The Nightmare Wars

Celestial / Cosmic

On a dark gloomy night, a mass sacrifice of innocents was successful, summoning forth the arguably greatest evil to ever set foot on Haven; The Nightmare King.

He was summoned near the city of Vreka in northern Ravil and immediately went on a violent rampage across the lands, burning, raping and slaughtering anything he came across.
The nature of the Nightmare King makes him unable to build anything that lasts. Instead, he went from city to city, kingdom to kingdom to spread his malice.
After raining fire onto the city of Vreka and laying it to waste, he and his followers went westwards, into the territories that are now part of Ravil, but at the time were a collection of city-states and small nations called the "Magna states", notably the city of Vigemona.

In any city he and his troops attacked, they broke down the gates, stormed the city and raised their banners over it. Then the dread lord summoned Demons and Nightmares, bred Ferals and other monsters, enslaved humans and spread disease to the nearby nations. He destroyed all that resisted him and enslaved the survivors, and moved on to a different city once his grisly work was done and there was no more for him to gain.

His presence on the world and the rituals enacted by his followers caused monsters to multiply and malignant spirits to manifest. His terrible influence was felt in not only in nearby Gallica and Pucraele but even distant in distant countries like Scyjia. Entire cities fell on the other side of the world without him needing to lift a finger.

The overlord was eventually lured into a trap and sealed near the city-state of Eifera by an alliance of armies from various city states and the country of Ravil, largely lead by a group of powerful mages. However this was done at a terrible cost, as during the final battle the god Prometheus manifested in the mortal realms to assist humanity, only to be killed and devoured by the nightmare king.

All in all the nightmare king's reign on Haven lasted only a few short years, yet his remaining forces would take decades to fully dislodge and his appearance set a precedence that vigilance and paranoia had their place in the leading of nations on Haven.

The nation of Ravil was also dislodged from their previously democratic form of governance by the crisis and after the crisis the nation transitioned to a mageocratic society; those who can cast magic are given preferrential treatment in the choosing of leadership roles and the highest offices would all be held by powerful mages exclusively from then on. Ravil also underwent a period of expansionism, adding most of the city states impacted by the crisis to their territory in the following years.