History
( this page is a massive WIP, so please excuse the mess :P )
Jump to a section!
Introduction • Prologue • The Slow Spread • Truth's Gambit • The Resistance Begins • Wish Upon a Million Stars • The War of the Light
Introduction
This page is here to serve as an overarching history of the Sevenfold — how it initially formed, the threat that banded them together, and its state in present day. You probably could enjoy the rest of the site without reading this massive wall of text, but I recommend that you at least skim through it (or read the TL;DR version on the overview page whenever i fucking get to it).
Now, without further ado...
Prologue
Millenia ago, somewhere in the universe, a deity goes out of control. This deity will eventually be known as the Exiled One, and It will go on to fuck up everything for everyone.
The details are scarce, and most of what we know of the Exiled One before It became a cosmic menace comes from another deity who saw everything from the beginning, and what that deity tells us is this:
The Exiled One was once a deity over a small, failing realm. Formerly a place that devoted itself to harmony and order, the inner clockwork that held it together had started to stutter and fall apart, slowly taking the realm with it. A faction of gods sensed the weakness in both the realm and its custodian, and believed them both to be ripe for the picking. They soon invaded in droves, too many to fight off and too powerful to defend against.
The deity felt the realm collapse little by little with each invader that stuffed themselves inside it. They quickly grew desparate, performing an eldritch ritual that merged them with the realm itself. Between the deity's will and the realm's magic, the resulting being had exponentially-increased power and infinite control of all within Its boundaries... including the invading gods.
What was supposed to be a sure win for the invaders became a bloodbath. Most of the invaders were assimilated on the spot and turned against those that managed to stay free. Anyone who managed to escape came face to face with the being itself and was quickly obliterated. All the invaders were either dead or had been fused into the realm in short order... but the being was still unsatisfied.
The deity, given fresh power, was incandescent with rage at those that dared disturb It.
The realm, given fresh will, was deeply unsettled from this disturbance of Its equilibrium.
And the assimilated gods' power ran through It all, a weapon and reminder of the threats beyond.
The only way to protect Itself, It decides,
i̐͑s̸̾͗͑͌̋ ͠t͏o͗̒̽ ҉b̸ͫ̋ͨ̿̈r̢͆i̴̎͊̿̾͂͑͊n̏͝g̛̍̋̉͌ ̛̔ͨẽ̡̉͗v͂͂̐ē̓̈ͯ̈́ͦrͦ͠yͩ̎ͩͥ̇͗̀th̛̆ͥͭ͆̉̓in͊̍ͦ̇͊͒gͬ͋̄ͧ̀ͮ̉ ė̂͂ļ̀ͩ̐ͨşͣ͊e͗͒͋͟ ͦ̏̿͒͆̒tͤ̍ͣ͏o̡̒͂ͦ̌ͤ̋ ̕hͥͫ̓̌͒e̿̆̈͏ē̋͌͌͏l̒̇͐̑͋̅.̶ͮ͒
The Slow Spread
And soon, the Exiled One begins to spread like a tumor. Its influence corrupts and "purifies" everything It touches, tearing apart anything that dares fight back. As It begins murdering gods and taking their powers for Itself, It causes a horrific domino effect that screws over everything for everyone, divine and mundane alike.
The gods struggle to pick up the slack their fallen leave behind, with more and more responsibilities falling by the wayside as the dead begin to pile up. A number of deities try to go after the Exiled One to no avail, only serving to make It stronger. A few try to appease It, outright support It, or otherwise attempt to get on Its good side. The Exiled One forced these gods to take in Its corruption and turned them into glorified puppets, using their influence to spread Its own doctrine of purity and perfection to the mortals under them. All of this dumps even more stuff to juggle on the gods still standing, and a good number of them break under the stress and go insane, becoming easy targets. Almost all attempts to escape or turn to other pantheons for help fail as the corruption eats away at any connections to other worlds the realm had, isolating the deities and forcing them to face their fate.
