The First Daemonic Invasion

Daemons were not originally a part of the world, and the cause for their creation is a mystery, or perhaps a secret known only to the Gods. Whilst their existence and constant attempts to breach through the aetherchasms that were once the paths knitting the known universe together are now a constant threat, the first daemonic invasion was a widescale, co-ordinated assault that took all by surprise and took a long and bloody century to reach its conclusion.
The initial strike was swift and sudden. Daemons emerged in force from the aetherchasm on Expin, rapidly destroying the nearby settlements, capturing many of the citizens. Whilst the daemons gained a foothold at the aetherchasm and fortified the immediate surroundings, most of their forces went to Starport with the intent to disrupt and limit the more advanced technology that could be used against them should they be given more time to prepare. Smaller forces made their way to each of the other continents, intending to push each nation into fending for themselves, limiting the odds of a unified push on Expin and the aetherchasm to cut off their only way of getting reinforcements.
Mistral was the only God present on the planet at the time and was wholly unprepared for the sudden attack. When word got to her of this sudden attack from an unknown enemy in Expin, she floundered and hesitated, trying to figure out how best to proceed when the attack on Starport began in earnest. Worried for her own people, she was hesitant to put herself on the line elsewhere, as her own followers were more artisans than warriors. The Mireiyan Eltari, a host of which had been present during the Eltari Uprising were more than prepared to fight, and besides that had been working on a project in secret that offered Mistral a solution. They'd constructed the underwater city of Mireiylle, a safe place below the waves for the mireiyans to reside. Mistral proceeded to prioritise getting her people to the safety of Mireiylle before rallying those who were willing and able to fight to reinforce Starport.
Starport had sent messages to the last known planets the other Gods had been, but the time it takes for messages to travel through space meant it could be years before they even hear the message, and instead have to hope that they return on their own. The higher tech level afforded to Starport offered a lot of protection, including heavy shielding to prevent a lot of the larger daemons getting through, focusing the fight on the smaller daemons who could slip through into the streets and do some damage. These were more of a hassle than a threat, but did a good job of keeping the forces there pinned down and unable to press forward.
As they couldn't enter Starport, the larger daemons broke off for the Academy of Arcanus. These daemons were powerful, and notably resistant to magic, causing a lot of trouble for the students of magic present. Whilst in greater numbers they could repel the daemons, smaller groups were easy pickings, and so the daemons took to hit and run tactics to scatter the spellcasters more thinly whilst trying to steal or destroy what knowledge they could to further damage the available teachings for later generations.
Stalvenrakh and Geminus were the furthest away from Expin and the hardest for the daemons to reach quickly. Geminus' nature of self-improvement made them less likely to get involved unless they were directly a threat, and so a single archon was sent to it with aim of slowly corrupting the wildlife in the less densely populated area in a discreet manner. Stalvenrakh on the other hand was the most prepared for battle and had the largest standing army, so the priority instead was to target the civilians with guerilla tactics, forcing their military to stay put to respond to the threats their citizens were put under.
The Aquos archipelagos were left for last, the puppetmaster of the entire invasion expecting them to be the weakest and easiest to take. The contingent sent their way were surprised however to find no easy targets, and were utterly annihilated by Mistral and her forces, having brought the brunt of a wrathful god down on their heads. Having repelled the initial wave, Mistral intended to scout Expin herself and sent her forces to assist the academy in the hopes that the tomes would house some answers to just what they were facing.
Expin meanwhile was facing a cruel transformation across the entire continent. The daemons were constantly pouring out of the aetherchasm, adding to their ranks and pushing outwards to the other continents. The approach the daemons on Expin were taking however was mostly different. It's unclear if there were some unknown ulterior motives, if it was because they had enough of a foothold to do so or a side effect of their entry through the aetherchasm, they'd been working to change the land and its inhabitants. Mistral managed to find evidence of the most powerful daemons were able to manipulate life on a complex level, completely altering their biology in a permanent way beyond even what Mistral herself knew how to do. With this worrying revelation, Mistral tried to help as many residents escape as possible, both the untouched and those who'd maintained their minds through whatever strange magics the daemons had weaved across the land. Eventually, as she watched the hordes grow bigger and spread further across Expin, she realised that she had to look at a larger picture when it came to saving people, and snuck her way through to the aetherchasm, hoping to use it to find the other gods and perhaps learn more of what the daemon's origins were.
If Mistral learned anything of the cause within, she never shared it publically. What she did make clear on her eventual return however were two things: daemons were similar to eltari, having been twisted in a similar vein to what the daemons were doing to mortals, and Eltar wasn't the only planet that was under attack.
Her search was successful on most counts, having found all but Domitari; even managing to track down Nameless Sixth. Each had been beset by swathes of daemons, a veritable shield of malformed meat bodies to hold back the gods and keep them away from Eltar. Mistral's arrival from behind was able to disrupt those plans one by one, as the gods came together, prepared to end this menace once and for all. The realisation that other planets were at risk did raise a moral quandry for the gods as to whether they protect their own or aid the other planets. Mistral felt it necessary to protect the other planets first, as her intel before she left had the eltari on a safe defensive with the exception of Expin and other places could be in much more dire straits. Arcanus was more concerned in their books and knowledge, and if it was being targeted then surely the solutions were there, just in need of finding. Vatra was prepared to help, but thought it would be better to do so with his army. After all, there had been enough daemons to keep him trapped in constant battle on his own before, and so doing it again seemed risky. Cyscus believed that allowing them to stand on their own would make them stronger, and Nameless stayed silent on his thoughts, though she agreed with Mistral.
