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The First Age of Man

The Deliberative Of The Enlightened

In the years following the defeat of the Primordials, humanity and the gods set about rebuilding their shattered world. With the help of the handful of Primordials who had joined the gods, and who now portrayed themselvs as gods to a credulous humanity, the gods showed humans ever-greater feats of magic and creation. Thaumaturgy flourished in this new Age, as the greatest heroes of the Enlightened founded the Great Deliberative, a place of wisdom and learning, where savants, scholars, rulers and generals brushed shoulders, sharing the knowledge of the empire. In these heady days, it was a given that the Threefold Arts - Enlightened martial arts, thaumaturgy, and the blessings of the gods - would be taught to anyone with the will to Rebelligrasp them. In addition, the Deliberative became a haven for Savants, and a rallying ground for heroes of all stripes. Some gods said that the Loom of Fate itself trembled when the Deliberative made a decision, for they had the very power to overturn Fate itself, should they so choose.

From their seat on the Pillar of the World, the great mountain in the centre of Creation, the Deliberative gradually spread their power. Nations who had opposed the Choosing War were brought to heel one by one, new nations were founded, and warriors rode out to do battle with the new dangers that were forming. And dangers there were. First, there were the Primordials themselves. Though bound to their prisons, they were as immortal as ever. Bitter, twisted even further into madness and evil by their forceful imprisonment by their inferiors and forced into closer proximity to one another than ever before, they reshaped their world into a place of torment and horror, to which they subjected one another while plotting and scheming to gain their freedom. They found ways to breach the barriers for a time, and discovered that, with effort, human cultists could crack their prison from without, calling them forth. To this end, they worked tirelessly to spread this knowledge throughout Creation, ensuring that the war against the gods would never end.

Another danger came from the dead. The great amounts of destruction wrought during the Choosing War had strained the mechanisms of rebirth past their limit, and those whose souls resisted death had found themselves transformed into ghosts. More impressively, once some ghosts existed, more followed. Soon, a small but notable percentage of those who died found their way to this Underworld, where they clung to unlife with fervor and passion, trying endlessly to delay their passing into the next world. While some of these ghosts were kind or caring, many of the reasons to hold to life were vengeful or dark, and many ghosts became hollowed out over time, losing their true intellect in favour of a pure routine goverened by the passions they had died for. Priests and heroes of the Deliberative were forced time and again to seek out rogue ghosts and send them on to their next lives.

Finally, there was the Wyld. Although the borders of Creation were strong, the Fair Folk walked into the edges of the world, seeking either to examine this strange new place or to destroy it. Both were terribly dangerous, scourges that could leave whole regions in flames if they were not stopped. A few became guardians of the world, fighting their own brethern, but they were rare. Still, despite these three great foes, the Deliberative stood strong, and Creation grew and prospered.

Corruption and Deceit

As time passed, however, the Deliberative became accustomed to power. Generation by generation, the rulers of Creation concentrated power increasingly in their own hands. The first step was the creation of an aristocratic class, through the Deliberative's requirement of proof of heroism for membership being modified to include heroic ancestors. The next step was the gradual reduction of new heroes being accepted, as the proof required because increasingly difficult to obtain. At the same time, the Deliberative gradually began to restrict the highest teachings of their powers to those who were 'proven' after a series of minor disasters resulted from a poorly-run teaching process.

It took over a hundred years for the process to begin, and six hundred more for it to become complete. However, by seven hundred years after the Choosing War, humanity was lost. The gods, many of them jealous of power, saw no fault in restricting power to a few humans, giving them free reign over the rest, and the Deliberative had lost any faith in the general population to use the teachings that they now jealously guarded. All thaumaturgy, martial arts and blessings were restricted to the ruling classes, and savants were taken into 'patronage' against their wills, ensuring that their amazing inventions belonged only to the Deliberative. Those areas that had resisted Deliberative rule were brought into the fold, one by one, through whatever means the Deliberative felt were necessary, including numerous occasions when devastating weapons were deployed that murdered thousands.

