In the wake of Starfall, many mortals tried to take advantage of the fact that the Arbiter seemed to be missing. They sought Divinity, and wars raged on. The following are the gods that rose and died in that period:

Incal-Hasdain, Fallen God of Conquest, slain by Nwa'kaur
Deremith, Fallen Goddess of Carnality, slain by the Triplets of the Webweaver
Meeanala, Fallen Goddess of Faerie, slain by Esaria
Eckatamahl, Fallen God of the Deeps, slain by the Leviathan
Huuruuluug, Fallen God of Darkness, captured and eternally tormented by the Webweaver
Lyndylloraem, Fallen God of Obsession, slain by Mieri Cuniad
Palda-Rahalla, Fallen Goddess of Power, slain by Othar Swordtitan
Yalgueth, Fallen Goddess of Ferocity, slain by Tuanberge
Q'leeth, Fallen Goddess of Birds, slain by Alerion
Fadangoul, Fallen God of Storms, slain by Ceronius
Loacrui, Fallen Deity of Oddity, slain by the Eleventh
Uttaaur-Khnemaelath, Fallen God of Authority, slain by Kez

None of these made it far enough to be part of a Pantheon or form a Court, but their Names are quite powerful.

They are called the Gods of the Pit because they rose in the wake of Starfall.

Bogquohep Eneya Medfax Fhrallta Yuh Inmek Millua'a

Also slain and cast into The Pit were

AlvumAnimo, the Thinker, slain by Alma Cree, the Hand of Despair
Gerrys, the Spellcaster, slain by Vigis, Nemesis of Magic
Banner, the Jester, slain by Naman Rath, the Tyrant
ProstatisEstias, the Housewife, slain by Seolus Ironsword
Minerva, the Spear-bearer, slain by Mnemnon, the Pallid Warlock
VahKadumavenRashaven, the Matriarch, slain by the Angel of Stillbirth


Version 1:

The time after Starfall saw a War of the Gods unlike any other before. It was not Dark vs. Light or Destruction vs. Preservation. It was not the Gods vs. Mortals, nor was it the Divine Courts vs. an Outside Threat. It was Old Gods vs. New Gods, and it was one of the most devastating wars in the history of Shem. This was the time of what would come to be known as the Gods of the Pit, who, like the Usurpers of old, tried to take over lesser domains belonging to greater gods, with one exception. These gods came to be known as the Gods of the Pit partly because they arose after Starfall, but mostly, they got this name because they were cast into The Pit upon their deaths.

The first to arise was called the Conqueror. He was a warrior and general, and he attained godhead quite easily, with an army of devotees behind him. He made Palhur his Empire, and for four years, he was a God-Emperor of terrifying power. What is known of him is that he was a minotaur halfbreed of some sort (the other half is obscured in history), and that he resented his minotaur lineage's discrimination against him. In the wars that followed, he was cast down by the Minotaur Manifest, Nwa'kaur, in single combat.

The second to arise was the Carnal Goddess, a dark mirror to the Beloved, a being of lust and desire, who created a cult of sex-crazed men and women who would drain the ashar of those they captured. They did not have a large following, but they had perhaps the most devoted following. Unfortunately for them, they fell afoul of the Cult of the Triplets, who had a similar modus operandi, and this spelled their doom. The Triplets of the Webweaver personally seduced, bound, and drained the Carnal Goddess of Haramaeth, then cast her into The Pit. What is known about her before she became a goddess is that she was a wyrder, a woman who used the Lore and other strange powers, who had been scorned by those she loved. She rose to power by using her powers to become beautiful and charm powerful men and women.

The third to rise was the Fey Goddess. Before she was a goddess, she was a handmaiden to The Queen, and her resentment of The Queen drove her to seek power. She was lured into a plot to overthrow The Queen by conspirators and traitors, and in the process, she became a pawn of these greater powers. After twists and turns of the conspiracy played out, she found herself in a position to steal the power her co-conspirators sought, and she did so, choosing to become the Goddess of the Fey, Mother of the Tradition, and upon her rise, she set to unify the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. Because the fey have had Ages to master not fighting in the open, the war was a subtle one, but it ended in a direct confrontation that is still whispered about by those who know if it: The Queen herself rode out against the Goddess, and in the end, the Goddess was slain and cast into The Pit.