All of the chaos and strife of the divine filter down to the mortals. Magic, for those who have it, becomes wildly unpredictable and borderline-unusable, bringing everything that depended on it to a halt. An extremist, apocalyptic sect of the Exiled One's new adherents cause an endless amount of chaos, acting under strict orders to convert anyone they come across, anyway they can. Chosen Ones who were prophesied to rise to the occasion in times of strife simply didn't show up, as the Exiled One began to manipulate fate to prevent any challenge to their takeover. Entire regions become uninhabitable as local environments go haywire and no one is able to cull what the corruption produces. Cultures are stamped out, civilizations collapse, and entire realms go silent.
And so, a cycle is born. The Exiled One's corruption happens upon a world, whether it be a planet or an inhabitied area of a realm. It cuts off all avenues of escape and assistance, assimilating the deities It can and killing the ones It can't. The assimilated begin handing down "their" new doctrine to their followers, at least some of which convert and become part of the apocalyptic sect. This sect becomes the Exiled One's enforcers, who gain control of governments or other seats of power any way they can, giving them the ability to forcibly convert the populace and execute those who resisted. After a few decades or centuries of this, the Exiled One either assimilates the entire planet or area, gaining a new pool of power and minions, or destroys it outright, seeing too much resistance and believing it to be a lost cause. Then the corruption spreads to a new world, and everything begins again.
Truth's Gambit
Kelia, the Stalwart Seer, deity of visions and truth, was simply another god in the Exiled One's way. One of the deities that tried to hold Their ground against Its blight, Kelia was just supposed to be another obstacle to perfection that would crumble at Its sight. And while They did fall like all before Them, what They did in Their final moments drastically changed the course of the Exiled One's fate.
Kelia was the last deity of Their planet to fall and held out much longer than Their brethren, frustrating the Exiled One to the point where It saw to Their death personally. It had cornered Them in Their holy place, leeching Their power the further It encroached, and Kelia knew that their end was imminent. With what remained of Their power, Kelia broadcast one final vision across planets, galaxies, and realms to all who had heard of Their name. From the simplest layperson to the most distant realmhoppers to the gods who oversaw them all, all who had ever felt Their influence were made witness to Their death — the Exiled One's approach, Kelia's last stand, and the final blow that made the vision go dark.
The remaining realms of gods were all in uproar. Deities either flung themselves into a panic or had shut themselves away in despair at the enormity of the threat before them, the vision confirming what they all had silently suspected. The mortal realms were even worse off, especially those that the Exiled One hadn't gotten to yet. The planets that had the infrastructure to pull it off did their best to prepare for Its arrival — stockpiling weapons, preparing massive offerings in hopes of appeasing It, or straight-up attempting to teleport their homeworld to another realm. In some places Kelia's vision backfired, with authorities taking the intended warning as a sign that they should welcome the Exiled One instead, should It ever arrive.
Some of the best scholars and resarchers, divine and mortal alike, began digging into the current state of the universe, and what they found was horrific. The Exiled One's power was so vast and all-encompassing that It had turned Itself into a "pillar" of sorts, holding the universe up by sheer will alone. However, the damage It had done had caused several massive "cracks" — weakpoints in the fabirc of reality — that were growing larger every day, letting in all manner of extra-dimensional dangers. With the remaining gods barely being able to maintain the current state of the universe, let alone try to repair the damage done, folks figured out pretty quickly that if things continued as they were, the universe (and maybe even reality itself) would collapse.
But however much chaos the vision caused, it inspired even more determination, especially among the mortals. This stick-up-the-ass is gonna fuck up my home?! Gonna turn me into a puppet?! Not on your fucking life!
And thus, efforts to oust the Exiled One began.
The Resistance Begins
The creation of and networking with resistance groups began in secret, but in earnest. The first few are scattershot and disorganized, and are stamped out quickly. But methods of interrealm organization improved with each group that survived their baby steps, and Kelia's last vision began reaching the worlds the Exiled One targeted after Their death, so the pool of potential recruits never dried up.
Many of these groups investigate several possible ways to bring the Exiled One down. Most end in failure at first, either because their research path hit a dead end or the Exiled One found out about it and nuked them from orbit. Turns out it's super difficult to hide plans to kill a god when the god you're targeting is almost omnipotent.
