In the Age Before Ages

The Dawn War was an ancient conflict that raged between the primordials and the gods over the fate of The World, during the Age Before Ages. The conflict was massive, spanning entire planes of reality, as well as many worlds of the multiverse. The gods won a narrow victory, but the consequences of the war still endure in the current era.

Background

“No mortal can truly know what motivates the gods or what has occurred in the depths of prehistory. All they can do is read through the religious texts of various faiths and try to piece together a narrative that approximates the truth. This is one such possible truth.”

— From the goblinoid legends about the rise of Bane.

Causes of the Dawn War

There are many legends and versions about what caused the Dawn War, that are told among different peoples and traditions. Among these, the most known are:

The creation of The World

According to ancient legends compiled in the Temple of the Dawn in the city of Argent, as well as the inscriptions found in the murals of Death's Reach, during the beginning of the cosmos the primordials of the Elemental Chaos created the mortal world from the raw materials of the Elemental Chaos and, as a side effect of this, its echoes the Feywild and the Shadowfell. The gods of the Astral Sea saw this creation and added designs of their own, giving the World a quality of permanence, and also created all manner of lifeforms, including the mortal races, to populate the World and worship them.

For the primordials, permanence was an alien concept and they saw it as a marring of their work, and they grew antagonistic against the gods. The primordials planned to destroy the World, return it to its raw materials and start the creation of a new world. According to some sources, the primal spirit Whisper was the first one to warn the gods of the intentions of the primordials. The gods were already invested in the World they had put work into, and were against the annihilation of the mortal races that now served them, and opposed the primordials. Thus both sides prepared for conflict.

The creation of Dragons

There are many legends about the creation of dragonkind, but regardless of which version is true most sages believe the dragon god Io gave his creations a balance favoring elemental power instead of astral essence. This was a sign of Io claiming authority over the primordials, something most scholars consider integral in fomenting the hatred between the primordials and the gods.

The Age of Chains

Some time after the gods created the mortal races, a host of giants and titans led by the primordial Vezzuvu marched upon Stoneroot and laid siege to the Firstborn dwarves who lived there, demanding Moradin to hand over the dwarven race to them. Moradin clashed against Vezzuvu at the feet of Stoneroot to defend the dwarven race, but was outmatched and fled seeking the aid of his fellow gods. The dwarves were enslaved by the primordials, and Moradin awaited his chance to retaliate.

The creation of the Abyss

The Demonomicon of Iggwilv suggest a more sinister cause for the war, however. According to Iggwilv, when the deity Tharizdun found the Shard of Pure Evil in his quest for a weapon that would allow him to conquer the all of the cosmos, he was corrupted by the creators of the Shard, the obyrith lords. They demanded Tharizdun to plant the seed of evil within the Astral Sea, promising him total dominion of that realm in exchange for his fealty. Tharizdun was aware that the other gods would turn on him before he could fully seize the power the obyriths promised. Instead, the mad god traveled to the farthest reaches of the cosmos, planting the seed of evil in a primordial expanse of the churning Elemental Chaos, which he hoped to seize as his own. This seed eventually grew into the Abyss.

Infuriated against Tharizdun, the obyriths tried to destroy him, but the Shard of Pure Evil had given Tharizdun powers the obyriths couldn't have predicted. Using his newfound power to enslave the demons that were spawned by the nascent Abyss, Tharizdun opposed the obyriths for eons before the two forces reached a stalemate. Eventually, the primordials were also drawn into the conflict, and some of them were corrupted into the first demon lords. When he became aware of their presence, Tharizdun tried to control the demon lords but Baphomet, Demogorgon, and Orcus proved to be very powerful and opposed him. Avoiding to risk defeat at the hands of the demon lords, Tharizdun retreated to the Elemental Chaos.

Under the guise of "The Elder Elemental Eye", the "first" of the primordials (a ruse devised by Tharizdun to gain the trust of the primordials), Tharizdun managed to assemble an army of primordials who were already angered by the gods' intervention with the mortal world. This movement eventually gave origin to the Cult of Elemental Evil. Among the converts, only a few knew the true identity of Tharizdun. Of those few, a primordial known as Miska the Wolf-Spider soon advanced through the ranks and became a high ranking officer of the elemental forces.