The fourth to rise was the Lord of the Deeps, the dweller in the crevasses on the oceanic floor. A dark, vicious god, he influenced only the most dread things of the beneath, and where he came from is still unclear. He made war on all the things living beneath the waves, and thus, he made many, many enemies. The deep ones flocked to him as a master, the krakens honored him, and the iku-tursos were his favorites, but the tritons named him the greatest monster known below, the bottom dwellers feared him more than anything, and the cetaceanoids spent most of their time trying to defeat him. In the end, the Leviathan himself entered the dark hollows where the Lord of the Deeps dwelled, and the two clashed in a war of currents and earthquakes, and the Leviathan left there and gave the corpse of the god unto others so that it might be cast into The Pit.

The fifth to rise was the one exception. He was not seeking a subaspect like the others, but instead, he sought to usurp the domain of Darkness itself. The tale is told often these days: seeing the inevitable coming, the Webweaver himself sought out allies to lure on his less important but still ambitious followers into a trap. He wove a web such that a powerful but not significant demon would find a path to apotheosis, a following of many powerful demons and infernal forces, and would come to face the Webweaver. Unlike all of the other gods mentioned here, the Fallen One is not dead, nor will he ever die, it is thought. He was bound in webs made by the Divine Spider, and cast into The Pit to suffer eternally as a message to any who thought to try to usurp the powers of the Webweaver.

The sixth to rise was a powerful jade dragon who served the Poacher. He was one of her consorts for a time, and he knew the Divine Courts well. He had three children, and each of them was a powerful lord in Mwyr Aeld. His plot was clandestine and complicated, and only his children were involved. In the end, the Poacher's daughter Mieri, a mage of incredible cunning, discovered the plot shortly after the Dragon of Obsession had become a Divine, and she used her arts to bind and destroy him, draining his Divine energies and feeding them back to her Goddess. She then cast the Dragon into The Pit. Two of his cildren died, but the third fled to Starfall and started a new life.

The seventh to rise was a Wathite warrior-queen who rose up against the Conqueror. She believed the only way to defeat him was to become a goddess herself, and thus, she took on the mantle of the Goddess of Power. She contributed greatly to the downfall of the Conqueror before being betrayed by her allies. This embittered her and set her against even her own people, and the Wathite Manifest Othar Swordtitan slew her in combat, weeping the entire time, for the two had been deeply in love before the betrayal. Because of this, New Wath and Haurkizadh, land of the minotaurs, have a lasting and bitter enmity. The goddess was cast into The Pit.

The eighth to rise was the Ferocious One, a goddess of intensity and fierceness. She was a goblin queen, and like the Powerful, she rose up in response to the Conqueror. Unlike the Powerful, she intended to usurp his position, not merely defeat him. She cut a huge swath out of Palhur before the Aeonian called the Ripper was summoned by trollish shamans to destroy her. In the ensuing battle, a valley was carved into the mountains that remains to this day the place where troll and goblin meet to duel for territorial disputes. The Ripper, Tuanberge, tore her to shreds and cast her into The Pit.

The ninth to rise was a curious situation: it was a mundane bird given Divinity by a druid who truly loved the birds. This little bird became the Birdmother, and she sought only to wield her power to better the world for birds. Still, her existence proved a conflict between followers of the Windfather and herself, and the religious war spread to include followers of the Ark as well. In the end, the King of All Birds, Alerion, battled her for the right to the domain of avians, and she fell to his talons. Though devastated, he carried her body to The Pit and cast it in.

The tenth to rise was the Mad Baron of Storms. An old lord living in a coastal region wracked by hurricanes, the mad baron sought to command that which devastated his rocky homeland. He used his influence and powers to find a way to become one with a storm, and from there, he sought Divinity, which he attained with relative ease. He then went to make war directly on the Stormfather, and in the ensuing battle, the Prince of Storms slew him and cast him into The Pit.

The eleventh to rise was the Oddity. None truly understand where it came from, how it became a god, or what its domain truly was, but it pulled from all the domains of Velour Mantle. It was hostile toward them as well, and in the end, it fell in combat with the Eleventh, the Archmage of Archmages, and was cast into The Pit.