Other groups organized evacuation efforts and refugee camps for worlds the Exiled One was approaching. These get more victories under their belt, successfully clearing smaller realms and entire planets before Its influence gained a chokehold on them, and even rescuing survivors from already-assimilated planets. These survivors were walking, talking resources on how the Exiled One's corruption worked, and their info was sent back to the researching groups, who used it to refine their potential murder methods. Plans still failed and worlds still fell, but every story of success put a little bit more hope in the realms.
It took a while for there to be a breakthrough among the researching groups, but when it happened it was explosive. Between talking to survivors that came face to face with the corruption and long, careful investigations, they discover a quirk of the universe:
A wish made in earnest will be granted, no matter what. It may not be granted immediately, or exactly how you wanted it to be granted, but it will be granted.
This seemed like the solution the resistance groups were looking for! A way to bypass the Exiled One screwing with fate while technically not needing humongous amounts of magic to do so. It was so perfect, in fact, that many in these groups suspected there was going to be a catch.
And there were catches — several major ones, in fact. First of all, one person simply wishing away the problem obviously would not work, or else the Exiled One would've been long gone by now. In order for any method involving wishes to work, enough people would have to all wish for Its defeat to override the fate manipulation in the first place, and with how powerful the Exiled One was, that number could easily be several million (maybe even several billion). And if it did require that many people, then some sort of large power source would be needed so that A) all of the wishes would even be granted and B) the granting would follow the spirit of the wishes as close as possible and not have any of them go sour.
So how were they going to pull this off? Could this even be pulled off?
Wish Upon a Million Stars
Several ideas for power sources were investigated and dismissed in quick succession:
Ask one of the gods to lend their power? No, the gods are already stretched thin as it is, and if the Exiled One kills the one they pick, then it's back to square one.
Pull from the power of their home planet, or their star? Well, maybe, but that would weaken that celestial body's natural defences for if and when the Exiled One makes an appearance there, and again, the Exiled One targeting that body at all would reset those wishers' progress.
Use the wishers' own souls? Absolutely not. That's bordering on necromancy and if something goes wrong, there'll be an even worse problem on their hands.
Realms usually have more magic and have been more resistant to the corruption overall. How about pulling from one of those? That could work, but which one? Using a divine realm has the same problem as using one of the gods, and afterlifes carry most of the same risk as using living souls. If they went with a realm it couldn't be either of those.
More suggestions were tossed around — elemental realm? a being's personal realm? just making and cultivating their own? — before settling for the Astral Realm. With the Astral Realm fueling the dreams of almost every sapient being in the universe, it should have more than enough energy to grant at least a few million wishes.
The Astral Realm still had deities watching over it, however, and when the resistance groups tentatively reached out to them about their plan, they were met with an icy, immediate no. The gods had been keeping the realm stable even with all their losses, and they refuse to let anything jeopardize it. They empathize with the resistance, truly and deeply, but they'd have to find some other way to power their plan.
...And that's where that plan would have died were it not for one god going over the heads of the rest. Yori, the Dreaming Maiden, was known for keeping a close eye on the resistance, going so far as to actively participate in a few operations Herself. She was intensly intrigued by their latest plan, and so fully agreed to help the resistance as soon as the other gods were out of earshot. She'd even give the potential wishers a little bit of access to the Astral Realm's magic for themselves for some extra firepower. The only thing She asked for was that some of the wishers stay back and help defend the Astral Realm itself, because She believed the Exiled One would not hesitate in going after everyone once It found out what was up.
With the plan saved and the power source secured, the only thing left to do was find volunteers willing to take the risk. And volunteers showed up in droves, energized by the thought the end of the Exiled One's reign was in sight. Yori held up Her end of the bargain, blessing the wishers increased strength and magical power. The more that wishes for the Exiled One's demise piled up, the more Its control of fate slipped from Its grasp.
It took a while for the Exiled One to notice, but when It did...
The War of the Light
The newly-minted Astral Vanguard hit the ground running, launching several operations against the Exiled One
The Final Blow
Where Are They Now?
[ yadda yadda yadda bridge the gap ]
And this is where we are present day: civilization is on the mend, the Sevenfold Alliance is going strong, and everybody's helping the worlds put their pieces back together. There are some stories that happen in the future, but that's for another time...
