The Great Darkness

These were the Days of Tribulation. The Fall of the Sky Cities, the Flight of the Khazad, the Darkening of Rappan Athuk, the Curse of Barakus, the Penumbra of Rothenia, the Horror of Tannesh, the Sorrow of Seven Cities, the arrival of the Pale Ones – calamity after catastrophe hailed the coming of the Great Darkness, and the Time of the Great Old One.
The Dark Mistress, Hecate, beholding this threat to her Ascendancy, and perceiving an opportunity to cast aside the Elder God who opposed her domain, bid Ahriman the Djinn, who owed her favour, to fashion an elemental blade of indescribable power. This sword would surpass even the might of the Five Elemental Blades of Legend, for it could slice through the Godsveil and open a pathway to the realms of the Elder Gods.
This Sword of Air was given to Aka Bakar, High Wizard of Arcady, advisor to King Bahotep the Vile. Summoning the Winds of Ahriman, he cut through the Veil and called out to the gods. But he cried out in vain, for the gods had turned away from the desperate cries of their faithful. All except for one…
Arden, the Sun God, who preceded Khors the Pretender, was ashamed of the gods’ silence. Hearing the beseeching chants of Hecate’s covens, who wailed from the hearts of forgotten groves, Arden stepped through the Veil. The very earth tremored beneath the tread of the Elder God, but the Old One did not quake. A tide of demons swept through the land.
Auril, the Rime Witch, prepared a blasphemous ritual that could banish Tsathoggua and his demonic hordes to a dimensional prison beneath the lead mines of N’Kai. As the Norns stitched together the Godsveil and sealed it, Auril stripped Arden bare and demanded he relinquish his godhood and submit to the foul will of Hecate.
High upon the wind-blasted plateau of Feirgotha, Arden solemnly nodded, and bowed his head in silent surrender. Even as the witch tore him apart and cast his still-living viscera across the land, he did not weep. He knew well Hecate’s scheme, but this was the only way; by his suffering he would save all from Shadow.
As his flesh became one with Yuggoth, he smiled, and in one last act of creation he made eight crystal shards of his godly soul, one for each avatar of the Lords of Light, and one to create the Angels of the Astral Sea. Of these Soul Shards, one remains in the mortal realm, entrusted to the Champion of Mael.
While Arden perished, Aka Bakar drove back the demon host and forced the despicable Great Old One through the portal of N’Kai. And with Arden’s still-beating heart, Auril the Sorceress bound and incarcerated the Frog God and his ravening terrors. Thus, Arden became the Sundered God, who made the ultimate sacrifice for all mortal souls.
Yet some of the Frog God’s minions survived the wrath of Aka Bakar. Cassius, Herald of Tsathoggua, cursed the sword to crave the blood of Arden, before razing Tsen to the ground and unleashing upon it a dreadful pestilence that horribly mutated the survivors, bestowing upon them a fate far worse than death.
But he could not destroy the Heart, and he slipped away into obscurity to plot his Lord’s return. Zvilpoggua, Spawn of the Toad, used the lodestones of Yuggoth to anchor himself and resist the witch’s magic, while Nyarlathotep, the Immortal Pharoah, untouchable in his Azath tomb, remained to whisper his black prophecies of doom.
An unholy madness descended upon Aka Bakar, and with the Sword of Air he turned in a frenzy upon his own people, his king and his family, before taking his own life in a moment of stark insight and cold regret.

Excerpt from the History of Arcady by Mel’or’i. Chapter 16, Verses 332 – 343.