Finally, the last to rise was the Authority, a communal Divine being of seven-in-one who sought to replace the Arbiter, but in the sphere of Authority, not Balance. His attempt garnered the attention of all of the gods, and the war with him was the longest and most brutal. In the end, the Servant of the Crowned God, Kez, used his knowledge of communality (being a thrax) to destroy the Authority in a battle of wits. He then cast the Authority down into The Pit.

Now thirteen athezants line the sides of The Pit, their cults barely memories on Shem...


Version 2:

The Conqueror rose up and was slain first. A common minotaur bent for greatness, he came close to ruling the world before the Minotaur Manifest faced him in single combat. Wielding a spear forged in the world's Core, he was nearly slain. The spear shattered, not strong enough to slay a god, and an attempt to gore his foe left him without his left horn. By chance, the First Dagger, Scarasamasax, fell from the grasp of a fellow warrior, and the Manifest was able to grab it and plunge it into his foe's heart moments before a blow from the god's sword would have cleaved him in two.

The Carnal Goddess was truly a rival to the Beloved, an evil counterpart to her domain, but the Beloved accepted this rivalry. However, the Aeonian Trinity known as the Triplets of the Webweaver found this usurption offensive, for the realm of Vanity lay within their foul hold. Using arts known only to Aeonian Trinities, they wielded raw baal essence and destroyed the Goddess with it.

The Thinker, ancient god of thought and memory, aided in the Sixth War of the Gods as an adviser to the fey and magical courts. Their foes, the Goddess of Faerie and the Deity of Oddity, hired the Hand of Despair, Alma Cree, to slay him, paying her with fuligin acquired from The Pit. Using forbidden arts to mask herself, she sneaked into the Library of the Divines and plunged a fuligin sword into his back and through his heart.

In response to this assault, The Queen of Faerie herself rode out against the usurping Goddess of Faerie. The two clashed for one hundred and one days, and in the end, using an invisible sword forged by the smith Obiefune, The Queen slew the usurper. What became of the sword is unknown.

Meanwhile, below the seas, a dread Divine who sought to command the Deeps faced the Leviathan himself. Not having a sword at all, and being of sizes too vast to wield them anyway, the two massive entities wielded the landscape itself against each other. The battle became one of hurling the remnants of ships, buildings, mountains at each other, ending when finally, the hull of /The Diamond of the Seas/, and impossible vessel sailed by the likes of the first Champion of Diamonds and the Reever Queen, slammed into the Deep God, piercing his heart with some fragment of the Absolute Zero, which the ship had sailed through.

The Spellcaster Divine did eventually die, of course. Her previous fall and rise was merely preamble. In the Age of Mantles, the Champion of Magic was forced to form his own Nemesis in order to transcend, and from this rose Vigis, the Spellslayer. Vigis was sought by the Oddity in the wake of his ally's fall, and ordered to slay all three Goddesses of Magic. Wielding the Gifted Sword of Nullification, Vigis first sought the Spellcaster and, empowered by the Oddity's bizarre energies, Sealed the Sword into her heart. However, in the wake of her death, Vigis was crippled, and his quest ended. The Sword was drawn out by unknown parties, and the Spellcaster thrown into The Pit with the other dead Divines.

The subtle struggle between the Courts of Thorns and Nails reached a standstill in these times, when a dragon dedicated to the Poacher sought Divinity and became the Dragon of Obsession. Both Courts found him loathesome and sought to destroy him, and a contest began to see whom would do so. In the end, Mieri Cuniaid, the Cunning Mage, took up one of the Obiefune-forged swords the Poacher owned and defeated the Dragon via magicks and the Connectioncutter blade. In the battle, the sword was lost (recovered by shemir followers of the Shrill Divine), but the Dragon slain.

The most infamous God of The Pit, of course, is the Demon God, the Usurper who sought the throne of darkness. In the wake of the Demon God's rise and fall, it became clear he was set up the entire time by the Webweaver, who saw the play coming from the infernal Courts and sought to head it off before it got out of hand. He made an example of the Demon God, never actually killing him. He let him build up an army, let him stand before the Webweaver, and then with an ease horrifying to behold, he captured the Demon God, bound him up, and impaled him on the side of The Pit, to suffer forever, powerless.

