Chapter eight: The Fall of Kador, The Great War of the Gods

The Fall of Kador, The Great War of the Gods Of course, dear reader, we have all read the epic poems, heard the songs, and watched the plays about Kador’s fall. And, as you have no doubt realized, these are entirely inaccurate. They show all the gods, including gods not yet born during this part of the Third Epoch, working together to best Kador with the aid of mortal races who had not yet awakened. My research has shown me that the gods did indeed work together, but the war was far more involved than previously believed. Instrumental to the struggle was the Celestial Host. While the gods had empowered div in their war, so Kador had empowered his own minions. For years, he had hoarded his power and made plans with those he had transformed with his cunning and might. His disciples were as follows:
• Lilith, the Mother of Beasts. Beautiful and cunning, from her womb sprang the countless wicked things that made up Kador’s army.
• Baal, the Destroyer. Kador’s strongest servant, he was a crazed hunter and great warrior.
• Dispater, the Learned. The craftiest of Kador’s servants, Dispater studied the ways of great magic and was so powerful as to make even today’s mightiest archmages look like fools.
• Mammon, the Greedy. Kador gave Mammon the gift of hunger unslakeable. Mammon would never retreat from battle with the gods, for he desired to consume all the world.
• Leviathan, the Endless. Kador had always hated Shalimyr more than any other god, so he made one of his servants into an endlessly expansive monster of the seas, in hopes that Leviathan might drink up the lord of the waters.
• Mephistopheles, the Mighty. Chief among Kador’s disciples was his student Mephistopheles. As the Nameless One had created Kador, so Kador sought to make a child of great power in his own image. Rather than making one of the div more powerful, Kador built Mephistopheles from his own essence, making an almost godlike being, wise in the ways of magic, strong in the ways of war, and every bit as evil as his father.
And so Kador sat with his six lackeys and the army of Lilith’s brood in the palace of air, waiting for the other gods to come for him.
After Morwyn explained the threat still posed by Kador, other gods planned to rise from their ocean keep and assault his walls. When their plotting was done, they struck. Zheenkeef let loose her ingenious engines of war, which hurled Tinel’s magic over the walls. Terak struck at the gates with his great axe. Urian aided by pitching the castle to and fro in his skies.
At last Kador came to the top of his walls. “You dare defy me?” he cried. “I am your creator!” And with that, the war truly began. The Celestial Host attacked the walls and was met by the spawn of Lilith’s womb. These giants, trolls, goblins, and other evil races are today mere shadows of their might in the time of legends, for then they had the fire of power that their father, Kador, had given them.
The gods had believed Kador to be alone, and so were not prepared for this great onslaught. As the fighting raged, Kador and his six disciples began to hurl down fire and other assaults on the world. The gods, unprepared for this, fled from the fire to their ocean keep. But Rontra— who could not flee, for she is the earth itself—was scorched from top to toe by the vicious flames. Her forests were kindled, her mountains melted.
Shalimyr’s great lakes were swallowed up by Leviathan in moments, so he could not put out the flames. Urian, expending all his might, kept Eliwyn safe from the attacks. And, though the other gods were safe from the flame, only those div who found shelter with the mysterious Shee tribes were protected. The rest of the div were caught in the fire. Most were consumed, but some few were not destroyed by the conflagration. They were, after all, born in Kador’s image as he had prophesied, and their blood ran with fire like his.
While they could not survive within the fire hurled down from the Heavens in any form they had known, the flames transformed them into great beasts of fire and energy. According to the original Treatise on the Divine, it is from this apocalypse, from these tortured div, that the forefathers of the dragons were born.
In the ocean keep, the gods and their hosts (which had retreated from Lilith’s brood) regrouped. Zheenkeef began to bemoan their fate. “Their might is unstoppable,” she said. “They’ll hunt and kill us all. We’re doomed! Doomed to die like buzzing insects swatted by giant hands!” Morwyn calmed her and the rest of the gods. Her quiet reasoning led them to a new plan. When the fires above had finally burned out, they sprang into action.
This time, all the gods assaulted the sky palace. Maal crafted for himself a sword made from metals he took from the ocean palace, which had been made by the Nameless One. He called this sword Justice, and to this day it is his symbol. He and his father, Mormekar, assaulted the Kador’s fortress from the rear. From one side came Terak and his host, led by Iblis, wielding weapons of iron with which they tore at the walls. From the other flank came Tinel and his host, bringing torrents of magic down from the sky, shattering the battlements. And from the front came the barrage of Zheenkeef’s machines, built by her Celestial Host, tearing the gates of the palace asunder.
All the while, Urian showered the sky palace with lightning and Rontra assaulted it with stones. Shalimyr forced himself into Leviathan’s belly, to burst it from within. Together, the gods broke the palace of the air. Morwyn strode through the sundered gates, and there found Kador and his followers smoking pipes and playing at dice. The army of Lilith’s brood was nowhere to be seen, for while the gods had plotted their second assault, the brood had descended to the land to find treasures in the dark places and caves of the earth. Thus, Morwyn came upon Kador and his disciples alone. “A delightful show you have put on, child,” said Kador with a wide, black-hearted smile. “Kador, we cast you out. You are broken,” Morwyn declared, and from behind her came the other gods, and the assembled Celestial Host, all standing to back her. “Of course I am, girl. But I will not be broken alone.” With that, Kador and his lackeys rose and began to call down flame to split the world and crack the crystal sphere of existence itself. “If you will not give me my due, we will all die!” As planned, the gods opened the portal to Hell. They and the host hurled their combined might at Kador. His arms and legs were broken with a sickening snap, hanging limp and useless at impossible angles.
As this happened, the flame he had been entrusted with by the Nameless One was stripped from him and all his followers. The gods placed the fire of power into Eliwyn and the five fruits she bore. The creatures growing inside thus became complete beings with life, free will, and the fire of power. Lilith’s brood, which had been given fire by their father, had it stripped from them, which is why even today the evil races of the earth lack souls.
With the fire torn from them, Kador and his six cronies were hurled back through the portal and banished to Hell. The power of the gods’ banishing of Kador was so great that most of Lilith’s brood was plucked from the deep places of the earth and hurled down with him. It is said by those who study such things that, once there, Kador was imprisoned for eons in a lake of ice at the bottom of Hell. Morwyn had hoped that he would be kept in check there by the demons she and the gods had cast out from themselves. Little did she know that by the time Kador was imprisoned in Hell, the demons had already left, using their strength to tear open the Abyss in which they now reside.
The gods rebuilt the castle in the air, proclaiming it and the ocean keep their realms. The land would belong to the children in the fruits Eliwyn now bore. And to teach the newborn children of the fruit all they needed to know about the world, the gods gave the surviving div the power and freedom to rule over the world as first among the race

