History of the Sector

Increasingly there have been calls for me to write a formal history of the sector. I've completed the adventurer's guide, but how did we get where we are now? There are almost two hundred millennia of relevant history to get through. 
The earliest records we have stem from The Great Cycle, which is our creation Myth. I use a capital M, because this is the true origin of the universe. Ready? Cause I'm about to drop some knowledge.
In the beginning there was a single being that encompassed all consciousness, all thought, all power, all magic, all reality. The universe sought to know itself, but as there was nothing separate from itself...you know how you can't really see yourself without a mirror?
So Ohm, the name the titans used for the creator being, split off part of itself and created the earliest titans. The only surviving one we're aware of is Reevanthara, who I met briefly in the First City, known in our sector as Sanctuary.

The Chaos Epoch

The earliest period involved primal titans, raw unformed entities turned loose into the divine equivalent of a petting zoo. Ohm set up a universe for his godlings, and then dropped them inside to see what they would do.
They created worlds, and stars, and children, and numbers, and light, and all sorts of other wonderful things. Every concept that we take for granted, like the law of gravity, was created by one of these titans. They decided gravity should be a thing...so it is.
Unfortunately, some gods were better at creation than others. Reevanthara rapidly eclipsed his brethren, and constructed wonder after wonder. The cosmic spear Worldender is one of few such creations to make their way to our present. For those unfamiliar the spear was used to kill the Wyrm goddess Marid, and large enough to split a planet.
We can only imagine what other horrors and wonders were created, but as one would expect of a bunch of jealous petty gods vying for affection from a hypothetical creator god who refused to reveal themselves...they went to war. Hardcore. They invented war. 
Armies swelled, and over time eight primal factions rose to power, each built around a specific resonance within the Circle of Eight aspects that comprised reality. Those factions are all recognizable today. The Wyrms, the demons, the unliving...I've fought them all. 
But back then they were raw versions of what they would one day become. They were experiments. Slow iterations over, presumably, millions of years. Divine selection. Every horrible thing you ever find in the darkened corridor of a derelict hulk came from that process.
It ended when Reevanthara came up with a plan to start the first divine fashion show.

Sanctuary

The primary cause of war between gods was magic. Every god needed more of it, and getting it meant consuming magic of the type you wished to control. It encouraged genocide. 
Some gods realized there had to be a better way. Reevanthara gathered the strongest titan of every aspect, and asked them to collect their children. They pooled their magic and created Sanctuary, the First City, a place where no violence could be done. Reality forbade it.
For the first time gods could gather in peace. They created art, and science, and mathematics. Seriously, Math was one of the second generation of titans. Best. Creation. Myth. Ever.
A funny thing happened as millennia rolled by in the city. Gods would create things to show off there. They would bring their best and brightest children, their wonders of artificing. The pissing contest grew and grew as gods sought to out do one another.
The more successful discovered an interesting phenomenon. Worship. As they excelled lesser gods flocked to their banner, and their magic grew. For the first time they could become more, without taking from someone else.
Reevanthara quickly realized they no longer had a zero sum game. The god with the most worship had the most power. The divine popularity contest intensified. Gods grew more and more resentful. Wars and sabotage increased, as lesser gods banded together to pull down the more popular.
On and on this war went for millions of years. Longer, maybe. Time is a funny thing, and it was even funnier before the Great Cycle came into existence. 
You keep hearing the name Reevanthara. This dude pops up everywhere. Well he once again leapt to the forefront of history when he gathered a hand-picked pantheon of gods. These gods and their children formed only a small fraction of total gods, but among their number shared diverse and incredible power.
Reevanthara proposed this secret organization use their power to steal all light from the universe.

