The Shattered Empire

Before the Gardener tore across the world a trail of destruction and death, before the Guardian rose mighty cities and mightier laws, and even before Chaos bet on the fate of a god and lost, there existed the Artificer, and the Artificer's first empire.
From the tablets and monuments of past ages, it is possible to piece together the histories of this ancient society. The Artificer's empire began in a highly militaristic and ancestor-worshipping collection of communities in the mountains to the far southwest of the continent. They lived in seclusion, constantly battling each other for control over the same few peaks.
On the first day of the Shattered Empire's calendar, the Artificer arrived in one of the most remote villages, and delivered a bargain. The Artificer would aid the people of that village in battle in return for the construction of a proper workshop, equipped with necessary tools and machines for the construction of an army.
The Artificer began constructing implements of war for the villagers, and with the aid of the Artificer's weaponry they began to triumph over other nearby settlements. This continued for some time, and eventually the Artificer's village held dominance over the entire mountainous region, although with its military significantly reduced from years of war.
In an effort to bolster the village's waning forces, the Artificer began crafting human-machine automatons, unearthing bodies from the crypts beneath the village to first augment with clockwork limbs, then awaken with divine power. The results were remarkable: soldiers of extraordinary strength, who never ate, slept, tired, or questioned orders.
Yet the news of these new warriors soon spread. The leaders of the village, now governing the entire mountain range, were aghast at this desecration of their ancestors. They mustered the remnants of the military and any willing townsfolk, marching to war against the Artificer's nightmares.
Few joined them. Many were bitter from their recent conquest. Some questioned the wisdom of attacking the very person who had first led them to victory. A handful even joined the Artificer's side, bearing mechanical arms in defense of this worker of wonders.
The leaders' forces were defeated without fanfare. Out of the battle-weary contingent of soldiers they had managed to gather, most turned and fled at the sight of the Artificer's abominations. The remainder were slaughtered, and made into the very beings they had attempted to oppose. Of the leaders, the most fervent in their defiance were slain. The rest were given a choice: join the Artificer or meet the same fate. Most saved their own skins.
In the decades of conquest that followed, this same pattern of resistance to defeat to assimilation would repeat itself over and over again. None could stand against the Artificer's army of mechanical might. With the aid of summoning circles, even the most obscure materials could be procured far from the ordinary centers of production. In less then a century, the Artificer had conquered the entire world. It was then that the Artificer began their most ambitious project yet: a defense network fit for a worldwide empire, complete with colossal watchtowers, instantaneous communication systems, and reserve garrisons of automatons buried deep beneath the earth.
Only a few years into this project, everything started to break down. The public opinion of the Artificer was extraordinarily low, as almost the entire world hated this god for embroiling the world into a terrible war...and then winning it. The Artificer's automatons in particular were despised, both for their role in the conflict and their utter lack of human qualities. Despite the war being finished, the people were still taxed heavily to fund the construction of the monumental defense grid. Across the globe, magic-users began ancient and dangerous rituals to summon more gods to Verdure.
The first that arrived was the Forgotten God, a deity of change, stories, and time. Taking the guise of a wanderer, the Forgotten God began to amble across Verdure, building power and gaining worshippers. Yet the Artificer was ready. Within the span of a year, the Forgotten God was hunted down and slain, their divine power absorbed into Verdure itself. 
However, that was just the beginning. More gods begin to arrive in quick succession. First the Gardener, then Chaos, then the Guardian. With knowledge of the terrible fate of the Forgotten God, they began to gather military forces about them. The Artificer tried to fight back, increasing production of the automatons twofold, and for a moment it seemed to work. All three of the opposing gods were held at bay by the unnatural strength of the Artificer's fighting force. 
Then the summoning circles failed, the Eternal Archives cast further away from Verdure in a moment of cosmic coincidence. 
All the Artificer's assembly lines came to a grinding halt. Without the aid of conjured material from the Eternal Archives, they could not acquire the complex infusible materials required for the creation of new automatons. The Artificer saw the doom approaching, and retreated to what is now the Rusted Sea. To gain the time required to build fortifications, the Artificer left the remaining automatons to take up defensive positions and delay the other three gods. 
It worked. While the automatons perished by the thousands, the Artificer constructed enough fortifications to seriously hamper any invading army. None of the gods dared to attack the Rusted Sea, fearing the immense losses their forces would suffer. After a while, enough of the automatons were destroyed for all three gods to carve out their own corners of Verdure, to build and shape as they saw fit. And so the fleeting empire of the Artificer was shattered, and its legacy vanished into history. 
Yet not all of it. Besides the crumbling watchtowers and ancient plinths, a sinister threat lurks in the darkness. For while the Artificer would grow more peaceful over the millennia, there remains fragments of their great army scattered across Verdure to this day. Rotting away in ancient towers and forgotten caves, they still follow their original directive: to destroy the three gods, and all associated with them.

by darksouls1