The Leviathan Gods

Summary

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

After many centuries of oppression by the great and fierce gods, certain groups of trained human warrior decided they had enough of living in fear of the gods. They forged powerful weapons and great armor to combat the gods and bring the raging titans down. When the gods learned of this, they laughed and laughed, picturing them as a group of annoying ants, pecking at their feet.

The human warriors called themselves the godhunters and entered the domains of the draconic god of flame. They saw the god emerge from his lair and stand tall, as a gargantuan monster of flame and rage. The godhunters didn't back down and the god charged at them, expecting a quick victory. But the godhunters had trained, and they were tired of being ruled over. They showered the titanic god with searing-hot arrows and tied him down with scorching rope. The god raged and raged but the godhunters's shields stood strong. Once the god was tied down and blinded, the godhunters tore through every inch of the god until the great titan came crumbling down. The age of fear was over. The gods raged and thrashed, but, one by one, humanity slew them them all and brought an end to the age of the gods.

Historical Basis

The myth of the ancient gods is one of the oldest myths recorded by Imperial scholars. So many ages have passed that even the oldest stories are now full of so much fiction and hyperbole that the original meaning has long since been lost to time. The gods were believed to have been great, shape-shifting creatures who would either take the form of a great beast of gargantuan proportions or of a more humanoid creature of similarly large proportions. It is believed that there were around a hundred or so of these gods. The gods reveled in war and ruled over the primitive human tribes with fear and anger.

There were some goddesses, but they were few and many were just as bellicose as the gods. Now, of course, every single god has fallen and been slain by heroic godhunters...but there is no record saying that every single goddess has been slain. Of course most probably have been, but perhaps not all. Whichever goddesses may still be alive could have managed to escape certain death by bending the knee to humanity as a goddess of harvest, fertility or love and slowly being lost to time or perhaps escaping beyond the Great Mountains, to the west. While these are all contradictory legends and rumors, meant to explain the mysterious Elven beliefs long-since lost to time, one idea remains clear in any telling of this legend: the age of the gods--the age of fear is over.

Spread

The myth is very common in and around the former Caleian heartland, in the far east. Many adjacent cultures have quite similar myths with the same basic story, or simple deviations of it with different gods and godhunters. In the North, where the pre-Caleian peoples still reside, the gods are viewed as dragons and the godhunters as dragon slayers, whereas in the steppes, the gods themselves are the hunters, who slew a supposedly older race of tyrant kobold deities. The Great Mountains is where this myth begins to die out though, as beyond it, in the mysterious Thyrian Empire and its subjects, the notion of slaying a god is deemed as heretical by the theocracy.

Date of First Recording

Late Silver Age (III)

Date of Setting

The Draconic Age (I)

Related Species

• Elves
• Humans