My World of Words

During the Age of Discord, gods and goddesses clashed, their terrible battles leaving scars upon the land of Sath’Kalios. In the aftermath, where champions lay slain, gods and goddesses wounded, banished, victorious, the land was carved into nations, each a territory claimed by a deity and inhabited by their followers and looked after by their covenants.

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To the east, across the Shattered Peaks, lay two realms at ancient odds with each other. The Ironclad Tower of Alith’malar had stood since time immemorial, a place of study, knowledge, and arcane prowess under Iorkaden, the God of Knowledge and Magic. His Covenant of Erudition, headed by a mysterious set of mages known only as the Order, ruled the tower, its floors divided into their unique areas of study.

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The mages of Alith’malar not only focused on studying the arcane, but were also responsible for creating constructs, automatons of metal and magic that served as protectors of the Tower and the rest of Sath’Kalios. For to the north lay Verdak, a region overtaken by the wilds, covered in forested crags and ruins of once great cities, inhabited only by creatures known as fleshrovers. The spawn of Nogvrahl the Devourer, God of Insatiable Hunger, these shapechangers had only one goal: to devour all living creatures in the land. Alith’malar’s mages and automatons had been locked in horrific battle against these amalgams of flesh and bone and blood that stole the faces of those they consumed, until, at last, they were offered some respite inadvertently by the gods.

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Nogvrahl was not Iorkaden’s only enemy. None despised Iorkaden’s dogmas of knowledge, order, and rigorous training of a keen mind more so than Wystria, Goddess of the Lurking Dark. She presided over the terrors in the night, dreams bred of ill rest, and delighted in the chaos sewn by madness, in turning the minds of men and women into their prisons. In the battles littering the timeline of the Age of Discord, Iorkaden and his champions – Callamen Rir the Scholar, Miskavell the Weaver, and Gehron Verrkun the Hermit – had many clashes with Wystria and hers– Kriella Wyst the Deranged, Niophi Pall the Fearmonger, and the Nightmare Dria Tunis. Kriella, Wystria’s own daughter, led the incursions against the Ironclad Tower, taking upon herself the task to kill Iorkaden.

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However, Kriella did not break his mind nor cut him down with dark magic. Something about his grace, his thirst for knowledge and curiosity for the world, had touched her twisted mind, and she grew to love Iorkaden. Her loyalties shifted such that when Wystria and Iorkaden came to blows, Kriella deflected what would have been her mother’s killing blow against him. Instead, the blade struck the earth, carving a yawning chasm between Alith’malar and Verdak.

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This Great Schism, an eminent danger, also served as a stroke of luck for Alith’malar. The fleshrovers could not cross it, and the mages were able to erect a barrier to seal both the planar rift in its depths, and the fleshrovers to the other side. Now fenced in by the Schism to the south and the Shattered Peaks to the west, Nogvrahl’s spawn were confined to Verdak, and the rest of the world was kept secure from their constant, gnawing hunger.

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Though the conflict between mage and fleshrover had seemingly ended, the conflict of gods had yet to be resolved. Iorkaden had not escaped unscathed from his battle with the Lady Mad; Wystria’s blade had sought to seal Iorkaden’s essence and magic into her domain, the Nightmare Plane, using his magical energy as an amplifier that would allow her to invade other planes and spread darkness like an infection. Though it did not kill him, it still cut Iorkaden, linking some of his power to the Schism and creating a rift that could spread and begin to consume the Material Plane if unchecked. As such, the Alith’malarian mages put forth a decree that tampering with the barrier or Schism was forbidden, an edict that would one day be broken…