V. The Last War of the Gods

By the final years of the Age of Divinity, the unrest spreading between nations had become impossible to separate from the powers moving behind it. The influence of Malgathar, Lessarith, and Vorandor had been uncovered, their followers had taken root across many lands, and conflicts born from mortal grievances were being pushed toward ever greater violence.

The discovery of the Triad also brought an older danger back into view. The three had arisen from divine power left behind after the death of Lyrael, and what remained of that power was removed from Eldareth before it could give rise to anything further. The manner and place of its containment passed out of ordinary history.

What followed became the final great war of the Age of Divinity.

The fighting did not begin upon a single field or beneath the banners of a single kingdom. Wars already underway widened as the gods entered the struggle openly, drawing mortal nations into a conflict whose reach soon extended far beyond the disputes that had begun it.

Celestial and fiendish hosts entered Eldareth in great numbers, while dragons and elemental powers once again fought beside mortal armies. The Primarchs and Dragon Ascendants returned to war alongside the gods they had stood with during the Dawn War, and battles spread across fronts separated by vast distances.

Mortals remained at the heart of the conflict. Kings called their armies, cities fortified their walls, and soldiers fought beside beings whose power had previously belonged to temple stories and the oldest accounts of the Dawn War. Some defended their homelands against the servants of the Triad, while others had already been drawn into wars that now became part of something far greater.

As the struggle continued, the boundaries between mortal and divine warfare all but disappeared. Fortresses fell beneath forces they had never been built to withstand, entire regions were abandoned, and roads that had connected nations for generations became battle lines or vanished beneath the devastation.

No surviving chronicle records the whole war.

Different peoples remember different campaigns, and religious traditions disagree over where the greatest confrontations took place or which victories finally turned the conflict. Much of what happened survives only in fragments, preserved through damaged records and stories carried forward by those who lived through them.

What remained beyond dispute was the cost. For the second time in Eldareth's history, a war between gods had engulfed the mortal world.

There could be no simple victory in which the Triad were slain. Their defeat instead came through exile, removing their full presence from Eldareth and casting each beyond the Material Plane.

Malgathar was driven into Baator, where he would eventually conquer much of the ancient plane and build the infernal empire that became the Nine Hells. Lessarith was cast into the Abyss and established the Endless Spiral, while Vorandor was confined to the Gray Wastes and the Withered Spire.

The fighting ended, but the lesson it left behind was far greater than the defeat of the Triad.

The gods who had defended Eldareth had still brought devastation simply by waging war within it. Their presence could decide battles and save nations, but when powers of such magnitude turned against one another, the world around them inevitably paid the price.

The gods withdrew.

In the years that followed, the Prime Deities agreed that the greatest divine powers should no longer be free to manifest fully within Eldareth. Ao gave that agreement permanent form through the Mythal, a barrier extending across the planar boundary surrounding the Material Plane.

The gods would remain part of mortal life, answering their followers and guiding events from beyond, but the age in which they could descend openly into Eldareth with all their power had ended.

The Primarchs returned to the Elemental Planes under their care, while the Dragon Ascendants remained within Eldareth and continued their long stewardship of the lands tied to them. Feonar alone retained the freedom to wander between the mortal world and the planes as he had before, his exemption written into the Mythal from its creation.

The change did not end faith, nor did it silence the gods. Their influence endured through the people who served them and through the signs by which mortals had always sought their guidance.

But they would no longer stand openly at the head of armies or bring the full weight of divine conflict into the mortal world.

The Dawn War had shaped the beginning of the age.

The Last War brought it to an end.

With the Triad exiled and the Mythal restricting the full presence of the greater gods within Eldareth, the Age of Divinity passed into history.