However, when Tharizdun charged Miska to search for the Shard of Pure Evil, the attention of the other gods of the Astral Sea finally was drawn to the Abyss, discovering Tharizdun's mad plot. Fearing Tharizdun would destroy the universe if his plan succeeded, the gods banded together and attacked the Abyss, eventually managing to defeat and imprison Tharizdun, chaining him away in a dead universe outside the normal universe, calling him the Chained God and erasing his name from history. With Tharizdun imprisoned, Miska the Wolf-Spider took control of the forces of the Cult of Elemental Evil and launched an attack on the Abyss, intending to reclaim the Shard of Pure Evil for himself.

Torog and Gargash

Gargash was one of the few primordials who took interest in the Underdark below the World, something that drew the wrath of Torog, a god who was jealous of Gargash's experiments with the powers of torture and imprisonment. Just before the start of the Dawn War, Torog followed Gargash into the Underdark and slew him, but Torog remained trapped in the Underdark ever since.

The destruction of the Lattice of Heaven

Regardless of its initial causes, the war properly started when a group of primordials invaded the Astral Sea and stole the Rune of Stone Eternal, an act that shattered the unfinished Lattice of Heaven, a powerful construct that would have interlinked the different dominions of the Astral Sea into a single realm. The destruction of the Lattice caused irrevocable damage to universe, burning entire dominions in the Astral Sea and destroying many stars in the mortal universe. Even the World was damaged, as whole continents were teared apart or sunk into the waters. The gods saw this act as unforgivable and decided to retaliate.

Gathering forces

Side of the Gods

The gods gathered their force, hosts of angels and cadres of exarchs, the mortal races of the World, and other creatures and beings. The greatest of the gods’ mortal agents were invokers, imbued with a fragment of the gods’ own might. Among the leaders of the divine host were the angels Erexes and Ilyssus, while He Who Was became a leader among the gods. Enraged by the enslavement of the dwarves, Moradin supplied the other gods with weapons and armor.

While other races of giants decided to follow their primordial masters, the astral and aquatic giants abandoned the primordials and decided to join the gods, swearing allegiance to Erathis and Melora, respectively.

Astral war wings and other astral war engines, as well as the Runes of Unmaking, were made by the gods to fill out their armies and counter the chaotic creations of the primordials. Among the artifacts created by the gods were also The Word and the Relics of Creation.

Each god selected a different aspect of creation to champion and care for over the course of the war, so the portfolios of the gods began to take shape.

Abominations were created by both the gods and the primordials as living weapons for the war. The gods Amoth, Gruumsh, Ioun, Melora, Moradin and Tuern created the astral dominion of Carcerias a laboratory to spawn abominations to serve them in the war.

Side of the Primordials

While the primordials gathered large groups of elementals, genasi, demons, giants and titans, and pitted them against the gods, they never considered the possibility of defeat. The gods were fewer in number and the mortals who served them were easily slain. Scarcely comprehending a concept such as military organization, the primordials didn’t think of creating a proper army at first. Among the leaders of the primordial forces was Castanamir.

Among the elemental monstrosities created by the primordials as minions and weapons for the war were the retrievers, the primordial colossi and oozes, and the nagas. While Baphomet created the minotaurs as soldiers to oppose Melora.

Of the elemental denizens of the Elemental Chaos, the djinns allied with the primordials, while the dao and efreet elected to remain neutral. Likewise, the good archomentals opposed the Dawn War and either fought alongside the gods or abstained from the conflict.

So confident were the primordials of their victory, that a primordial named Deluvius created the Deluvian Hourglass as a way of marking time until the primordials’ “inevitable victory”.

The Dawn War

Early battles

In what can be said to be the very first battle of the Dawn War, the deity Kord hunted down the primordials responsible for the destruction of the Lattice of Heaven and their servants. However, when Kord reached the Elemental Chaos, he was confronted by the slaad lord Ygorl, who by this point in history was at his strongest. Kord was forced to flee, masking his retreat with one of the Runes of Unmaking, that masked his retreat with a boiling storm that blocked any pursuit.