The Great Cycle

Reeva's grand idea was the creation of a Great Cycle. The Cycle would collect, amplify, and refine magic. More importantly it would collect, amplify, and refine souls. If a god followed a specific process, and got their children to worship them, then inside the cycle these children would breed true.
For the first time a god's children could produce offspring without the use of magic. They could grow in number, and as they grew, they could offer more worship. The gods within the Cycle could gain power, infinitely. Everyone present agreed to help construct it, despite the terrible price.
To fuel the Great Cycle Reeva needed all the magic, all the light, and much of the matter from within reality. He claimed that Ohm had blessed his vision of the Cycle, and that this theft had been sanctioned by their creator. He lied.
When the Cycle was born it created three realms.
Dream, where all magic is amplified and concepts are expressed. A fluid realm where anything is possible.
Life, where magic gained form. It is here the gods dwell, and what we recognize as reality.
Spirit, where all souls, and all magic, decay into something called the maw. The maw churns it back into raw magic, which completes the Cycle when it feeds into the Dream Realm.
The creation of this Cycle screwed existing reality. So what became of it? Well, have you ever wondered how the Umbral Depths got to be so...umbral? Reeva stole their light, and their magic, and imprisoned all remaining gods in the lightless realm we use to shortcut travel around the sector.
I can only speculate at what happened there in the early days, but try to imagine being a god who can produce light in a universe suddenly devoid of it. Every surviving god would devour each other, and you'd hide what magic and light you managed to hold on to. 
That's why the vessels who open a Fissure and travel in the depths go dark. The gods that survive there are ancient, bitter, and powerful. Pray you don't get noticed.
As for the Cycle itself? That worked like a charm. Gods rose to power, nations of their children thrived, and for a time there was peace. For a time. 

The First Recorded Godswar

We have vague mentions and myths of wars between gods long before the Cycle was created, but the first organized godswar as we know it occurred within the Great Cycle. For the first time the pantheon that had created the Cycle fractured.
Not into two groups. Into many. 
Demons became the embodiment of the void.
The Shayatin and their Earthen cousins embodied earth.
The Unliving embodied spirit. Liches, Wraiths, Wights, and Shadows who refused to seek the maw.
The Marid embodied water, healers and sages who honed their bodies into weapons.
The Seraphim embodied life, and light, and purity. Healers and artificers all.
The Djinn were the rulers of air, and the finest artificers in creation. 
The Ethereals were the stuff of dream. Raw unformed creatures visiting us from their true home within the Dream Realm.
The Ifrit were born of fire, and were known as masters of war. 
These eight races recognized each other as the rightful rulers of their respective aspects, and worked together as a single pantheon.
But not all accepted these designations. The Wyrms claimed all aspects, and warred on all self-styled lords of those aspects. The disdain the Wyrms held for all others is the stuff of legend. Their Outriders were, at best, cherished pets.
And the Wyrms weren't wrong in their hubris. They were incredibly powerful, numerous, and ancient. The Wyrmmother was feared by all other factions. Almost the Wyrms triumphed over all other factions, but Xal of the demons, approached each other faction until he'd created a coalition to oppose them.
War escalated.
The Cycle itself shook. Gods died. More gods died. Centuries passed. The slaughter continued. Each iteration was less than the one before, and fewer and fewer of the ancient weapons and gods remained. Finally both sides gathered for a last battle, but before it could be fought Reevanthara appeared and called for a halt.
Everyone hated him by that point, apparently. You that one kid in class who was better than everyone at everything, attractive, the teacher loved them? Yeah that's Reeva, and people were done with his crap by now.
They knew enough to listen when he said listen though.
Apparently in the penultimate battle that preceded the end of the war a crack was created in the swamps of Orlan. The Rent they called it, a break in the shell protecting the Cycle from the rest of reality. A shell touted as being unbreakable...from the outside at least.
Reeva told the gathering that if they did not leave the Cycle, if they continued to war, then they would destroy not just the Cycle, but all the myriad realities they created when it was constructed. Nearly everything would be destroyed. The Cycle was too precious.
And so they must leave it.