With discussions at an end, Nameless and Mistral went to the other worlds they knew of to aid in the defence of those worlds, whilst the rest returned to Eltar. Nameless and Mistral found that most of the other planets, whilst under siege, were not facing the same numbers as Eltar was, allowing them to more quickly mop up the weaker daemons and provide boons to the locals to defend themselves before moving on. Vatra, Arcanus and Cyscus however found much more threatening foes awaiting them on their return. They were ambushed, and risked being pushed back through the aetherchasm, separated from their forces. The daemonic leaders, so called "archons" were much stronger than anticipated, and showed skills and magic the gods had never even comprehended. When the gods were able to eventually break through, they each returned to their respective homes to be briefed on the situations.
Stalvenrakh was holding strong, though hesitant to deploy outside of their cities as whenever they tried to mobilise, another attack came from within their walls. The academy was burning, with many places of learning destroyed, though a concerted effort had been made to save as much as possible. It had been noticed by the archmagi that their archipelagos had been untouched, and so had taken the effort to move what they could in secret to the Arcanus Vault on the southernmost island. Not everything had managed to make it unscathed, but they were prepared to rebuild once the war was over. The Aquos archipelagos had remained untouched, the daemons unable to find any evidence of life among them. Starport's shield was beginning to falter, and larger daemons were starting to get in. The mireiyan forces and a contingent of battlemages had left the academy to assist, as more civilians were at risk. There were no reports on Geminus of any issues. Expin's state was dire; humans had proven exceptionally susceptible to experimentation, and had been targeted on mass. Most of the land was swarming with daemons, with only the south-eastern side still offering any resistance.
After a few days for the gods to recover their strength, they mounted a counter-offensive. Arcanus led the armies of Stalvenrakh, using his arcane secrets to teleport them directly to Cromvale in Expin, one of the last known cities to still be standing. The reinforcements came at just the right time, as their diminished forces were fighting alongside the bandit lords known as the Harbingers of the Crimson Crown in Crom's passage in a last stand. These reinforcements were unable to make it to the pass in time to save most of the combatants, but were able to push the offensive against a depleted and weakened swarm of daemons, pushing them further and further back towards the aetherchasm.
Cyscus met with what remained of Mistral's forces in Starport to put an end to the 8 year long siege, allowing the shield to be dropped and spaceships to take flight once more. With greater access to the skies, military vessels were sent towards the academy to deal with the magic-resistant daemons focusing there, whilst the ground forces were transported to the western side of Expin to continue to push back. Vatra, loathe as he was to do it, had remained behind in Stalvenrakh, focusing on expanding his consciousness across the continent, watching every door, and waiting. When the daemons emerged to cause havoc whilst the forces were absent, they thought they had free reign to do what they want, and would leave nothing but smoking craters by the time the army returned. Unfortunately for them, they were about to find themselves at the mercy of Vatra Ratnik in his home turf.
Once reinforcements arrived from Starport, the academy sprung to life once more with mages of all schools of study who had concealed themselves, waiting for the opportunity to defeat the daemons that had plagued them and disrupted their studies. Whilst their magic had little effect on the daemons directly, they were able to provide ample obstacles to prevent them from destroying the spacecraft that had come to help, and successfully managed to impede them once the daemons tried to flee, not content to allow even one of them to escape. Once Vatra was satisfied that he'd cleaned house in Stalvenrakh, he made his way to join with these forces.
The three pronged attack applied significant pressure on the daemonic forces. With gods leading the charge and Starport technology being readily deployed, the daemons were fighting a losing battle, and moved to the second stage of the plan. They managed to fight and hold Expin for three more years before the archons retreated back into the aetherchasm. With the archons no longer present, the ranks of the daemons became much less unified in their assaults, and an increasing number of attempts of individual daemons to sneak away in the fray grew. Without the discipline and order the archons seemed to control, the rank and file began to fall more easily, allowing the three fronts to meet once more at the aetherchasm. Cyscus, determined for a rematch with an archon, charged headfirst into the aetherchasm to continue their fight. The other gods however took a moment to plan for the future.
They soon learned that in the 11 years the daemons had been present on Eltar, they'd managed to repurpose the kalydrid technology that had made the aetherchasms in the first place, causing it to weave the rift into the fabric of the material plane itself. Now, even should the device be deactivated or destroyed, the rift would remain in place. This worrying discovery meant they could always attack again, and so a military force would need to be established with the sole intent of keeping watch and repelling any attempted incursions. As only Arcanus and Vatra remained, Arcanus took on this responsibility, allowing Vatra to take his own forces through the aetherchasm and assist Mistral and Nameless with the other worlds.
Eltar was safe, and their part of the great war of the first daemonic invasion reached its conclusion as the populations began to rebuild. Vatra, Cyscus, Mistral and Nameless all continued to fight across other worlds, pushing the daemons back wherever they went. With no alternative at the time, each place they saved was instructed to close their aetherchasm when they left to prevent further incursions, and where there were none to close the door the gods did their best to seal them by themselves from the inside; an effort that wasn't entirely fruitless but later proved to not be a flawless solution. By the time the gods all returned to Eltar, with all known gates to them closed, they'd been at war for close to 118 years.
Despite having won, they didn't feel that way. The universe had just become much bigger and more distant, there were scars across all of Eltar, Expin especially from the foul magic that had been used, and the safety and security of the paradise world they had set to create had been shattered thoroughly, and yet they still didn't know the cause, nor the reason. Domitari had also been absent for the entirety of events, and all that the gods had managed to find was a single letter from them, addressed to an unknown party. And so, a tale spread of the prodigal god, out there still fighting to keep the daemons at bay as a first line of defence as each god returned to their respective domains, seeking for answers and determined to not let such a tragedy happen again.

Conflict Type

War