At first, the gods were disorganized and couldn't gain an upper hand in the conflict. Many of the young gods were killed by powerful primordials such as Timesus and Haemnathuun, among others. Things became even harder for the gods when some primordials, led by Timesus, went to the center of the Shadowfell, a place called Death's Reach, and began to consume the souls of the dead to increase their powers. The primordial Balcoth supported his primordial allies from behind the frontlines with his reality warping powers, while reclaiming the magic and knowledge of the dead gods.

War on the World

Eventually the war came to the World, and Ophan, a serpentine primordial, built a great fortress in the World and marshaled his armies and launched devastating counterattacks against the gods. The primordial queen Kir-Yagh enslaved numerous mortals and made them fight against the gods. However, many of those mortals rebelled against her, becoming the first of the Vistani.

When the primal spirits became aware of the damage the gods and primordials were inflicting on the World, they awoke to protect it from both, the gods and the primordials. Led by the powerful Stormhawk, primal spirits such as Dark Sister, Tree Father, Great Bear, and the Hunter Twins, gave aid to the desperate peoples of the World, allowing the survival of all the living creatures of the natural world. It was also during this age that the primal spirit Everflame was born.

According to old legends, it was during this time that a mortal wizard named Nerull, the first human disciple of Corellon, created the magic school of necromancy when he say that those who had died in the field of battle could still contribute to the war effort as undead, who he raised as soldiers to reinforce the armies of the gods. This infuriated Aurom, the original god of death (among many other portfolios), who rejected Nerull's discoveries. Infuriated, Nerull took advantage of a primordial attack to kill Aurom, seizing the dead god’s power and becoming a god himself. Nerull then took the portfolios of death and the dead, and gave the rest of Aurom's portfolios to the other gods, thus securing a place among them.

Some time after this, the first werebeasts began to appear. Some say they were created when either Melora or the Primal Beast gave the mortals the ability to turn into werebeasts to defend themselves, but other sources say they were a consequence of the divine plagues Nerull sent to the World to kill more mortals and bolster his undead armies.

Some believe that eventually the primordials were tricked by the primal spirit Whisper into taking their battle with the gods to other planes, sparing the World from destruction.

War on the Multiverse

Eventually, the war expanded to other worlds of the multiverse. When the primordials invaded the world of Abeir-Toril, that world became one of the central fronts of the war. A primordial named Nehushta built the fortress of Glaur as the main headquarter of the primordial forces. The native gods of that world, led by Shar and Selûne, summoned gods from other dimensions, among them the gods of the World, to aid them in their struggles against the primordials and their servants.

The Gods Retaliate

Achra (either a war god or a demigod, the sources are conflicting) was able to convince several deities to team up with him during battles. He devised clever tactics, instructing the gods to set aside their differences and work together in small groups of three or five members, and sending those teams to fight specially mighty primordials. In a battle that destroyed countless worlds, Achra led the gods to victory by killing Tabrach-Ti, the Queen of Bronze, the first primordial to fall in the war. Achra gained the command over the bulk of the divine forces, and adopted a new name that the servants of the primordials had begun to call him: Bane.

Envious of Bane's position, the war god Tuern made subtle efforts to sabotage Bane’s strategies in hopes of taking his place. This eventually predisposed Bane against Tuern.

The primordial Lormoch, the Master of Tides, was among of the first primordials to be slain, because the gods especially feared its plane-spanning destruction. After they killed him, the gods shattered its body and cast the pieces adrift in the Astral Sea, though with time the remnants of the dead primordial began to shift to other planes. Another primordial defeated during this period was Suulkar, who was sealed by Kord in the Frozen Spire, in the Elemental Chaos.

The dragon god Io intervened in the war on his own, leading his army of dragons against the forces of the primordials. He killed many primordials on his own. Among those he fought was Castanamir, whose brilliant tactics had allowed the elemental hordes to gain ground in the Astral Sea. It's said that Io snatched up the primordial and flung him down into the natural world, where he fell to the ocean. Some believe Castanamir’s remains became an island.

When the powerful primordial Heur-Ket, the Storm Unabated, invaded the Astral Sea, he destroyed astral dominions and killed many gods. Pelor, Erathis and Ioun, who held their domains in relatively close proximity of each other, decided to join forces and lured the primordial into attacking them, and bound it by fusing their dominions together. The new fused dominion became known as Hestavar.

