Reign and Ascension of Takanda, and the Slumbering of Taurask

In the wake of the destruction wrought by the Tahosian Civil war, Takanda was left no choice but to take up the mantle of Empress. Despite her training as a powerful druid, the responsibilities of managing an empire were alien to her and weighed heavily upon her shoulders. She was a healer and guardian of the jungles first and an Empress second, but for the betterment of the Dynasty, she would set an example.

With Vauldis' treason fresh in her mind, she scrutinized every King, Queen, and elder at the Golden Table. Disloyalty was shirked in her regal presence, and a collective effort was organized to pick up the pieces left in the wake of the war. Takanda ensured that Temples were repaired, crops blossomed, and the monsoon seasons came and went. The people of the Dynasty were happy as an emerging golden age of prosperity reigned for centuries.

Omens from the South. Eventually, new peoples emerged from the south from across the Ak'tuin's Back Mountains to join the empire. These were not the Saurask. These were refugees; races of beast men who fled a growing saurask aggression across Iotia.

The tribes of the feline Sharr people, who competed with the saurask for food and territory in the Iotian Rainforest, were forced from their homelands or risk slaughter. They pleaded for aid from the Dynasty and, in her mercy, Takanda allowed them to live among them as citizens of the empire.

The Summoning of a God. Their High Chieften, Tamori, told Takanda of a gathering host of saurask tribes from across Iotia. Their shamans and druids practiced profane, savage magic, and dark rituals. Tamori told of how the night skies lit up with auroras of sickly green magic, while the saurask's high priests gathered in hidden places near temples built as a geometric network across the jungle. They aimed to tear the Astral Filament asunder, all under the guidance of an ancient, green dragoness known as Verdavang, the Verdant Blight. Under her direction, the saurask secretly aimed to bring their god through the veil from the Savage Fen and into the Materium. This god was neither immortal nor divine. It was a horrific creature of myth and legend, and its name struck fear into Takanda's heart: "Taurask".

To Slumber a God. With these dire warnings, Takanda tasked her greatest sorcerer and scholar, Quetzali, with researching the nature of Taurask and the Savage Fen. Quetzali poured over ancient scrolls and texts thought to be fiction. He studied the leylines, the stars, and poured over rituals that would let him peer beyond the veil until he uncovered the realm's secrets. Taurask was a titanic creature capable of immeasurable destruction. It was a creature with an impenetrable hide, scythed claws as large as temples, and it dwarfed even the largest temples of Tec'Tahos.

As soon as this new revelation reached Takanda, she also received word that a horde of united saurask tribes far larger than that encountered during the Saurask Wars marched upon the mountain pass with their god. In desperation, she and the war-priests of the dynasty prayed to the spirits of Tahos and Banzala, her former husbands in life, to grant them strength for the coming battle. No response came.

Since no help came, Quetzali conferred with the other high priests of the empire and labored day and night to create a powerful spell that would bend reality to his whim. With but a simple word, he could wish Taurask back into its shackles behind the veil, but to send it back would require power equal to that which brought it into the world, and no such power existed beyond that which was given to the saurask by Verdavang. A series of temples and towers were secured across the Dynasty, and a geometric web of anchoring stones was established. If Quetzali could neither banish Taurask back through the veil nor kill it, then it would be put to sleep forever.

The Battle of Ak'tuin's Pass. The ritual began on the eve of battle as Quetzali watched over the battlefield. A massive army of tahosian warriors, raptor riders, pterosaur flyers, siege tyrannosaurs, and war stegosaurs awaited the immense hordes of saurask at the mountain pass, but no such force arrived. Hours went by and still, nothing came.

It wasn't until a great earthquake erupted behind them from the side of the mountain that they realized they'd been flanked. Standing nearly three-hundred feet tall, after burrowing through the mountains, was the terrifying visage of Taurask in the flesh. Thousands of marauding saurask spilled forth from the massive tunnel from around its feet like a sea of scales and gnashing teeth. Worse still, joining the fray from the mountains overhead was the ancient green dragoness, Verdavang. The entire tahosian army had been out-maneuvered

The battle turned into a slaughter. While the Dynasty had the skill and tactics to weather the fighting, the Saurask had the numbers and unstoppable power of Taurask and Verdavang. Nothing could pierce Taurask's hide, and no pterosaur rider could match Verdavang in the air as her burbling gas filled the battlefield. Clouds of lightning summoned by Takanda's druids decimated the saurask's ranks, but Verdavang was quick to choke them with toxic fumes. The tide quickly turned in the favor of the saurask and their newly summoned god.

As Quetzali looked upon the battlefield, the convergence of magical power across Tansia lit up the skies in great, blue auroras. It was then that Takanda summoned the power of Earth herself, and a tremendous, titanic figure broke away from the mountains.

