Three centuries of chaos followed the Northern Crusades. As Hazlia withdrew from the Dominion, the absolute hierarchy of its theocracy descended into the typical machinations of any convoluted and bureaucratic body of government. Desperate to hold to the authority of their station, the Celesors, rulers of the theocracy, turned against enemies imagined and real alike. Amidst the chaos, the Dweghom launched the Exile Campaign, driving away remnants of Weavers and toppling Spires, but not before they spewed a new warrior species. Fugitives left the Dominion in wave, guarded by the last, defiant Legion… as the Heavens behind them fell, plunging the dominion into fire and ash and the world in a winter unlike any other.
Hazlia’s Crusade against the gods of the Nords was nothing short of ruthless, bordering on the psychotic. Few, if any at the time, understood what drove Hazlia to such extremes. Whatever it was, the Gods of Yggdrasil knew, for their powers of divination were unmatched. They had awaited and they had prepared. But then, they were betrayed. Struck by Loki, Heimdall’s clarion call to awaken the subjects of the Einherjar project and quicken the carefully selected and elevated mortal warriors never came – and Yggdrasil burnt.
While the Crusade was, technically, a success, the death toll had all but decimated the fabled Legions and the scope of the expedition had crippled the Dominion’s byzantine economic structure. Worst of all for a theocracy, its God had disappeared. Leaving prayers unanswered and rituals unattended, Hazlia allowed his Dominion to doubt itself and civil war, rebellions and chaos would follow. Such was the violence that already Ninuah urged her faithful Keltonni tribes to abandon the Dominion and flee west, forming the first of the three waves of exodus that would follow.
With the divine choke of the Dominion loosening around the continent, the Elder races awoke. While desperate Celesors declared one religious war after another, in their attempts to keep their fragile power in the absence of Hazlia, the Dweghom, ever first to be drawn to turmoil, launched their own Campaign. Falling upon Spires and Weavers alike, they largely ignored the Dominion – until, inevitably, the Dominion refused passage or misread their intentions. All-out war broke out around the continent, with the weakened Dominion soon realizing it was fighting to survive, not to win. Withdrawing, as waves of refugees increased in numbers, the Last Legion, who had disobeyed their orders to disband, focused their efforts to escorting refugees, creating as safe a passage west for them as they could, while the Dweghom focused on bringing down entire Spires. Answering the challenge, and with their hand forced, the Spires responded by unleashing their latest creation, a warrior species meant to serve and fight better than any clone or drone could: the W’adrhŭn.
It was in such a world, and after three hundred years of turmoil, that two men finally glimpsed into Hazlia’s purpose: the destruction of his own people. One of them, known as Platon, sought to preserve, spiriting away the amassed knowledge of the Dominion and laying the foundation of a perfect society, where belief and science would police politicians and each other. The other, known solely as the Anathematic, found a way to kill a god. And while he never committed the deicide himself, he left his research for his most trusted and powerful acolytes to find.
Before long, they struck. And Hazlia, in his end, pulled down the heavens with him, trying to end the world. Were it not for the sacrifices of Ninuah and the efforts of Cleon’s chosen last surviving Legion, humanity, and perhaps all Life, would have found their end in Hazlia’s Fall. As it were, the world endured; but so did, in a way, Hazlia.
Deep beneath the bowels of Capitas, main city of the Old Dominion, there was a massive lake of still, black waters and unfathomable depth. There, for centuries, the Dominion theocracy would bring its honored dead, at first crafting tombs along the shoreline, then expanding in crypts and catacombs beyond counting. It was there were Hazlia’s essence fell – and it was there that, eons ago, the Dragons had sealed Death. How the two interacted, no one knows. But mere hours after the Dominion died, all those sworn to Hazlia in life would serve as host to His shuttered power beyond death.
It is said that Hazlia’s undead relic itself attacked the walls raised by the Last Legion in the Claustrine Mountains, hunting its fleeing people. Three times Hazlia and his unliving hosts attacked and three times Cleon and his last legion repelled them, assisted by a single Dweghom clan. In the end, both Cleon and Hazlia fell, the Last Legion shattered and humanity, along with the rest of the world, survived. For a hundred years, the Long Winter would force all civilizations to withdraw, focusing on survival and their internal differences.
Today, it has been over six centuries since the Fall, five hundred years since the Long Winter ended.
And everyone is flexing their muscles once more.