Jöro and the Times of Ruin

Before time and reality, there was only the primordial entities, The Formless, and the void in which the dwelt.   Beings beyond reason and understanding and powerful beyond comprehension.   Each of the Formless was itself only imagination and potential and existed without any true sense of self or purpose. They had always been and would always persist.   Eternity and infinity stretched on before them and slowly over Eons the Formless grew curious.   One by one they splintered from the nothing and formed realities of their own, taking on new roles as progenitor creators, birthing their own pantheons to better understand what is, what was and what could be.   New worlds and planes of existence were formed and the multiverse slowly came into being, separated from the nothing. Some realities grew to be diverse and wondrous. Some remained barren and lifeless. Magic, science, chaos, order, life, death and everything between. The Formless brought forth meaning and matter.   However, in one such reality, the Formless One looked upon the canvas of potential and saw nothing but the emptiness left by the loss of its siblings.   Alone and without understanding of its new role, it set out to find some echo of its kind; a need and yearning reaching out into the void, seeking out the new stars and worlds beyond.   Time has little meaning in the space between, so when it finally found the new worlds between the darkness, what it beheld was not that which it sought, but pantheons of new gods created by its siblings.   Frustrated by the seeming lack of its kin, it stole the image of these new gods for its own reality, believing they may possibly hold the essence of its siblings and bring companionship once more.   It then saw the worlds formed of land, sea, and sky; distinct dimensions created from the elements and those fashioned of Fey and Shadow. It saw dark lands of abyssal nightmares and bright mountains of celestial marvels, and so it stole echoes these also.   Most curiously of all, it saw a plethora of lesser creations born of flesh and physical matter. Not understanding the purpose of these lower creations, but intrigued by their design, it set its own stolen deities about the task of replicating them to populate its own slowly forming reality. Maybe they would quench the spark of longing that it felt?   Millennia passed and the new world of echos grew.   The deities excelled in their task, creating life as diverse as had been seen in any world across the void, each filling their assigned domains with an abundance of creatures and wonders. All had a place and all had a purpose.   Slowly, through the evolving of the world and its denizens, the Formless One began to understand why its siblings could not be seen upon the lands they had made. It had not found a replacement to the loss it had sought to quench, but a fulfilled contentment in the shape and life within the new world it had created.   The material sphere of this new world was named ‘Jöro’, and was gifted to the lesser beings to inhabit, while the new gods were tasked to reside amongst them in secret and maintain order.   The Formless One diminished in peace into the background essence of its world of echoed things, and became just a memory of imagination and potential once more.   But peace upon Jöro was not to last, for within its stolen deities, the Formless One had inadvertently poured a portion of its own sense of yearning, need and frustration.   Without the Formless One's guiding presence, this frustration festered and grew within the new gods and, as the centuries passed, slowly developed into resentment, anger, hubris and zealotry, until it could no longer be contained.   No mortal now remains to know which of the Pantheon struck the first blow, but what is remembered all to well is how quickly the conflict spread to all corners of the material world and into the realms beyond.   "The Godfall". "The Times of Ruin and the Final Ruination". "Mors Deorum". "Halag Immrek". "Valaina Ohtatimeár".   All societies across the planes quickly found names for the war that erupted as nowhere was safe from the ensuing cataclysm.   The land and skies were filled with the sounds of clashing weapons and the cries of the wounded and dying.   Mountains crumbled and oceans roiled as the gods battled for supremacy. One of the three moons in the night sky was shattered and sundered, rending the sky with forbidden magics.   Deities rose and fell, heroes forged and broken and across all planes, untold legions of combatants sundered the land for generations.  

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Over a thousand years have now passed since the war began and the very fabric of the world has been rent apart, teetering upon the brink of oblivion.   The Material Plane of Jöro is now a wild and untamed land, where other Planes leak into its fabric and the veil between good and evil, order and chaos is mutable and ever changing.   It is a dangerous time to be alive, but within the chaos there is profit to be made.   Adventurers are a common sight in the remaining towns. Mercenaries, hired-hands, scoundrels, rogues, do-gooders, zealots, knights and more wander the city states. Some have formed allegiances, many are friendly rivals, a few are bitterest enemies. Power is there for the taking, but survival is hard won.   Who will you be in this time of ending?