The Rise & Fall of the Dragonflights

The gods agreed to leave the Great Cycle, and journeyed out into the void. They found countless realities waiting, subtle variations and reflections of the cycle itself. They carried the godswar with them, and it has raged ever since, across all realities.
Many gods came to our own reality. Two of the most powerful were Xal, and the Wyrmmother. The Demons and Wyrms both made claim to our galaxy, as did the Unliving those they gathered under no central god, instead serving a council of liches, each Harvester class vessel a nation all its own.
Perhaps fifty millennia of squabbling ensued. Dragons fought demons fought unliving, all while empires rose and fell across the galaxy. Roughly a hundred and twenty thousand years ago the balance finally tipped.
The Wyrmmother and Xal had long been enemies, but at long last, for reasons never explained, Xal agreed to back the Dragonflights as the rightful rulers of the galaxy. Aided by demotech weaponry, countless demons, and Xal's potent void magic, they turned on the unliving, and drove them to unseen corners of our galaxy, where many still lurk today.
For twenty millennia the dragonflights ruled unopposed. Countless worlds rose to prominence. Art, culture, and the science of magitech all flourished. Demotech saw a renaissance as well, until the Dragonflights outlawed it without warning.
Many speculated that it was an attempt by the Wyrmmother to bait Xal into war again, but he backed her decree, though he allowed his children to use demotech while on his titanic body. There he ruled, and no Wyrm would tell him what he must do. There he kept the science alive, though the rest of the sector forgot the brutal devastation wrought by demotech.
We get conflicting accounts on what happened next. Some blame Krox, and say he bound Shivan, and ordered him to kill Marid, which kicked off their epoch of the godswar. Some same Nefarius slew the Wyrmmother, her own mother, and became so reviled even her name is tainted.
I do know how things ended, though. Nefarius definitely extinguished the Dragonflights. She attacked her younger brother Inura, the artificer, and Wyrm Father of life. She tricked her sister Virkonna into killing the peaceful god Hotep, which created the storm raging in space around the First City.
One by one the gods of each dragonflight died. Marid at the hand of Shivan. The Wyrmmother at the hand of Nefarius. Their fleets were shattered, and only Inura and Virkonna survived of their eight siblings. Six of eight flights were wiped out without a trace.
The children of Inura became the modern day Inuran Consortium, everyone's favorite corporate pricks. The children of Virkonna held true to the Dragonflights, and are now known as the last Dragonflight. We'll get to that in current history, though.
The Dragonflights ended approximately a hundred thousand years ago. Over the next ten millennia the galaxy collapsed further and further, until the flights lost any semblance of unity. Our sector has been effectively isolated for 90,000 years.
Scholars among you are going to be deeply annoyed, because we know effectively nothing about what happened during that time. Most of us can barely keep track of what's happening in our own sector.
Anyway, the pantheon backing the dragonflights mostly died. Xal was ripped apart, which he allowed to happen without fighting back for some reason. His skull was relocated to a remote system, well away from the husk. Both are void Catalysts, or were until someone resurrected Xal. I'm getting ahead of myself though, as that just happened a few months ago, and I'm still not certain I even believe it.
Any gods that survived the purge hid. Most did not survive, though. Shaya died on the moon that took on her name. Marid died on the world that toon on her name. Shivan was cut in half, and ended up as Shi and Van, a dream and fire god respectively. Krox was slain by Nefarius. Nefarius died, but no text remaining to say who killed her or how.
For the first time since the exodus from the Great Cycle our sector stood alone, and mortals were left to rule.

The Shayan Confederacy

Shayan's children, who are genetically identical to Inurans by the way, gathered around the Great Tree which grew up over her grave. They brought with them their ships, part of the Vagrant Fleet that survived the war. Many powerful archmages had risen during the war, and most decided to settle.
They elected the first Tender, who became Guardian of the Pool of Shaya, the most powerful life Catalyst known in our sector. Fast forward about eighty millennia.
It's ten thousand years before the present and the Shayans are the most powerful, most advanced fleet in the sector. But their culture has ossified, and they no longer grow, or create new things. Instead, they start conquering others and taking their culture.
Their first target was Yanthara. Yanthara was settled by the children of Shivan, a tribe of dark-skinned humans strong in both fire and dream. Their firedreamers know more of the future than anyone, though in my experience prophecies and auguries exist only to annoy you. I'll stick to flame reading, thanks.
Anyway, Yanthara added fire and dream to Shaya's already powerful life. Next on their stop around the Circle of Eight was Air, which would unlock both enchanting, and illusion. To that end they made a deal with the Council of Wyrms on Virkon. 
They would exchange 100 mages a year, life for air. Virkon agreed, and that deal held for centuries, which allowed both cultures to prosper.
Shaya remained content with their territory, though they often raided into the Erkadi Rift to steal fire or spirit from the Krox. As one might expect...this pissed off the Krox, who declared war. They brought sizable fleets, earth Wyrms, and most importantly binders. The Krox could soulshackle powerful creatures, and then hurl them into their opponents. 
When the creatures were slain the Krox would animate them, and send them in again. Every creature had to be killed twice, and every one of the Shayan's who died rose to become another threat. 
Fast forward to three centuries ago. Shaya realized they were not going to be able to beat the Krox. They needed allies. They began exploring the sector, and happened upon Ternus, an isolated human colony that had existed for millennia with no magic. Their tech rivaled anything in the sector, even the magitech sold by the Inurans.
Shaya saw an opportunity and quickly ratified the Confederacy, which initially held two members...Shaya and Yanthara. They approached Ternus and invited them to join, so long as Ternus would abide by the mutual defense pact. At that time the humans had no idea that that the Krox even existed.
Ternus agreed, and began selling Shaya tech in exchange for magic. The humans went nuts over magic, and ships went out all over the sector from the Skull of Xal to the Heart of Krox as they sought to catch up in the magic department. 
They failed, and learned that they were at a serious disadvantage against magic. Mistrust fermented, and now the humans trust no one who isn't, well, human. They consider the Shayans to be arrogant. The Yantharans are awesome, but then they're human. They do like drifters, though they have some strange misconceptions about them stealing babies.
The addition of Ternus to the Confederacy turned the tide, at first anyway. Shaya won several wars, and invited Ternus to colonize the worlds of Marid, Danton, and Starn along the Erkadi rift. Ternus already had New Texas, it's first and largest colony, and Colony 3, their breadbasket.
They were all too happy to expand, and cheerfully settled all three worlds. They thrived, and trade boomed across the sector. People largely forgot about the Krox, who stayed without the Erkadi Rift, and kept to their own business.

