. It'll sound familiar to you all now, so that means they were on to somethin'.
The conclave said to rebuild the temples, but this time, devote 'em to the people. Use the temples as ties, leylines, harness all the love and hope the people had put into them for all that time, but instead of tying it to godhood, tie it to what the gods represented, the people that benefited from 'em. So a temple for the smith, a temple for the healer, a temple for the merchant, a temple for the--...well, heh, the courtesan. The temple for the smith, well, it drew on innovation, creativity, fire, right? Healers draw on life, on hope, on patience, on plants; merchants on fortune, bounty, charity, luck, charisma; courtesans on--...well, you get the picture.
None of the folks outside the conclave really knew how they came to that conclusion or why it should even work. But damn if it didn't, right? The magic around these areas, the hungry monsters and crazed storms and rampant surges of power, as the leylines of these temples got established again, the wild magic started to calm a little. Slowly. Untangling the Web, it seems. Unknotting.
As the Web got, I guess you could say untangled, yeah, the disaster of each area started to subside. Granted, you know as well as anyone that it's all still there. But the more there's temples around, the more stable. Out in the wilderness is a different story, and for some reason buildin' new temples doesn't work, only harnessing the temples that were already there for eons before...maybe it needed the real god residual to get the juices going, who's to say. Not my wheelhouse.
In a way, it's symbolic, isn't it? No longer monuments and catacombs, we put those spots to use siphoning the energy into the people, a ritual of intent that focused all that power into the people still brave (or stupid) enough to keep walking the ravaged earth.
This group of magic scholars, these Finite Architects, as well as their legacy live on in libraries and learned places where people still work to understand the flow of the Web, the loss of the gods, and maybe, even a way to lead them back home, reconstruct their shattered bodies, quiet their apocalyptic screams. Grasping at ghosts in hallowed halls, my bard soul tells me, pretty but not much else. But, then, I'm just a bard. It's not for me to know.
Now, there's one last piece of this that I haven't gotten to yet. Some of you sittin' here likely have magic of your own, and I've not said anything of how rebuilding temples got cantrips back into hands, wards into wands, all of that.
The architects had an answer for this too, though those of you who've done it will recognize the fundamental unspecificity of it.
The solution was a ritual of sorts, highly personalized to each person, spiritual or book-learn-ed. For some, a pilgrimage to each temple of a certain type or in a certain area. To some, dedicated learning in sequestered quiet rooms. To some, a change in profession or obsession that brought them closer to the Web’s reach. If this sounds unspecific, well…it would make sense if you’d had your own Godcrafting, wouldn’t it?
To go on a Godcrafting--blasphemous as some might say the term is--is to harness your own little tendril of the Web, to catch hold of its drifting fiber and hold on tightly. It's doing something to follow your soul, that tug in your gut, to bring you to where you specifically can reach the magic. Hm? What was mine? Now, it's not quite polite to ask folks that. All's you need to know is I've got a magical thing called storytelling, wouldn't you agree? After all, you've been sitting here all this time, haven't you?
Now, as I said, some out there are still looking. For a way to calm the storms. To bring the gods back, or maybe birth new ones in. Some still think they can find out more about how it happened in the first place. Me? I'm just here for a warm fire, a good drink, a long story. What about you, young godcrafters?