The Sundering Arcana

Metaphysical / Paranormal event

After nearly a millennia, the Arcane Lock imposed by the goddess Myurdin was broken, allowing mortals to access the Script, the metaphysical force that connects life to the Old Magic of the Realms.

For nearly a millennia, the goddess Myurdin lived in Exile, keeping watch over the Astral Gates that separated mortals from the well of metaphysical energy known as Old Magic. The original connection between mortals and magic, called the Script, had once been used by mortals like Myurdin herself to change the world as they saw fit, to become masters of their own destinies.   However, it had also been used for dark magic; to spread unspeakable cruelty across creation and to ascend to godhood itself. To ensure that mortals would not break the world the gods had created for them, Myurdin sealed the Astral Gates that held the metaphysical well from which the Old Magic emanated. With the connection severed, mortals could no longer understand the Script and instead had to put their trust in the gods and the Old Magic that naturally suffused the world around them.   However, over the centuries the power of the gods became centralized and corrupted. Mortals used this power to create empires and without the Script, many found themselves powerless to those who fervently believed they understood the nature of the divine. One such group, the Palladian Empire, spread great suffering for their own gains and lost sight of their divine charter. Their last leader, Emperor Alcius IV, desired yet more power so he could unify his empire and put down any and all dissent. Eventually, he learned of a way to access the Seal Arcana of Myurdin. He orchestrated a great war that spawned a myriad of horrors for his foes as well as his own people. He even murdered his closest friend when she dared defy him and then carried out a vast genocide of her people in search of their power.   Eventually, he learned that the keys to the Astral Gates were the Time Tablets, ancient artefacts of immense power upon which the destinies of every mortal had been inscribed in the earliest days of creation. He orchestrated a great war that spawned a myriad of horrors for his foes as well as his own people in an attempt to draw the keepers of these Time Tablets out. When he learned his closest friend was one of these keepers—a Tahmuras—he murdered her. He proceeded carry out a vast genocide of her people in search of their secrets. Finally, he learned the location of one Time Tablet.   When the goddess Myurdin looked through the Astral Gates to see Emperor Alcius reach the Gorgon Gate that held the Time Tablet, the goddess saw another Doom Lich in the making. And as she cast her gaze forward to the years to come, she saw a great conflagration, a tumult that would remake the world. Such a fate was inevitable, yet there was one strand in the Weave that would give mortals all another chance. And so, the goddess Myurdin broke the seal upon the Astral Gates and allowed the Old Magic to return once more to the Material Plane.