With the quaking of rock and the rumbling of land-slides, Takanda strode atop the shoulder of a tremendous golem of earth, vines, and stone. She descended upon Taurask with earthquakes of immense, brutal fists that caused Taurask's chitinous armor to dent and shatter. Taurask impaled the golem with his horns and slashed at rock. The battle between both titans was a spectacle to behold as the tahosian forces rallied behind Takanda, meeting the saurask head-on. The battle lasted for hours, but the combined might of Verdavang and Taurask was too much for Takanda, and the tide turned in their favor once more.

The Return of the Gods and the Slumbering of Taurask. Suddenly, magical power erupted through the sky as Quetzali was engulfed in the ritual energies of one thousand shamans that surged into his body from across Tansia. He spoke the spell's incantations, and the veil to the spirit world was split open. Three beings of light stepped onto the battlefield. Tahos, Xalaxos, and Banzala, once thought lost, appeared as gods over man, woman, and beast. The worship and praise they'd received over the centuries transformed them into powerful divine spirits. Quetzali was also changed. In the convergence of magic, his body was sundered, but his spirit was left behind, now divine in power. A great winged serpent unfurled through the skies in the shape of a snaking aurora.

As the winged serpent spirit of Quetzali uttered the second incantation, the four spirits summoned their combined power and placed a powerful curse upon Taurask.

Taurask fell as the titanic creature was put to sleep forever

Together, the four living gods reigned supreme over the saurask, and the tahosian armies rallied behind their gods just as the saurask once did. Banzala, the Ferryman, raised the souls of the fallen to avenge their deaths. Tahos, the Spirit of Kings, lead his loyal champions to meet the saurask on the front lines, while the Tyrant-Queen, Xalaxos the Scorned, rallied her cultists and opened fissures and chasms to swallow up saurask sorcerers, and Quetzali summoned storms of raw magical power from the skies to strike at Verdavang. Takanda, the Queen of Beasts, stood by the gods and summoned scaled creatures of the jungles to devour, trample, and tear at the saurask's war-beasts while her titanic golem battled Verdavang, swatting the ancient dragoness from the air.

Victory had been assured, and the saurask fled back through the tunnel in the mountains their god had burrowed, battered, bloodied, and demoralized, while Verdavang fled to the Tansin Wilds.

This event in the Dynasty's history would forever be remembered by two names: the 'Battle of the Five Gods', and the 'Slumbering of Taurask'. Most prominently, it would be remembered as the day the Living Gods returned to the world. While they faded from the battlefield that day, their presence remains with their people in avatar form; chosen champions of the Living Gods and conduits for their physical manifestations and power.

Temples of Titan's Rest. In the following years, five great temples were constructed around the slumbering body of Taurask to ensure the enchantment upon the titanic creature be upheld for generations to come. A great golden gate was built within Ak'tuin's Pass, and the great tunnel that the god-creature had bored through the mountain was collapsed. Forevermore this place would be known as Titan's Rest.

Soon after, Verdavang's lair was discovered within the Tansin Wilds. There she was confronted by Takanda, and as punishment for her plots against the Dynasty, Takanda turned the ancient green dragoness to stone.

As the Dynasty recovered from the events of the battle, Takanda oversaw an era of peaceful prosperity in her later years. The pantheon of the Living Gods became sacred within Tahosian society. Temples and shrines to their worship graced every city and town. Priests of Banzala communed with the great spirit in person and saw to funeral rites, while priests of Tahos trained soldiers and oversaw the coronations of Emperors. The temperamental cults of Xalaxos revered the scorned Queen in secret as she awaited the Dynasty's next plea for aid as they moved their Kingdom's capital to Raptor Isle, building the temple-city of Chichil at the base of the island's dormant volcano. Takanda waded her titan into a fertile basin near the Tansin Planes where its body has rested ever since. It was eventually reformed into a temple monument dedicated to her reign.

Takanda saw to the resettlement of the Sharr people within the Dynasty, and established a home for them in the northern K'banni Steppes. There, they called the jungles home, naming them after their High Chieften. The Tamori Wilds became home to the arboreal community of Tarmir where the Sharr founded a new existence for themselves as part of the Tahosian Dynasty, and their people spread far and wide throughout Tansia.

Content that the Dynasty was able to look after itself, Takanda abdicated the throne. Like her husbands before her, took her staff and walked into the jungles surrounding the temple. In the years that followed, the jungle blossomed into a safe haven of rare wildlife and flora and the surrounding lands became the fertile and bountiful Garden of the Goddess. The former kingdom of Zicotl was reborn as the Temple of Takanda replaced Zicotl as its capital. Takanda eventually joined the pantheon of the Living Gods, becoming its fifth and final divine spirit.