Chaos United

After the imprisonment of Tharizdun, his chief lieutenant, Miska the Wolf-Spider, still tried to follow his orders to assault the Abyss to find the Shard of Evil, with the help of the Princes of Elemental Evil. He fought against the forces of the obyrith Obox-ob, then Prince of Demons, when the mightiest of the obyriths, the Queen of Chaos, slew Obox-ob and offered his title to Miska. Miska, already transforming from primordial into demon lord, gave her allegiance to her in exchange for her aid in destroying the gods of the Astral Sea. The alliance between Miska and the Queen of Chaos began a climatic epoch of the Dawn War. With the combined forces of the Abyss and the Elemental Chaos battering its deities, the Astral Sea seemed lost.

Amoth, the original god of justice, fought against the demon lords Orcus, Demogorgon, and Rimmon in Kalandurren. Though Amoth managed to nearly slay Demogorgon, splitting his head in two, Orcus was able to strike him down, and Demogorgon and Orcus joined forces to kill him. In the moment before Amoth died, he cast a self-sacrificing apocalyptic spell, hoping to destroy the three demon lords with it. Orcus and Demogorgon managed to escape, using Rimmon as a shield against the spell that shattered the essences of both god and demon. Kalandurren became a shattered land of fear, and in the days following the battle, specks of bitterly cold light began to rise from the landscape. The light formed semi-sentient creatures that fused the wrath of the slain god with the fury of the dead demon lord. The creatures dispersed across the cosmos, fuelled by an insatiable desire to destroy immortals and elementals alike.

The Sundering

In one of the most violent battles of the war, in his arrogance Io faced alone a primordial called Erek-Hus, the King of Terror, and was killed when the primordial cleaved him in two with his adamantine axe. Some sources claim Io died in that battle because the god Zehir betrayed him to Erek-Hus, as he wanted to control the dragon race.

The same legend tells that Bahamut and Tiamat were born from the two halves of the dead god. Bahamut and Tiamat joined forces and killed Erek-Hus before they began to fight against each other. Only when Tiamat fled the battle did both dragon gods aid the other gods in the war, though they preferred to work alone. Some dragonborn believe their race was born in that battle, when the first dragonborn arose from Io's blood.

Io’s death was so violent it caused a rift between the planes. The guardian god Haramanthur realized the only way to prevent the primordials from using the rift to invade the Astral Sea was to close off the way with his own essence. He sacrificed himself by turning himself and everything around him to stone to seal the rift.

Chaos Spreads

Storralk, a primordial of stone and earth, foolishly challenged Demogorgon sometime after the battle against Amoth. Demogorgon tore his enemy to pieces, trapped him beneath his throne, and used a powerful ritual given to him by Dagon to extend Storralk’s agony for all eternity. With that ritual, he called forth ettins from the blood Storralk spilled that day.

When the God of the Word died, Ioun, instead of taking that position, gave to the inhabitants Shom two syllables of the Words of Creation so they could continue the God of the Word’s work. Those humans eventually evolved into the illumians.

At some point, the genasi race rebelled against their primordials masters and gained their freedom. Although the primordials already had great beasts and chaotic elementals that were being used as pure weapons, they needed more reliable and inventive creatures to replace the genasi as the leaders of their armies. Soon, they found the means to reshape elemental spirits and hammered them into soldiers, creating the archons, gifted with a degree of cunning not found in other primordial creations. Given life, the archons could reproduce themselves, building armies faster than giants could be born or angels ordained. Archons and other elemental soldiers began forging weapons, having learned the value of such tools from followers of the gods. They found the mines of Irdoc Morda in the Elemental Chaos. Their uncontrolled creation pleased the primordials and worried the gods.

