Divine Hollow

There always was a movement, ever since the Second Age, Godswar, that refused the rule of the gods and tried to go back to their creators, the Titans. The origins of the Divine Hollow are wrapped in a mystery, some speculate it was at the dawn of The Great Clash. A group of Immortals or long-living creatures saw the utter devastation brought by the gods to the world and sought their destruction. However, the knowledge about the Divine Laws about how a god is made or unmade wasn't known for many, so they went on a journey to understand it. Their organization touched every part of the world, thus they laid in wait until the right moment and historians say it was the coming of the Archadian Empire, when knowledge became widespread and many theorists appeared, one of which, Miraves the Heretic, became the focal point for the organization. His theories were antithetical to the rule of gods, how they exist, and really how much free will they have. He speculated and tried to prove mathematically, that gods are not needed in the world of Tethys as they are a "foreign" entity in the Divine Algebra, a science that tries to explain the Cube, Planes, other Spheres, Godhood, etc. He found a way to cut the gods entirely from the world - stop their worship at the center, meaning clerics. They channel the divine will and if it is cut, decreasing their powers and rank, as only the worshippers would stay but over time they could be taught to stop their worship. While there is much speculation on how the organization came to being, the historians have no clue how the Icons fits in all of this. Some speculate that the Icons are part of the world, what is left of the First Age, The Titan War. Another theory says that while some Titans escaped punishment, they created the Icons as their weapons against the gods. Different theorists say that the Divine Hollow found a way to gain powers out of worshipping the dead Titans, thus granted the powers to summon the Icons or they were able to extract them from the world in some way, like using the Foundation Pillars or Undertethys. How they gained these allies didn't matter, they took their sweet time to masterfully execute a worldwide conspiracy against the monarchs of the world and create world-ending disasters, starting the Fourth Age, The Calamity. During their conquest, the Divine Hollow became part of the Iconian Empire, enslaving mortals, killing clerics and paladins, worship was forbidden in their empire. However, the will of the people won in the end.
The Divine Hollow still exists and they are enemies to almost all nations in the world, especially the organization Titan Watchers who hunt them down. They sometimes take the guise of cultists, who worship beings from beyond, major entities or infiltrate temples to corrupt them from the inside. It is unknown if the Divine Hollow still has the access to the Icons but it is known that these creatures can return at any moment as there were examples in the Fifth Age, Current Age of Icons returning, even if they were defeated long ago. These occasions are rare, maybe happening once or twice per century but enough to make the mortal remember about the horrors of the Fourth Age, The Calamity. There are nasty rumors that the Gods allow the Icons to appear, to make their followers worship them as aggressive propaganda.

Type

Secret, Military