During this time, the battle against the Three Great Enemies remained strong; in fact, it only grew, as perceived heresies that seemed too lenient on the Enemies were harshly punished. Loyal Primordials began to fear that they would be targeted next, and even the gods grew concerned by the power that was concentrating in the hands of the Deliberative; they passed laws about how humans could worship, governing the flows of Essence to the gods, and set themselves as the rulers of Heaven and Creation.

The Upheaval

The Dragon Cult

Salvation, in a way, came from an unexpected source: within the Deliberative itself. A small, secretive cult that worshipped the Five Elements, in the form of the Elemental Dragons, began to take shape deep within the Deliberative. Taking root before the Deliberative's restrictions had become absolute, it preached a doctrine of responsibility, that power was not a privilege but a burden. They practiced only variants on five martial arts, which were deemed 'pure', and restricted thaumaturgy and blessings only to those who had proven their ability to resist temptation and power. The members of the Immaculate Order Of The Dragons, often known as the Dragon Cult, looked around and saw the deadly horrors that the Deliberative was inflicting, and they knew that they had to take action before there was no one left to oppose the tyranny growing in the once-great Deliberative's place.

Even this discontent might have come to nothing; though the Deliberative was often cruel, the powerful still supported them, and many people, although leery of them, refused to consider changing society; the threat of the fabric of civilization coming undone was generally considered to be too great, as a war against the Deliberative would unleash the greatest weapons of the Age. However, it was a natural event that ultimately gave the Dragon Cult their chance.

The Great Contagion

The Great Contagion was a horror from beyond the World. Over the course of the Deliberative, it had not been unknown for a new Primordial to push its way through the Wyld and manifest in Creation. These beings were swiftly captured, and forced to either swear allegiance to the gods, or banished to Malfeas. This happened again in D.Y. 787, as a new Primordial slipped through the borders of the world, and she was extremely powerful. However, her Essence was self-created, and as she had not been one of the first Primordials, she did not realize that her own Essence flows were hostile to those of Creation. In the days of Primordial rule, the Primordials had caught their brethern on the borders and modified them, rendering them able to live in Creation. In the early days of the Deliberative this had continued, when the surviving Primordials reached their brethern. When they did not, the Primordials quickly collapsed, leaving poisoned Essence fields that proved lethal to those around them before being contained.

This new Primordial never had a name, for her power worked against her. Alien Essence flows, stronger than almost any of the Primordials of old, collapsed within moments, spreading through the Essence streams of Creation. No longer guarded by the Primordials, they were left unchecked, and where they spread, death followed.

The effects of the Contagion were first documented early in D.Y. 788, in a small village in the Northeast. The disease affected plants, animals, and human in equal measure, and was profoundly contagious and dangerously lethal; it infected close to 75% of the populations encountered, and over two thirds of those infected succumbed, after days or weeks of fighting. Those that did not succumb could remain diseased for weeks, before suddenly recovering as though they had never been ill. By the time the disease was firmly reported to the Deliberative, two weeks later, it had spread across a quarter of the world, travelling along Essence lines and feeding off the released Essence of the deaths it left in its wake. One week after that, the gods had discovered its source, by which point all of Creation was infected. Once it finished spreading, the tainted Essence had nowhere to go, sinking into the Underworld towards Oblivion, but the damage had been done. Half of the population of Creation was destroyed, and the edges of the world lay in tatters. Entire regions became unwoven, fading into the chaotic Wyld.

Rebellion

The Order of the Dragons preached that this plague was the result of the corruption of the Deliberative, and their relentless pursuit of power. They claimed that the disease had been spread as a curse of the gods, and the gods did not care to contradict them. Ravaged Threshold kingdoms, incensed that the Deliberative had failed to protect them, declared themselves independant even as the Order of the Dragon declared war.

The war lasted five years, and did much damage, ruining many of those structures and devices and people that had survived the Contagion. When the dust cleared, however, the Deliberative was gone. In its place stood the Immaculate Order and the Draconic Dynasty, a rigid theocracy that would hold its grip on the world for the next seven centuries.