Asmodeus' Rebellion

While watching over Tharizdun's false prison, the archangel Asmodeus, exarch of He Who Was, was corrupted by the obyrith Pazuzu, now a demon lord. Asmodeus grew proud and hateful of his position as prison-keeper and sought out the Heart of the Abyss instead, abandoning his duty. He managed to claim a small sliver of the Shard of Pure Evil, that he used to created his Ruby Rod and fought his way back to the Astral Sea. He also managed to attract to his cause other angels who were discontent with their roles, such as Beleth. Asmodeus' rebellion was disastrous, and many innocents died as a collateral effect of it. He Who Was cursed Asmodeus and those angels who joined him to be "stripped of their beauty" and exiled them from his realm, Baathion. Those angels became the first devils. Asmodues swore to take revenge of He Who Was and those gods that had stood by and forgot about his sacrifices. After his exile, Asmodeus was recruited by Bane, who felt Asmodeus was a kindred spirit.

Asmodeus waited until a grim time in the Dawn War when the gods appeared to be losing to betray He Who Was, and he eventually managed to kill him. Some say he was helped by Pazuzu (in his guise of Pazrael), Bane (indirectly), Tiamat and Zehir (who may have been the one who actually killed He Who Was). The death of He Who Was so enraged the other deities that they sealed Asmodeus and all the devils and rebel angels who helped him in to Baathion (now called the Nine Hells), though some of the darker gods still sought him to aid them during the war.

The Battle of Death's Reach

To deal with Timesus, who had become a problem for the gods, Nerull and other gods created Nerull’s Gate to gain quick access to Death's Reach. Thanks to this gate, several gods, scores of angels, and the massive army of the followers of the gods were able to ambush Timesus and defeat it at last, thought many gods died in the battle. Timesus was sundered into many shards after the battle and sealed away within Death’s Reach's reliquary.

Rise of the Raven Queen

When Corellon and Pelor grew wary of Nerull's attrocities on The World, they conspired to bring him down. With the help of Moradin and Sehanine, they took one of the souls killed by Nerull's many plagues and strengthened her with many qualities. This made this soul attractive for Nerull, who elevated her as his consort and renamed her as "Nera", her true name forever lost. Nera eventually learned the secrets to control mortal souls, and after the battle of Death's Reach led a rebellion against Nerull in Pluton, eventually killing the god and usurping his throne and divinity. The other gods, convinced by Nerull’s actions that no god or power should claim dominion over the mortal souls, allowed Nera to join their ranks with the provision that she would become the goddess of death and not of the dead. Soon after her ascension, Nera expunged her true name from the knowledge of all creatures and began to calling herself the Raven Queen.

The Elven Gods intervene

After the betrayal of Lolth in the Feywild and the subsequent Kinstrife War that almost destroyed the elven civilization, Corellon, Sehanine, and the rest of the Seldarine, as well as Lolth (who did it on her own), who until that point had preferred to not take a side in the Dawn War, went to the Astral Sea to help the other gods, as they were aware that they won't survive if the gods of the Astral Sea were defeated by the primordials.

Bahamut's Crusade

With the help of Bahamut, many of the most powerful primordials were defeated, such as Haemnathuun, who was defeated by the combined might of the Platinum Dragon, Bane and Ioun; Balcoth, who was defeated by Moradin and Bane, an sealed by the followers of Bahamut; and Mual-Tar, who was defeated by Bahamut, Bane and Moradin. Another of Bahamut's battles was against the primordial Nihil, an incarnation of nothingness. They battled throughout the Astral Sea, until they crashed into Lakal, a god that was also at the same time her own dominion. Bahamut eventually managed to kill Nihil, but Lakal was also killed as a colateral casualty of the battle.

The Dwarven Rebellion

(Kho-Tharkk)

As the tide turned against the primordials, disaster struck the giants from an unexpected angle. The dwarves, enslaved by giants and primordials since ancient times, made their bid for freedom bolstered by their faith in Moradin. Beset on all sides, the empires of giants fell into chaos while the dwarven race reclaimed their freedom.

The War of Winter

In the final years of the Dawn War, Khala, goddess of winter, tried to become Queen of the Gods. Allied with Gruumsh, Kord, Tiamat, Zehir, and even some primordials, she cast a long winter over the world. During a battle between Moradin and Kord, Kord came to regret the devestation he had caused during the battle, and chose to turn against Khala; soon after, he launched an assault against Gruumsh and crushed his former ally. Khala and her alliance were then defeated by Pelor, Kord, Moradin, Bane, and Asmodeus. In exchange for power over winter, the Raven Queen banished the defeated Khala into death.

