The Collapse

This story- My Story -will travel to worlds I don't know, so let me lay out some context here and now for you. It's ironic as I don't know much about my own world, no one really does anymore, but I believe before the Fel-star we had to have seen it all. My corner of it used to be called, Ninoegrast; it was united under The Wizard Kings, the whole continent managed by a nearly a hundred mages and their apprentices. I suppose they likely had more underlings beneath them, would apprentices have their own apprentices? Never mind. The Wizard Kings were the most powerful and learned people this side of the globe and in order to get King status a mage had to earn it. Magic was used in everything then; from forcing crops to grow fast, texts being written in light and on feather weight steel tablets and even the creation automaton servants. You couldn't walk down a street without seeing something powered by the arcane, so life was easy, and those that made it easy were made Kings. 

But what happens when that easy life gets torn out from under you? What do you do with your Kings then? This is when the Fel-Star comes into the story, when it wasn't wanted. No one I have ever met can tell you what the Fel-Star actually is, just what it looks like and what it has done to us. It first appeared to be a purple comet, bright in the day or night, growing in size as it grew close. Very few worried as most assumed the Wizard Kings could handle it should it actually become a problem. Those that did worry were shunned as doomsayers, calling "An end of days, only the gods can save us!" wasn't appreciated in a society built upon mortal mages that were treated like deities. 

The Wizard Kings had to have been sweating when the comet grew to be a bright purple moon above them. By that time though the Fel-star was close enough its Hex Aura was sweeping across the continent so blood and tears would be shed as well as sweat. Something about the Fel-star didn't agree with the enchantments the people of Ninoegrast had come to rely on, causing them to overload in one way or another. If you were lucky the enchantments just fizzled out and stopped working. The worst cases, which we still find, is an enchantment going into overdrive unprompted, like a self-propelled cart speeding over a cliff or the enchanted texts exploding in your hands. If only a few people used these kinds of magics it wouldn't have been so horrific, but I remind you that everyone had enchantments in their lives during this period of time. 

The Wizard Kings had no answer to this, no shield could be conjured, no abjuration built to repel the aura. As people died, their confidence in the mages that ruled them did as well, and as the Fel-Star loomed over the continent, it continued to radiate it's sickening magic without impediment. It's clear during the collapse people didn't know what the rain was doing to them, but we know now that the Fel-Star's magic affected nature as well. There's a forest in the north where one can always see the Fel-Star and the trees there are all mutated from centuries of Fel radiation. Most everything now has a bit of exposure to it, harmless if in small doses and you're living creature, but it does something to a corpse. In small doses it animated the corpse into a ghoul, and I assume the ogres are caused when someone dies from absorbing enough of the Fel to call it a large dose. I'm told ghouls and ogres aren't intelligent and can't be reasoned with, driven by a compulsion to absorb more Fel radiation be it that rains that animated them in the first place... or that little bit of radiation I said we all had by now. So during the collapse, when the dead started to rise and attacked anyone that had been rained on in the last week, it broke the last bit of confidence that was holding up the Wizard Kings.

In a last-ditch effort to repel the Fel-Star and keep their thrones, the Wizard Kings tried to go on the offensive instead. Gathering a final force of Wizards and apprentices (and probably apprentice-apprentices), they attempted a massive ritual to destroy the moon out of the sky. I am of the opinion someone screwed up, possibly on purpose, as I've seen enough Confederate caravans to know that when you have so many people being relied on to do their jobs, it takes just 1 to ruin a wagon train. No one knows why the spell failed because the mages that tried to cast it didn't survive, and if someone did survive, they probably went into hiding like that rat, Hans. You really won't know someone till their first raptor charge and if they ditch during our part of a Ceratop-cyclone maneuver. In my case I had more than just Hans to watch my back while driving, but the mages were the last that could meet the power of the Fel-Star... and it wasn't enough.

