Torches in the Dark
In a world shattered by eldritch horrors and broken gods, where magic tears at the fabric of reality itself, survivors cling to fragments of civilization in the shadow of the Slender Crown's return.
Enter the Darkness
In a world shattered by eldritch horrors and broken gods, where magic tears at the fabric of reality itself, survivors cling to fragments of civilization in the shadow of the Slender Crown's return.
Enter the DarknessHow forbidden knowledge shattered the natural order and brought horror to the world.
The world is a fragmented, ruined shell of what it once was, and magic is what ensures it stays that way. In Ages past, before the Night of the Vacant Throne -- when mankind and the other races of Ayotha were given the chance to meet a sliver of what it was that they had foolishly called their Gods -- the world followed the rules set out for it at its creation.
Arcanery, in a very generous sense of implying it existed at all, was only a theoretical, philosophical exercise, conducted in meeting halls and lounges by societies that simply enjoyed dressing their social circles in a different kind of trapping. It did not exist; not merely as the world sees it now, in this broken age of horrors, but at all, and when it did arrive, it did so on the wings of nightmares.
Magic is not some mystical recipe its practitioners follow on a day-to-day basis to casually manipulate the world around them; while it affects very real results in the world around it, these results are consequences of another reality being imposed upon ours and causing the one we live in to shatter, albeit in -- at least hopefully -- a controlled fashion.
Before the Night of the Vacant Throne, magic was merely theoretical discourse.
The Black Book: A living tome of alien knowledge and corrupted power.
As far as scattered records can ascertain, the application of this knowledge came at the hands of the humans of Ayotha first, as most of their peers and the other races struggled not just to rebuild but to survive in the lloigor-wracked wasteland that was once a comparatively peaceful, fertile world.
After the Night of the Vacant Throne, rumors of uncovered writings which allowed real magic, real power, to be channeled through a dedicated practitioner and out into the world. These writings were collected in an utterly forbidden grimoire that came to be known as the Black Book, a tome with many speculated origins.
Some say the Book is a legitimately living, sentient other, alien and conscious entity with unknown and sinister purposes. Others say that it exists simultaneously in other times, other places, other worlds, and exists conterminously to spread its influence in the past, present, and future all.
What is incontrovertible, however, is that the following of parsed and translated rituals found in this book or copies of it has wrought unmistakable horror upon the world and those in it. While the Night of the Vacant Throne was responsible for the destruction of cities, towns, and life, the magic found in the Black Book is responsible for the corruption of what remains and what has been built to try and effect repairs upon those shattered remnants.
Every so-called spell cast brings Ayotha closer to a tremulous reality merged with that of wherever the grimoire truly came from, and even amongst the universally loathed practitioners, all but the maddest can recognize that that would bode very, very poorly for our world and those living in it.
People have been strung up, burned, tied, and quartered, even tortured to death over days over mere mention of witchcraft, and this is the case through almost all true civilization. Only in the vast, far reaches of the untamed world is this viewpoint ever relaxed, and even then, it would still be a poor idea to reveal oneself -- fear is the most powerful motivator of violence.
Ayotha today: A world scarred by divine abandonment and eldritch corruption.
Hope flickers like flame in the endless darkness.
The Night of the Vacant Throne and the fall of the Arkkadian Empire.
The Night of the Vacant Throne is a tale etched deep into the somber annals of Ayotha's history, a chilling memory that even time itself dares not erase. It was the night when the haughty kings of the once mighty Arkkadian Empire, in their fervor and fanaticism, sought an audience with their deities in a spectacle of self-immolation.
The Arkkadians were worshippers of flame, revering it as the embodiment of their gods. The weeks leading up to the Night of the Vacant Throne were frenzied with preparation. Supplicants and slaves, chosen as sacrificial lambs, were led to pyres where their screams echoed through the imperial cities as they were immolated alive.
The devout priests of the Empire, their faces etched with zeal and grim determination, immersed themselves in intricate rituals. They prepared themselves for the ultimate act of faith, a self-sacrifice to echo through the ages.
The great immolation - Arkkadian nobility burns in devotion to their gods.
The moment reality broke - when the Slender Crown emerged from the shattered sky.
