This page contains in-character information. Whether your character knows any or all of this information depends on whether or not they pay attention to religious studies.
The Creation of Ciruin
Most hear the word “apocalypse”, and they think of the nothingness that follows – everything they’d known before gone in less than the span of a heartbeat. But for the people of a place long gone, their apocalypse came first in a slow trickle, only to become a flood faster than anything could be done to stop it. The people of the old world fought amongst themselves, divided by such fickle traits as their birthplace and the crown they bent their knee to, and all the while, the gods they paid their lip service to – mere mortals who had taken up the mantle of divinity – watched, not only content, but even amused as their creations destroyed themselves.
From the shadows of their divine plane, lesser divines not yet entrusted their own world watched in horror as the old world fell to murder and corruption, and they hatched a plan to stop their betters from destroying not only the world they should be protecting, but also any that may get in the way. The eldest of these lesser gods, following the advice of a being that refused to identify itself, took a single, still burning ember from a forge long destroyed by the people, and from that single shard of the old world, the gods forged a new land in the place they had been directed, the force of the magic required barring the previous divines from interfering in their creation.
This new land, called Ciruin, was populated by those of the old world who had grown weary of the war, and those gifted with salvation by the gods flourished where before they wished for nothing but a quick death in battle, as opposed to the slow death caused by disease, famine, or infection. But people, being as they are, could not be satisfied with a world where there was no conflict, and the gods were powerless to stop the survivors as they, too, fell to war amongst themselves. The survivors fought until they had brought themselves nearly to the brink of extinction, until a single mage, along with their army, sent word to the other factions that a tourney would be held, and the people were to unite under the winner’s banner.
This mage was called Alderra, and while the other factions sent their strongest warriors to fight in their leaders’ stead, Alderra fought in her own name, and her power proved the better. Alderra, however, was mortally wounded in the tourney, and appointed her second in command as the leader of the kingdom the united factions would build before she, too, succumbed to her wounds. The faction leaders kept their word, and so the kingdom was built, given the name of Alderra in memory of the mage who lead them to peace.
The peace would last for only a decade before being shattered in a particularly brutal fashion by a seemingly endless army of enraged specters, attacking and killing indiscriminately until, just as suddenly as they appeared, they vanished, only to appear again only months later. The kingdom’s priests implored the gods to save them, and the gods blessed the weapons of the soldiers, allowing them to fight back against these spectral attackers, eventually driving them out of the kingdom entirely. These spectres took their toll on the kingdom, however, and they would prove that they weren’t gone for good, forcing the kingdom of Alderra to remain on its toes.
One hundred and twenty five years after its creation, the story of how the gods made Ciruin from a shard of the old world has passed into myth, the kingdom is uneasily awaiting another attack from the mysterious spectres, and the gods have become quite pleased with their creations. The fate of Ciruin, now in the hands of its people rather than its gods, is yet to be decided.