The Sixth War of the Gods was a confused one, of course. New Gods were rising in legitimate domains and in false ones, and the conflict between them all lead to battles between groups that had no real concern with each other. Such was the fall of the Jester: a tragedy of opportunity. Leading forces against the Oddity, the Jester found himself surrounded by unknown forces lead by a figure of incredible power. The then-unknown figure known as the Tyrant wielded the Obiefune-forged sword called Dominion, and he lead an army of mindless drones that delighted in the slaying of any foes not enslaved by the Tyrant's power. When he clashed with the Jester Divine, the heated battle ended in heart-rending tragedy as the sword Dominion plunged into the Jester's chest when the power of enslavedment defeated even his power of mirth.

That battle gave way to the much more devastating (land-wise) Battle of the Divide. Five Divines would fall in this battle, four Usurpers and one Old God. The Rushing Strength, Goddess of Power, had smashed a vast trench across the world, ripping a massive swath of it out, and some fourteen massive armies rushed into it via supernatural means. In the initial blast, the wife of Othar Swordtitan, Wathite Manifest, was killed. During the pitched battle, he slew the goblin warlord Karneg Earbreaker, and from him he stole the Gifted Sword of Vengeance. Using the empowerment brought by such feats to empower the Sword, he called out to the Masked God for vengeance, and he hurled the Sword into the heart of the Rushing Strength, nearly ripping her in two in the process.

The Rushing Strength's ally, the Fierce One, channeled the power of the Divide and sought to obliterate the world entire in the wake of her partner's fall. Seeing their Court's purpose threatened by an outsider, the Ripper, Tuanberge, Child of Destruction, wielded a morag-sword against the Fierce One and stole that power. In a blow that reversed the Divide's creation, he nigh obliterated the Fierce One, leaving only scraps to be thrown into The Pit.

Above this, the King of All Birds, Alerion, battled the usurping Birdmother. Unable to wield swords of any kind, the two struggled with talon and beak. This battle was bloody and intense, and it was only solved truly when, using cruel trickery, the King of All Birds maneuvered the Birdmother into impaling herself on a spike along the edge of The Pit. This maneuver would have been impossible had it not been for the struggle between the Storm Prince and the usurper the false Storm God. The incredible hurricane that dominated the world over the Divide was powered by their fight, and in the eye of this storm, eventually, these two met, with the Storm Prince taking the Gifted Sword of Winds and Sealing it into the heart of the usurper.

Meanwhile, the horrific battle also saw the Hearthmother slain. She sought to use her strength to seal the Divide (which contributed to its erasure), and the fallen fir bolg Seolus Ironsword, wielding his namesake blade, ended her life with a blow to the heart. Few understand why he would do such a thing, but most believe it was an opportunistic strike. Others believe he saw opportunity in the Divide and sought to prevent her from sealing it. Others still believe it was another mistaken strike. He has yet to offer an explanation.

After the Battle of the Divide, the War calmed somewhat. The Oddity, perhaps the most powerful of the Usurpers, fled to a stronghold on the edge of reality. For eleven days and nights, it remained safe there, but an enraged and empowered Eleventh, Child of the Sorceress Divine, mustered all his strength and entered the edge of reality to face, finally, the most dangerous of the Usurpers. There, the Eleventh wielded not a sword but pure, raw magic in his quest. Using arts lost to the world, he split the Oddity's six chambered heart and threw him into The Pit.

In the wake of the Oddity's fall, the only Usurper left was the Authority, a faceless, massive construct of a Divine that commanded slaves more potently than even the Conqueror or the Tyrant. The army he held in sway was immense. The power he commanded rivaled the Arbiter's, they said. In order to learn how to destroy him, the Spear-bearer infiltrated his army. After getting word back to her allies of how to slay him, however, she was enslaved by his power. In the battle against the Authority that followed, she fought for him, and it was the power of the Warlock Mnemnon that defeated her. Using a potent curse, he commanded her to impale herself on her own spear.

Using the wisdom of the Spear-bearer, the Proctor of the Throned God brought to bear the full might of an entire race, the thrax, and channeled it into an ancient weapon, the first gun. One single bullet flew from that gun and broke the device within the Authority that served as its heart, clogging its system and causing it to erupt. In the chaos that reigned in the wake of its destruction, the Angel of Stillbirth rose up with a baalsword, acquired from unknown sources, and slew the Matriarch, who was attempting to save as many people as she could at the time.

And thus, the history of godslaying concludes, for now.
Topic revision: r7 - 12 Nov 2021, SallyJaneBlack
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