By the time of the Fourth
Riftspawn War, the Divine Age (DA) had begun. The
Isendir Empire had fallen; the
Church of the All-Father had risen to prominence. The Rift was now viewed not only as an arcane catastrophe, but as a cosmic blasphemy.
This war, often called the Breach-Witch War, was fought mainly across the regions that would become
Ravenna, Orvaha, and
Teremont. Its leading Rift entity was Grandmother Sunderbone, an Arch-Hag known as the Breach-Witch, whose methods were intimate, insidious, and cruel.
Instead of grand offensives, Sunderbone favored:
- Long, multi-generational corruptions of bloodlines and noble houses.
- “Coven fronts” that quietly warped entire villages and towns from within.
- Carefully placed Breachpoints in symbolically potent sites—shrines, ancestral crypts, sacred groves.
The single most infamous act of this war was the opening of the Chasm of Veylan just north of the city of Veylan in modern
Teremont. What began as a spreading sinkhole of tainted stone became a yawning Rift-scar: a vast chasm of warped geology, seething energies, and unstable clusters of Rift Stone. It remains one of the most dangerous thin places in the world.
Religiously, the conflict was framed by many as an assault on the All-Father’s order. Crusaders, inquisitors, and holy orders hurled themselves into the fighting. The
Order of the Sacred Flame fought alongside the
Rift Wardens in an intense, sometimes tense partnership: one side favoring purges and martyrdom, the other ruthless triage and surgical strikes.
The Right of Calling was invoked openly and often, especially in Crusader-dominated territories. Entire regiments of condemned heretics, rebels, and criminals were handed over to face the Rite of Tempering rather than the noose or pyre. Those who survived often became some of the Wardens’ most fervent members, seeing their survival as divine reprieve.
Grandmother Sunderbone was eventually unmade in a series of battles around the Chasm’s edge, but the legacies of her war—Rift-witches, breach cults, hag covens, and the ever-hungry Chasm of Veylan—continue to shape continental politics and faith.
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