War Against the Far Realm
The War Against the Far Realm, also called the Far War, was a war against invaders from the Far Realm that changed the world of Erathia in fundamental ways. It began with the shattering of the moon and ended with the withdrawal of the gods. The Far War began when warlocks who worshipped the Sleeper performed the necessary ritual and sacrifices to summon the Great Old Ones from the Far Realm to awaken their leader.
The Path of War
This global war pitted the entire world against invading aberrations from 3035 FA to 3060 FA. For these two and a half decades, the mortal races and the gods, irregardless of past differences, were united as one in their attempt to save the world. All military, arcane, and divine forces were focused on the singular goal of repelling the aberrant horde. Millions of mortals died from attacks, massacres, starvation, and disease. Several gods perished in battle against elder gods and immense monstrosities.
Night of the Shattered Moon
On the Night of the Shattered Moon the forces of the Far Realm were summoned to Erathia's sphere by a forgotten group of warlocks who successfully performed the Ritual of Awakening. The Sleeper woke up enough to call his siblings to come crack him out of his shell. They came with a legion of aberrant monsters descending from the stars onto the world. They summoned their mightiest weapon, the Bakunawa, and sent the great serpent hurtling towards the world to crack it open.
The gods Braza and Feshluf sacrificed themselves to divert the attack. With it's first target beyond reach, the old serpent hurled itself at its old desire, the Moon. The goddess Thaya beheaded the serpent, but was overcome by its writing coils and spewing venom. She died and the serpent and its host of monstrosities descended upon the moon, breaking it into pieces. The new Shattered Moon pulsated a sickly gray-green in the night sky.
The First Armada
The tragedy of The First Armada is a lesson in hubris that some say the elves are still learning. The elves were the only mortals with the capability of striking back at the invaders in the sky. They hid ancient elven spelljammers in the oldest groves of their forests. They began the process of fitting them to fly into space to attack the Far Realms forces where they gathered.
They refused any help from other mortal races, believing that the mere existence of their ships along with their martial prowess would be enough to defeat the aberrant armies. They were horifically wrong.
Their ships never made it to the moon. A million elves died on those ships, smashed to pieces on a blockade of Far Realm Dreadnoughts. The First Armada was a miserable failure.
The Kirinal Explosion
The world's lowest point came five years into the war. The forces of the Far Realm engineered a simultaneous invasion from the sky on the same day that multiple planar breaches to the Far Realm opened in the Kirinal Pit. The instability caused an explosion mirroring the first Kirinal Catastrophe, but at three times the scale.
The forces based at the Pit recognized the signs of an impending explosion, and they were able to evacuate almost everyone from the old boundaries of the Kirinal Pit. A force of 10,000 Kirinal Defenders remained behind to hold the invading Far Realm armies in place. The Defenders and the invaders were all incinerated in the second catastrophe that widened the Pit from 10 miles in diameter to 30 miles in diameter.
The devastation was so overwhelming that the Far Realms forces took five years to replenish themselves. This gave the new Concordance for Survival enought time to organize and begin the successful defense of the world.
The Second Armada
The first successful attacks against the Far Realm on the Shattered Moon were carried out by the Shattered Moon Coalition. The vampires of the Blood Moon Covenant somehow convinced the elves and druids, Thaya's Vindicators, to join them in an attempt to avenge their lost goddess.
The alliance of elves, druids, vampires, wizards, lycans, shifters, and the Church of Sun & Moon assembled on a cobbled together Second Armada. With a lot less arrogance and much more stealth and strategy, they managed to land on the Moon. They were able to hold off the Far Realms forces long enough to establish a permanent gate back to the world below. That first base on the moon allowed the mortal armies to finally take the battle to their enemies.
Battle for the Barrow Shard
The next turning point came with the discovery of Thaya's divine corpus on the Barrow Shard. She was entangled with the corpse of the Bakunawa and the Far Realm's forces were using both of them as divine power sources. If they could take the Barrow Shard and deprive the enemy of those resources, they could possibly close the gates to the Far Realm that they were using for reinforcements.
Ariana Durinhelm and her psion followers performed a great ceremony of transformation that turned the corpse of the Bakunawa into the great tree Lokorn. The spell took so much energy that it drained them of their lives, but they were successful. The invading army was left without a power source and their largest base was taken away from them at the same time. The portals to the Far Realm began to close.
Naraky's Eggs
Just as the War seemed to be turning in the world's favor, the Great Old Ones refocused on their original goal. They began a great ritual to awaken the Sleeper so that it could crack the world open from the inside itself. With the Elder Gods entering the conflict directly themselves, the Gods of Erathia decided to counterbalance them.
The Avatar of Naraky, Gemini Dolgathason was tasked with fiinding a way to stop them. He performed the trick of Naraky's First Egg, where he switched out the Sleeper in "The Egg of the Old Ones" with the contents of a hen's egg.
This drove the Great Old Ones mad as they chased Gemini with the greatest of their kind held in the palm of his hand.
The Gods Withdraw
With the Elder Gods in such a state of agitation, the gods took their chance to finally end the War Against the Far Realm after 25 long hard years. They rose from the world, pushing and dragging the Great Old Ones along with them. The desperate Elder Gods were completely distracted by the presence of the Sleeper as they chased after Naraky's avatar.
Once all the gods and the Great Old Ones were outside of the world's Crystal Sphere, the gods closed the Divine Gate behind them. As a result, neither gods nor Great Old Ones can physically manifest within the Sphere. Their influence is greatly reduced and any mortal that grows too powerful is pulled out of the world by the Gate.
Comments