Godbinding

The False Gods fell to the forces of the Queen of Blood and Thunder thousands of years ago, at the Battle of Burning Sands. In its wake, the world was changed forever.
What began with war, ended with utter, systematic devastation. River gods were driven from their waters and suffocated with salt. Gods of the wind were pinned to the earth and imprisoned. War gods that once sang the songs of a thousand slaughters were stabbed in their sleep.
Now, the gods hide in the dark places, where mortality will not seek them. They scavenge idle prayers from desperate villagers on the outskirts of civilisation, suck the souls from scorpions and spiders and the occasional unfortunate traveller. But not all of them are content to live in such a state, and not all of them can hide from the Eye of Heaven for long.
Mortality found a new use for these gods – they dreamed of a more advanced age, of vehicles that flew and engines that turned under their own power. By binding a fire god to a forge, they wondered, what divine weapons could one create in its unearthly flame?
Thus began the study of godbinding.

Discovery

The story goes that a hurricane god – who admittedly, after centuries of starvation, was little more than a draught god – appeared before the wizards of the Astral University, in surrender.
It asked them, why should he, who had done little to hurt mortals, who had not even been incarnated at the time of the Battle of Burning Skies, have to suffer in hiding? Why should he not be allowed to live amongst mortality, to be able to feed from their attention and acknowledgement?
The wizards – who knew wind gods to be treacherous, and conniving – paid his words little mind at first. But then the thought occurred to them: if the gods were so desperate for the sustenance afforded to them by mortals, then surely they should be working in their favour?
Since then, the magelights of the Research and Development have not dimmed in centuries, powered by an engine spun by an unnatural wind that once danced among dragons at the beginning of the age.
Further research continues.