With the Wizard Kings shattered, the dead rising, the infrastructure of our society exploding and going off the rails! At that point we submitted and echoed; "It's the end of days and only the gods can save us". We prayed to old gods, never had we needed them like this and at first it wasn't clear they if they heard us, the few mortals left huddled in the dark.
Please, Braelot, Sage of the winding road, guide us to safety, or send our plea to your peers so we may be saved!
Kaelous, mystic warden, protector of the arcane font, this cosmic aberration fouls your beloved mana and those that would weave it!
Tatelus, forge keeper, hammer of the gods! You must have a weapon to smite this Fel-star, an only you can smash it!
Graelin, treasure seeker, trove master, upon your shrine we will reign gold for centuries if only you can destroy the wretched moon.

But there were no signs of their intervention, so we turned to new gods, ones untested in crisis but without options we called on anyone.
Felix, the stray, we have lost too much and can no longer fight. Hide us where we may outlast the Fel and its monsters.
Minsong, lovers entwinned, one of you was a great trickster, one last trick to save us and we will never let our halls grow dull and silent.

Clearly something was wrong, never had the gods been so silent, with even their more devoted followers there wasn't a sign. But even the silence did not deter the rash of new followers from coming to call on what seemed the last hope of Ninoegrast, perhaps the world. Maybe their silence was some sort of test, perhaps the gods were embarrassed to have so many come when it was too late, or maybe the gods were dead like so many of us. The truth was that we were forgetting a god that had until that moment wanted to be forgotten, an unknown. Aquellon, the boatman, deal maker and once a mortal like the rest of us. He was calling on his favors while the world burned, looking to make the deal of the century, again.

If Aquellon wasn't one of the worst in the pantheon, his rise as the boatman would be even more awesome. In short, The Boatman had caught the Old Gods by surprise one day, very tired and trying to cross a river that was too strong and vast for them to swim, only Aquellon and his boat could ferry the gods home. In exchange he asked each of the Old Gods for a favor as his toll. It was only after crossing the river that the gods realized they had been tricked, but the first of the Four Unbreakable Favors had been used to make Aquellon the first of the New Gods. Now had come the second of the Four Favors, Braelot had been forced to work against his mandate as Messenger and the prayer postage wasn't getting to their gods. It was a play at another deal and this time no one knew which of the gods made the deal, but most people agree only one of the gods did. 

From here our history goes dark, nothing written or passed down, and everything seemingly forgotten. How Aquellon was dealt with is unknown, technically speaking the disruption he caused wasn't known until after the voided history. It seems to me like if the gods made another deal, they are trying to hide it from us for some reason.  Whatever was agreed to in the blank history, coming out of it the Fel-Star remained but it was no longer as calamitous as it was before: new enchantments can't get hexed but old ones can, ghouls still rise if you don't take care of your dead but ogres aren't as common. The Wizard Kings did not return, most of the new nations seem made out of spite for the old one when you look at them from where I stand in history.

The most spiteful is the Queendom of Vailyagonn; essentially built from the women with and without magic that were second-class citizens under the Wizard Kings. I don't know a lot about them, but even confederates have heard rumors about the assassinations. The confederates are my people of the Blessed Confederacy, though we aren't that blessed anymore and with how much infighting has been going on we may not be confederates much longer either. We don't have cities like the folks to the North do, just keeps and a castle that our caravans travel to from time to time. Next is the Prolcun Wind Company, prolcun means the same as west where you're from and this trading company has been blowing in from the west since collapse. They too were nomads, but rather than keep to a corner of the continent and sit on traditions for the next millennium, they worked on reconnecting the Shattered Expanse. That's the name for the continent now as well as the central most neighbor, though usually if you say The Expanse people assume the continent, where if you add Shattered, they know which part you're speaking of.

The Shattered Expanse is supposedly the battleground that the blank history took place in and because of that it hosts many pilgrimages and circles of prayer. I never liked going there as a kid, but my parents were devotees of Minsong, so we made a lot of trips there to give away remedies and potions they made as apothecaries. The climate there is cold and dry, harsh for agriculture and it's the faithful that keep civilization here alive. This is also where my life gets up ended like a jug of pressed cider, all over Hans' head.