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The Godslayer's War
Relevant Knowledges: History, Literature, Regional (Aridoc, Ardashir), Religion
The Godslayer's War, known to the historians of Aridoc as the Great Bloodletting and to the elves as the Reavers' War, ended the Third Age and began the Fourth. Though the war was won over a thousand years ago, the wounds it inflicted on the world have yet to heal.
The tale of the Godslayer's War is also, largely, the tale of Maghredan.
In the Third Age, Maghredan was a demon-lord and the general of Baoz's Abyssal armies. He was a powerful fiend and an ambitious one, who chafed at being made to serve another. Wrath and rage were his domain, and he yearned for the freedom to inflict them with even greater ferocity than his Abyssal master allowed.
Plotting to win his independence, Maghredan began amassing power in secret. He bent many of the lesser demon-lords away from Baoz by promising them a freer hand in Bierilon, and tempted mortal champions with offers of greater power than the Iron-Crowned would grant. When the demon believed he had enough strength, he struck.
The ensuing battle was terrible but, as it was fought chiefly on the Abyssal planes, remains largely a mystery to the historians of Meditra. It is known that Baoz was gravely wounded, and that Maghredan wrested the five blood-red jewels from the older god's iron crown. These stones he claimed as his own, fashioning them into an inverted triangle that became the emblem of the new Lord of Wrath.
With their deity mortally wounded and in hiding, the followers of Baoz in Bierilon were thrown into disarray. Confusion and infighting weakened them further, and the new servants of Maghredan were quick to seize their moment of vulnerability. Across eastern Meditra, the citadels of Baoz fell and fortresses dedicated to Maghredan rose over their rubble.
During this period, with one of the great Abyssal lords crippled and another not yet ascendant, the goodly powers of the world enjoyed a flowering of peace and prosperity that they had seldom known. The end of the Third Age was widely considered a golden era; it saw achievements in art, culture and governance that would not be matched in a thousand years. Like all things of beauty in a mortal world, however, it came to an end too soon.
Maghredan's faithful built five great fortresses to honor their god, one for each of the jewels he had won from Baoz. The ragers and reavers who poured from these citadels were a scourge such as the world had never seen: they were as single-minded in their destructive fury as undead, yet somehow more horrible. Maghredan's reavers were still men who breathed and ate and slept, but there was nothing of humanity left in them. They could not be reasoned with, they could not be bought off, and they did not fight to conquer. They fought to destroy. They sowed the earth with bones and stained the rivers red with blood, and where they marched, nothing grew ever after.
The armies of Maghredan swept westward, killing all in their path. Maghredan himself rode at their fore, and none could withstand the charge of his Dedicated. Undefeated, they came to the twin empires of Aridoc and Ardashir. All Meditra knew that if the empires failed to hold back the reavers' tide, nothing would be left to stop them before they reached the shores of the far sea; and so the remaining powers of the world came together in the Last Alliance.
Sorethan the Golden, the last Northern Emperor of Aridoc, led the alliance. The dwarves of Cathilcarn marched out from their mountains to war under Sorethan's banner; the elves of Delverness emerged from the shade of their leaves. The champions of the goodly gods came crowned in gold and white, and the emissaries of the fell temples wreathed in shadow. Even the scattered Baozite survivors mustered their strongest warriors for the crusade. For that one, rare moment in the long tale of the world, all set aside their differences to join against a common foe.
Prophecy decreed that only a mortal hand could slay the god, but there was no mortal weapon capable of wounding Maghredan. During the Last Alliance, therefore, the high priests of every god joined with the archmages of Meditra to forge the Godslayer's Sword. The histories that survive from that time describe it as a blade of crystalline purity, glittering with the rainbow hues of a thousand beliefs united in their opposition to Maghredan. The Godslayer's Sword was given to Helsair Fairshield, a young paladin of Celestia, who bore the weapon with courage and dignity, for all believed that he who struck the deathblow to a god would not survive to see his victory.
The Last Alliance met the reavers on what was then known as Anlen-Vais, the Field of Sorrows, where the soldiers of Ardashir had met and vanquished many a foe in years past. The battle raged for three days and three nights, and the field was trampled into a marsh of blood. At dawn on the fourth day, praying for his goddess' blessing, Helsair met Maghredan. Their fight was long and terrible, but the god's arrogance proved his undoing. Believing that no weapon could harm him, Maghredan disdained to defend himself fully, and Helsair found a gap in his hellforged mail. The young knight struck true.
The Reavers' War did not end so easily, however. Contrary to what was claimed, not every deity had lent his power to the forging of the Godslayer's Sword. True to his treacherous nature, Anvhad held back, believing that he would gain an advantage over the other gods by keeping all his own power while they sacrificed a portion of theirs. Thus, the weapon was flawed when made, though the flaw remained concealed until Helsair's final blow.
Because of the Betrayer's treachery, the Godslayer's Sword shattered when Helsair drove it into the wrath-god's heart. The sword broke into seven pieces, each containing some fraction of the gods' collected essence, and the land itself tore apart under the fury of so much power released. The Field of Sorrows sank beneath the sea and was lost; the Cithon Peninsula was broken off by the drowning of Anlen-Vais and became an island, later known as Ihoshi.
It is said that the Hazeth Sea, which formed from the waters that rushed in to cover the Field of Sorrows, turns red each summer on the anniversary of Maghredan's death. It is said, too, that the Lord of Wrath did not truly die that day on Anlen-Vais, but that some fragment of his spirit survived due to the Betrayer's flaw, and that he merely bides his time until he can return.
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