The Deluge
The Deluge was a nigh-apocalyptic and world-defining disaster that occurred on the plane of Waking Materia approximately 1,500 years ago. Over the course of about a week, untold megatons of haunted, demon-infested brine welled up from the centre of the plane, then radiated outward in a catastrophic series of tsunamis. The resulting destruction was incalculable. Modern scholars (very roughly) estimate total planar casualties to be well over 70%. In a mere few days, Materia was transformed into a Waterworld-type plane, with only the upland peripheries remaining as a sort of series of archipelagos.
The event, dated 2,850 I.M. on the Yasnan Calendar, marks the end of Waking Materia's prosperous First Age and the beginning of its desperate, war-stricken Second Age, also known as the Lost Age or the Era Best Forgotten. Some calendars, like the Ruskanskalendar in Valamon, use the Deluge as its zero-point, listing years prior in A.D. (Ante-Diluvian) and P.D. (Post-Diluvian).Background
Author's Note: This section represents a major, world-defining spoiler for this setting. If used in games, information here should only be given out under the rarest of circumstances, usually in high-level campaigns.Nearly three millennia after the arrival of the First Empire and over centuries' worth of exploration and warfare, the great megalopolis of Alanthan'aravaut had settled into its own identity, a sprawling homage to the Empire's ancestral roots on Lorgain, but in many ways unique. One unavoidable difference on Waking Materia is the presence of its Dreaming mirror, the Duskscape, and with it its own endemic, sentient cultures. One such culture were the Disians.
The Disians
While most demonic societies are aloof to what they see as an inferior, backwater reality to their own, some do take an interest in Waking Materia and its inhabitants, for example the great hive cities of Dis. Dis was a society that used dead and dreaming souls as chattel slavery, and under the leadership of its then-Supreme Pontiff, Húm Quoth, the hive cities quietly developed a sizeable black market of souls from the expansion of the First Empires.Revenge
But Waking beings are not to be trifled with. The founding warlord of Alanthan'aravaut and the First Empire, the "High Empyrion" and "King of Kings", Inum'indiron'aravaut, was by this time an immortal Lichlord and ascendant demigod of water, storms, warfare and ambition. When the High Empyrion heard about the enslavement of his deceased citizens across the Veil, he was both incensed at their abuse and overjoyed at finding a new and worthy enemy.
With several Lichlord lieutenants in tow, many of whom were themselves arch-hydromancers of some immensity, Inum'indiron'aravaut crossed the Veil into the Near Umbra and marched on Dis. With a collective shout, the Kelpeaters raised their hands to the anomalous Duskscape sky, and with those hands rose what seemed to be all the water in the Near Umbra, more than enough to topple the great conical hive-towers like sandcastles.
But they knew not with what they were contending. Dis was an advanced civilization long before the Kelpeaters had even become a people. Having water thrown at them was akin to attacking a swordsman with a willow branch. What's more, Húm Quoth was not a Duskscape Regent that suffered insults of any measure. Scores of alien gates opened to face the colossal tsunamis, and through them the water rushed in a deafening cacophony, and the towers stood unmoved. The water had gone somewhere, but had not reached its target. The attackers retreated.The Result
The Lichlords arrived to chaos on the Waking side. The mystery of the missing Duskscape water became horrifically clear: it roiled outward from a mounstrous plume at the plane's centre, crushing the King of Kings' beloved cities beneath untold tonnes of haunted brine. No scribe was witness to the Lichlords at that moment, though even the most skilled may have had trouble describing their reaction. Their Era had ended, violently, and at their own hands.
Of the Lichlords only Inum'indiron'aravaut remains, albeit as a bestial, shadowy thing at the bottom of the Sunken Expanse, now known as Ina'ut-in-Mourning. The fate of the other Lichlords is unknown, hidden within the chaos of the ensuing Second Age. For a description of this period or the history thereafter, consult the Timeline.Date
2850 I.M.
0 P.D.
Comments