The Darkest Decade

Disaster / Destruction

The Darkest Decade refers to an unknown amount of time in the First Age, wherein much or all of Waking Materia experienced ceaseless night. The effects on the plane were utterly catastrophic: crops failed, resulting in starvation and malnutrition; new plagues emerged, so virulent even New Rozsan bioengineers struggled to keep up. It resulted finally in The Great Fractionation, where nations were forced to split from their parent empires in order to fend for themselves.

Scholarship

Some scholars believe this to be particularly long and dim winter season (seasons on Materia usually only last 1-5 years). Others believe it may have been an anomaly in the Wyld, or Arcane Dimension that lies above the Material realm (The Weave, or Mundus) and is thought to be responsible for celestial light phenomena.

Mythology

• Common belief in the Church of Saint Ajora is that the Overbeing Aios was so dismayed by the death of her son Solonn that she left Materia's skys to mourn, only to return a decade later, drawn by the sorrowful singing of the fallen Aiosian paladin, accompanied by a thousand birds.
• Cults of the Night Lady, Asphodel, commonly take credit for the Decade of Night, and it plays strongly into many of their religious stories and observances.
• It is allegedly this period where the lands of ancient Valamon were overrun with child-stealing demons, fought back and subdued by a barbarian king and eventual God of Winter, Jarl Juulnir.
• Worshippers of Elir-Otrinax believe Materia's skys were blotted out by the smoke and ash of The Wurm of Annihilation punishing a neighbouring plane for insufficient deference. This is one example where a church's mythology explicitly mentions the existence of other planes within the Void.