IV. The Shadow of the Triad

By this point, the unrest that had begun with hidden cults and scattered accusations had spread much farther.

Armies gathered along contested borders, alliances weakened, and rulers who had once dealt cautiously with one another began preparing for war. Old grievances returned with new urgency, while plague, failed harvests, religious suspicion, and political violence made diplomacy increasingly difficult to sustain.

Feonar was among the first of the gods to suspect that mortal rivalry alone could not explain what was happening.

He spent years moving through Eldareth in mortal guise, following reports of forbidden rites, unexplained outbreaks, broken alliances, and conflicts that had worsened with unusual speed. During this period, he traveled for a time with a band of adventurers pursuing many of the same disturbances.

Gradually, a pattern emerged.

Certain names appeared repeatedly among otherwise unrelated cults. Symbols changed between regions, teachings differed, and followers often knew little of one another, yet the same three powers surfaced again and again: Malgathar, Lessarith, and Vorandor.

Their influence took different forms.

Malgathar found followers among those drawn to conquest, vengeance, and rule through force. His teachings spread most readily where rulers, warriors, and factions already believed strength was the surest means of securing power.

Lessarith was harder to trace. Her presence appeared in concealed bargains, manipulated prophecy, betrayal, hoarded necessities, and promises whose cost became clear only after they had been accepted. Some of those touched by her influence lived far beyond the lands familiar to the kingdoms of Ethelra, and the full extent of her reach would only become known much later.

Vorandor's mark was found in blight and disease. The Creeping Rot and later the Scab-Rot were eventually linked to the same power invoked by smaller cults that used contamination, poisoned supplies, and promises of relief to gain influence over desperate communities.

These movements had not begun as a single organized faith. Many followers knew only the name, aspect, or promise through which one of the three had reached them. Some served knowingly. Others may never have understood the true nature of the power they followed.

By the time these connections became clear, the three had already been shaping events for generations.

Later histories traced their origins to the death of Lyrael.

When the Elemental Matriarch fell during the Dawn War, much of the divine power released in her death became part of the transformation that created the Primarchs. Some of that power remained unclaimed.

Exactly how Malgathar, Lessarith, and Vorandor emerged from what remained is less certain. Accounts written after their discovery describe divine potential gradually taking form amid centuries of warfare, ambition, scarcity, disease, fear, and suffering.

Whatever the precise process, three distinct divine beings had arisen during the Age of Divinity.

Their existence gave new meaning to events that had previously seemed unrelated. Cults separated by great distances had been answering to the same powers. Political conflicts had been encouraged by forces that benefited from their escalation. Blights and plagues once treated as isolated catastrophes bore signs of deliberate influence.

As Feonar's findings became known to the other gods, the scale of the danger became harder to ignore.

Malgathar's teachings had become entangled with wars and ambitions already taking shape among mortals. Lessarith had established followers and altered the histories of peoples far beyond the conflicts then troubling Ethelra. Vorandor's diseases had devastated lands where his name was barely known.

The Triad still worked largely through followers, intermediaries, hidden worship, and divisions that already existed within mortal societies.

But their presence was no longer in doubt.

As the threat of wider war continued to grow, the gods began preparing for the possibility that the conflict spreading among mortals would draw the divine powers of Eldareth into open confrontation once again.