The Otherverse

Once upon a time there were a bunch of gods that led their people in great and terrible war against each other because they were kinda dicks. Unfortunately, just as the gods were given life by humanity's most powerful thoughts and emotions, so too would a new (and very unpleasant) dark spirit form in the wake of the world's most awful conflict. Tall, Dark, and Loathsome quietly drew strength from the peoples' hate, fear, despair, and so on until his power rivaled the rest of the gods. He set loose an army of his own dreadful creation upon the world - and the world took notice.   Even the most stubborn of gods and men set aside their petty squabbles and took the fight to their murky new enemy, but that enemy would quickly prove more fearsome than anything their world had ever known. In their bleakest moments, the desperate deities came together with a council of wise men and talented sorcerers assembled from each nation and devised a plan. They would lie in wait in a mountain at the heart of an abandoned, war-torn land, and with any luck, the dark figure at the heart of the apocalypse would show itself, drawn hungrily to the site of so much power in one place, and together perhaps they could forge a spell to ensnare him in the depths of the mountain. And they were lucky, but their work was not finished.   To follow through, that council of mankind - the Circle - then borrowed a portion of each god's lifeforce and gave birth to a new god, one which would hang above this cursed land and watch over it from within an eternal slumber and power the magic that held together the seal within the mountain. It watched as countless volunteers made a pilgrimage to the mountain and made their home there so that people would always be around to maintain the seal and perhaps someday destroy what they could only trap. It watched as the Circle's final spell was triggered, lifting this land into the air and beyond the stars. It watched over generations of humans as they fell or thrived, struggled or triumphed in the innumerable stories of their own lives.   And it watched as they forgot something very important, buried in the rock deep below them, on a chunk of earth drifting off to who-knows-where throughout the void, somewhere...within the Otherverse.