The Current Godswar

If you'd have asked me five years ago if any gods lived in our sector, or any other, I'd have been skeptical. Oh how wrong I was. 
The Krox came boiling out of the Rift on their Worldkiller ships, and invaded Starn and Danton. Both fell almost instantly, four years ago nearly to the day. 
The Confederacy responded with reinforced fleets, and relied heavily on Ternus, who were eager to contribute. They met the Krox in the skies over Starn, the largest of the three new human colonies. They drew their line in the sand, and dared the Krox to cross.
The Krox kicked sand in their face, pulled down their pants, and punched them in the crotch. Every major vessel at Starn that did not flee died. The Confederate fleet, the base of their power, died that day, about two years ago. 
Up until that point we believed that it was mortal on mortal...just your garden variety interstellar war. We were wrong. The Krox had conspired to, and succeeded, in resurrecting their god. However, in typical Krox fashion they betrayed their own creator in the process. The demigoddess Nebiat, an earth Wyrm of immense power, bound the god Krox to her service, and effectively ascended to godhood.
We'd have been in real trouble, but Nebiat wasn't the only player. Nefarius resurrected herself. How do you even do that? Like, paradox and stuff. Anyway, Ternus and Shaya stood against the Krox, and held. 
Krox came to Shaya to destroy their planet, but Lady Voria rose as a goddess by drinking the Pool of Shaya. She used the mythical First Spellship to battle Krox, and drove him from her world, though Krox did steal the legendary spear, Worldender.
Nebiat got lonely, and forced Krox to elevate an Ifrit to godhood. Frit became a potent fire goddess, who if rumor is to believed, turned on Nebiat and helped Voria kill her. I'm getting ahead of myself though.
Nefarius arranged her own resurrection, and had Ternus and the Inurans build her a new body, made from magitech ships that all linked together. Nefarius killed Virkonna, and ate her. Then she killed Krox, and ate him.
She let Nebiat live. Maybe there's like a bad guy code or something? Anyway, our sector looked like it was down for the count. Especially because Ternus absolutely worshipped Nefarius, which increased her power.
The demons were like...hold my beer. The Avatar of Xal, also known as the demon prince Xal'Aran, resurrected his dark father, and his dark father beat the snot out of Nefarius. 
That brings us to the present, or close to it. With Nefarius and Krox gone we were left with the following pantheon:
Frit- Fire Goddess
Aran- Void God
Nara- Void Goddess
Lady Voria- Life Goddess
Crewes- Fire God
Davidson- Water Demigod
This pantheon currently backs the Shayan confederacy, and has agreed to follow Confederate law. Krox are operating alongshide the very Shayans whose world they so recently depopulated when their god attacked. Demons are crewing human ships. It's a different age.
There are other threats of course. Necrotis and the Unseen Fleets are still out there, and are just as dangerous as Nefarius, if not more so. And that's just our sector.
Who knows what lurks beyond it? We've only mapped thirty light years in a galaxy a hundred thousand light years across. I've found maps, but haven't been brave enough to leave our sector. You'll be the first to hear about it when I do.
My quest? I'm probably going to see what ever became of ancient Terra. There's a line item saying when it was added to the Dragonflights, directly by the Wyrmmother, but it didn't say how, or what became of the world. 
That's okay. I have the location. Nope. Not sharing. Find your own map.