As the evening descended into a hauntingly serene darkness, kings, emperors, nobles, and their retinues gathered around pyres, their faces aglow with the sinister dance of the flames. They stood resolute, their conviction unyielding, as they set themselves, their families, and their servants ablaze in the name of their gods.
In the throes of their self-destruction, they raised their flaming hands towards the heavens, their voices rising in fervent prayer. They waited, their bodies writhing in the fiery torment, for the arrival of their gods.
Yet, the heavens did not open to reveal the fire gods they had so zealously served. Instead, the sky shattered like a broken mirror, the jagged shards revealing an alien realm. From this world wound, the Slender Crown emerged, its monstrous form a blasphemous mockery of their burning devotion.
Six centuries of war, horror, and the struggle for survival
With the Slender Crown's catastrophic arrival on the Night of the Vacant Throne, the dreaded era of the Black Crusades began. Like a storm, its arrival was sudden, its devastation incomprehensible, and its consequences lingering and profound. The Slender Crown, this alien deity, brought with it not just the terror of its existence, but the promise of relentless war that would engulf all of Ayotha.
The mighty Arkkadian Empire, once the bedrock of civilization, was the first to bear the brunt of the Slender Crown's wrath. The empire that had so arrogantly sought to commune with the gods was savaged and shattered under the monstrous god's onslaught. Its once resplendent cities were razed to the ground, its proud armies decimated, and its people scattered.
In the wake of the Arkkadian Empire's destruction, Ayotha was fractured. Noble houses turned into feudal fiefdoms, each desperately clinging to what remained of their power. Small, unconquered kingdoms, mere shadows of their former glory, huddled in fear, waiting for the storm of the Black Crusades to descend upon them.
The Slender Crown's reign of terror drew the monstrous races to its side, their primal instincts enticed by the promise of bloodshed and destruction. They joined the Slender Crown's unholy crusade, sweeping through Ayotha with a ferocity that seemed to know no bounds.
The Black Crusades - Monstrous legions sweep across the continent
The mortal races of Ayotha were pushed to the brink of extinction. Cities fell, civilizations crumbled, and countless lives were lost in the face of the seemingly unstoppable Black Crusades. Yet, in their darkest hour, the mortal races found within themselves a desperate resolve. Against all odds, they resisted the Slender Crown's onslaught, their spirit of survival burning brighter than the fires that consumed their world.
Their efforts, though commendable, would likely have ended in vain had the Slender Crown not vanished as suddenly and inexplicably as it had arrived. The god's disappearance brought a sudden halt to the Black Crusades, leaving behind a world scarred by war and soaked in blood.
Living in the shadow of the Slender Crown's return
Wytch Towers - Monuments to madness that birth horrors into the world
After the Slender Crown's mysterious disappearance, Ayotha was left to nurse its deep, festering wounds. But instead of peace, seven omens swept across the lands, each more terrifying than the last, serving as a grim reminder of the world's broken state and the persistent threat of the Slender Crown's return.
The onset of these dire omens drove the battered and traumatized inhabitants of Ayotha into vast migrations. Kingdoms and fiefdoms turned on each other, in desperate attempts to find safer grounds, away from the ominous monoliths and the terrifying Wytch Towers that spawned nightmares into reality.
Magic, once a subject of academic debate and philosophical conjecture, had been revealed as a horrifying reality, an unwelcome echo of the Slender Crown's reign. Magic was feared and loathed, seen as an unnatural force ripping the fabric of reality.
Six-hundred years have passed since the onset of the Black Crusades, yet Ayotha remains a land cloaked in darkness and shadowed by fear. The Slender Crown's vanishing brought not a restoration but a sustained struggle, a fight not against a visible enemy but against the chaotic remnants of a war long past and the dread of a war yet to come.
As mankind struggled to rebuild, monstrous entities, remnants of the Slender Crown's legions, lurked in the shadows. They haunted the ruins of old cities, prowled the wild frontiers, and stalked the labyrinthine tunnels of ancient ruins beneath Ayotha, preying on the weak and the lost.
The world is a cruel and unforgiving place, yet in their struggle, the mortal races of Ayotha find resilience, forging their path through the darkness, one step at a time.
Light a torch against the darkness
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