The War of Winter convinced the primal spirits of The World that the gods were as large a danger to the world as the primordials, and somehow enacted the Primal Ban, a powerful magic that made The World resist the intrusion of mightier elemental and astral beings like the gods and the primordials.

The Battle of Pesh

Torzak-Belgirn, an exarch of Moradin, and seven angels of Bahamut known as the Wind Dukes of Aaqa crafted the Rod of Law. With this Rod, they attacked Miska the Wolf-Spider in a mortal world, in a region named Pesh. They cut down Miska, who was banished in death to the Astral Sea. The banishing of Miska caused the shattering of the Rod of Law into the Rod of Seven Parts, his fall turned the tide of the war for the gods’ favor. The united consequence of Miska’s banishment to the Astral sea and the rupture of the Rod of Law caused a brief moment in time where the fabric of space to the Far Realm was torn. As Miska’s armies retreated to the Elemental Chaos, the Queen of Chaos’s power diminished and her will broke and she dissipated back into the Abyss.

The final years of the Dawn War

It was during this time that Moradin forged Guldarak, “the God Hammer,” with the help of Kord. They later joined forces with Bahamut to defeat the primordial Zurtharak.

The Princes of Elemental Evil created the Tarrasque as a weapon to destroy the gods. At least two Princes of Elemental Evil, their names forever lost, died during the process. With the victory of the gods, however, the Princes of Elemental Evil fled, leaving the unfinished Tarrasque at the core of the World.

Piranoth the primordial the giants consider their master, was imprisoned in the Elemental Chaos in the waning days of the Dawn War, using a divine engine known as Klar'ekku, designed by Erathis and Torog and built by Moradin. Kord later destroyed Klar'ekku and scattered its parts across the planes, as a precaution to avoid that Piranoth could be freed.

Bryakus was among the last primordials to fall. Kord defeated him in a fearsome battle. When the god of battle managed to entangle and quarter him, hydras swam from the primordial’s severed limbs in a flood of poisonous liquid. Not even the gods know how many hydras Bryakus’s defeat birthed.

Unintended Fallout

The chaos and reshaping of the planes during the Dawn War created vulnerabilities—rifts into the Far Realm, where illithids are believed to have originate. That breach allowed illithids to enter the multiverse and begin their conquest, enslaving early humans. Over time these enslaved humans evolved into the Gith from the evolutionary adaptations to illithid control—a mutation from prolonged exposure to their masters.

Aftermath

By a margin, the gods were the winners of the Dawn War. Most primordials were either slain or imprisoned; some remain free, but in exile. The enactment of the primal ban by the primal spirits ensured that neither gods nor primordials could easily interfere directly in the world any longer. The gods, wearied by the long conflict, had no other choice but to accept that they had to influence the world indirectly from the Astral Sea.

Banishment of the Primordials

The defeated the primordials were cast down, bound in chains, and sealed away for all time. The chains binding the fallen primordials owe their creation to Moradin’s forge and Kord’s strength, yet not all the Dawn Titans were bound by these champions. The gods shackled their foes through various means; by forcing them from this reality altogether, their names erased from history’s annals, or using the World itself to confine the tempestuous monsters.

Chernoggar

After being relieved of his duties as commander at the end of the Dawn War, Bane began to plot strategies of how to become leader of the gods again. Abandoning his own domain for strategic reasons, he assaulted the iron fortress of Tuer-Chern in the astral dominion of Chernoggar, and killed its master, the war god Tuern, to make the dominion his own. The rest of the pantheon united as a demonstration of strength against him, and Bane had to postpone his plans for domination. Then Gruumsh, eager to claim Tuer-Chern as his own and secretly aided by Moradin and Erathis, enacted a plan that crashed his own dominion of Nishrek into Chernoggar. Bane managed to prevent the dominions mutual destruction by fusing them together, but since then Bane have had to divide his attention to a constant war with Gruumsh.

The War of Dragons

As soon as the Dawn War finished, Bahamut and Tiamat began a struggle for dominance over dragonkind that has lasted into the present age. Tiamat aligned herself with the githyanki in hopes of controlling the Astral Sea. The war is ongoing to present day.