Hell and The Abyss

According to the mythology, Hell was once ruled by the demons, which are made from the pure powers of chaos and evil that the gods cast out of themselves, and the world. Devils are the brood of Kador, and the corrupted div who followed him against the gods. Because they were trained and created by Kador to follow his laws and serve his tyrannical aims, they are creatures of pure law and evil. When Kador and his followers were cast into Hell, they found but few demons residing there. In their constant wars, metamorphoses and acts of evil creation, the demons had quickly outgrown Hell’s structured nine layers, which had been designed by the ordered mind of Morwyn as their prison. Led by their powerful forebears, the qlippoth, the demons constructed great and terrible machines and burrowed out of Hell. They tore at the fabric of their prison, building great hives and mounds from their offal and other excretions as they went. They built layer upon layer through the astral emptiness until, at last, they came to the edge of the Great Sphere, constructed by the Nameless One. As war raged in the Material Plane between Kador and the gods, the demons worked their way through the very stuff of the sphere and out into the emptiness beyond. For this reason, the Abyss the demons have built for themselves is truly infinite. However, they still had a use for Hell, as a prison for unworthy, weak demons. Thus, when Kador and his devils were cast into Hell, they easily overcame the long-defeated demons trapped there. Old hives, ruined war machines and infernal bridges provided connections between Hell and the Abyss, and once the devils took command of Hell, they activated and explored them—and began their war with the demons, who also claimed possession of these places, and of Hell itself. The war continues still, but the ultimate reasons are obscure. Scholars suspect that even the Great Sphere isn’t big enough for two forces so profoundly evil, so the war between them is simply a natural inevitability.