The Forsaken Aftermath
The Aftermath of the Forsakening
The Forsakening was not a single moment of destruction but the beginning of a slow, relentless unraveling. The cosmic order that once held reality together has fractured, leaving gods, mortals, and magic alike struggling to survive in a world that is fundamentally broken. The First Light, once the pillar of all existence, no longer shines, and its absence continues to tear at the fabric of creation.
Entire pantheons have crumbled, their celestial domains flickering like dying embers. Magic, once bound by the Weave, now surges uncontrollably, mutating those who wield it. And in the ruins of the old world, new beings emerge—soulless wanderers, fallen divinities, and creatures neither mortal nor god, but something else entirely.
The cosmos no longer resembles the ordered reality that once existed. It is shifting, changing—reshaping itself into something unrecognizable.
The Fall of the Divine Order
The gods, once seen as eternal and unshakable, have fallen into chaos. The First Light was not merely a distant celestial force—it was the foundation of their existence, the source from which their divinity was drawn. Without it, the celestial order has begun to decay, and many gods have either vanished, weakened, or turned against each other in desperation.
The Vanishing of the Gods
- Some deities simply ceased to exist, their power too entwined with the First Light to survive without it. Their temples stand abandoned, their followers left without guidance, their names fading from memory as if they had never been.
- Others withered into husks of their former selves, their divine essence depleted, reduced to echoes of what they once were.
- Some fled into the void, retreating to hidden sanctuaries in the deepest corners of the multiverse, waiting for a time when their strength might return.
The Celestial Realms in Ruin
- The Aether, once the pinnacle of divine order, is now a war-torn, flickering ruin, its radiant halls unstable and impermanent.
- Some divine realms flicker in and out of existence, appearing for brief moments before vanishing into void-choked oblivion.
- Other celestial planes have become battlegrounds, as surviving deities fight over the scraps of the power that remains.
Where once the gods sat upon radiant thrones, shaping reality with divine will, now they scramble to cling to what little remains. The celestial hierarchy has collapsed, and no power has risen to take its place.
The Struggle of the Remaining Gods
Among the gods who survived, desperation festers.
- Some have grown ruthless, carving out new domains in the ashes of the old order, caring only for their own survival.
- Others seek to restore what was lost, though their efforts are met with hostility and betrayal from their former brethren.
- A few have descended into madness, unable to comprehend a world where their divine power is diminished, their influence waning.
The Forsakening has left the divine order in freefall, and with every passing century, it becomes increasingly uncertain whether the gods can ever reclaim their former place in existence.
The Fracturing of Arcane Magic
The Weave’s collapse did not merely disrupt spellcraft—it rewrote the very nature of magic itself.
Where once wizards, sorcerers, and warlocks studied the Weave’s intricate patterns, now they stand before a shattered lattice, its power unpredictable and often dangerous.
The Collapse of Structured Magic
- Wizards, once the masters of arcane precision, now struggle as spells misfire, collapse, or twist into unintended forms.
- Incantations that once shaped the elements may now call forth strange, unintended forces, pulling fire from nowhere or summoning creatures that should not exist.
- Long-lost spells resurface in strange ways, emerging through cracks in the Weave, rewritten into forms their creators never intended.
- Sorcerers, their bloodlines once stable, now mutate as the Forsakening warps their inherited magic.
- Some gain terrifying new abilities, manifesting power they cannot control.
- Others suffer horrific transformations, their physical forms warping to match the chaotic magic that now flows through them.
- Entire sorcerous bloodlines are changing, their once-predictable abilities shifting into unrecognizable, unstable forces.
- Warlocks, once bound to pacts with ancient powers, find their patrons weakened, severed, or worse—transformed.
- Some entities that once granted power freely have gone silent, leaving their followers in arcane stagnation.
- Others have grown even more powerful, feeding on the instability of the Forsakening, warping their warlocks into something twisted and inhuman.
The Corruption of Magic Itself
The shattered Weave has left behind arcane wastelands, places where magic does not follow any natural laws.
- Wild Magic Storms roam across the land, rewriting reality at random, leaving those caught in their wake forever changed.
- Arcane Dead Zones—places where magic fails entirely—have begun to spread, creating regions where once-mighty wizards are no more powerful than commoners.
- Weave Scars, points of raw magical instability, warp and twist everything around them, making time and space themselves unpredictable and ever-changing.
Those who once wielded magic with confidence and mastery now do so with fear. The age of controlled arcane power is over—now, all spellcasters are gamblers, playing with forces they no longer understand.
The Hollowborn and the Lightless Ones
As reality fractured, so too did the nature of existence itself.
The loss of the First Light had a profound effect on the souls of living beings, leading to the birth of two new kinds of existence—The Hollowborn and the Lightless Ones.
The Hollowborn: Those Without Souls
The Hollowborn are the first generation of beings born without the influence of the First Light.
- They do not possess souls, or at least not in any way that the gods, scholars, or death-wardens understand.
- They are not undead, nor are they constructs—they are fully alive, yet entirely devoid of divine connection.
- Some believe that they have no fate, no true destiny, existing outside the cosmic order entirely.
The Plight of the Hollowborn
Hollowborn wander the world searching for purpose, but they are rejected by both the divine and the arcane.
- The gods ignore them—they do not hear prayers, nor are they affected by divine magic.
- Clerics and paladins cannot heal them—they do not register as part of the cycle of life and death.
- The dead reject them—they cannot be resurrected, and their spirits do not enter the afterlife.
Some believe the Hollowborn are a new kind of existence, free from divine influence, free from fate itself. Others see them as a sign of the final unraveling—a mistake in the structure of reality.
The Lightless Ones: Fallen Divinities
The Lightless Ones are those who once carried the spark of divinity, but have since lost it.
- They were once gods, angels, celestial beings, or divine champions, but now they struggle to hold onto their existence.
- Some fight to restore their former glory, seeking lost relics, old followers, or forbidden sources of power.
- Others have accepted their fall, walking among mortals as fading echoes of their past selves.
- The most desperate have turned to darker forces, seeking to replace their lost divinity with new, unnatural power.
They are the remnants of a broken order, divine beings who no longer belong to the heavens, yet cannot fully exist among mortals.
The Forsakening Was Only the Beginning
The cosmos is no longer what it once was. The divine order is shattered, magic is unstable, and new beings walk the world, their fates unknown.
But the Forsakening is not finished—its consequences are still unfolding, and no one knows what the next stage of the unraveling will bring.
