The Cataclysm

Era beginning/end

The terrible war between the Divine and the Profane.

No records remain of the terrible war that followed.   The sheer magnitude of the ensuing battles of gods and mortals alike was enough to fray the boundaries holding back the elemental chaos, spilling unbridled destruction back into the world.   The dark kingdom of The Ashen Spires was brought to ruin, but the conflict devastated Altiira's peoples, reducing most cities to rubble. So great was the loss of life during the war that historians believe no more than a third of the population survived, leaving only one remaining bastion of civilisation: Aureum, the first city itself.   The world entered a long, dark period of recovery, when history had to be recovered and purpose had to be restored.   The Gods turned away from their creation in shame and grief for the fallen Matriarch, and they left their children to fend for themselves within and beyond the walls of Aureum, believing that their own hubris had caused their creations to suffer so greatly. They returned to their own Divine Plane, dragging both Profane and Abomination with them and sealing the pathways to the Mortal Planes behind them.   Only in this way could they prevent their corrupted brethren from physically returning to the Material Plane. Sadly, for the Gods, this action also carried with it a self-imposed sentence of exile. They would henceforth never be allowed to visit Creation, though their dragons remained as guardians of mortalkind.   Much time has passed since the Gods left this world, and the world has been reborn once again. The gods still exhibit their influence and guidance from beyond the Divine Gate, bestowing their knowledge and power to their most devout worshipers, but the path of mortals is now their own to make. New cities, kingdoms, and cultures have retaken the world, built over the ashes of the old. New songs fill the air, and the hope of a brighter future drives people day after day, while buried ruins and forgotten relics remind all peoples of a darker time, and of mistakes that should never be repeated.