War of the Majors

Early stages of the war saw that mainly, it was fought on the behalf of the gods by other parties, with the gods themselves only contributing when they themselves were under direct attack. Due to increased aggression, the size of these attacks, as well as increased boldness from other parties, battles increasingly became more and more extreme until the majority of battles were fought by the majors themselves. This was often to incredibly devastating results, seeing entire regions devastated by their sheer power and entire armies obliterated in single acts. Due to numerous battles where one of the elemental gods would be attacked by the other three, the way the war was fought drastically changed.   From there on, much of the war was fought on an individual basis between pairs of the Major gods against one another in fleeting and repeatedly broken alliances. These were often so short lived that the majors would fight as soon as it seemed they had achieved victory over one of their brethren, sometimes even betraying their ally before they had even left the battlefield to recover. Often, the majors would also subjugate Minor Gods and their followings into doing their bidding and into fighting conflicts for them in exchange for blessing them with elemental affinities. The vast majority of these divine blessings were not recorded, though Ferventi, God of Wolves has suggested that his predecessors were blessed by the Wind God, with him himself later receiving one from Fire God Vega. The fallen wind god is said to have also blessed all flying creatures during this period, declaring their protection to be their responsibility, a decree upheld even to this day by Ryou.   Skirmishes with the minor gods independently of alliances with the majors also occurred, as noted by Nagi that at one point many fish gods had turned on him due to destruction of their breeding grounds by the warfare. Similar was directly observed by humans and other mortals of the era that the wind god would oftentimes be assailed and harried by birds, bats, and insects in large swarms at many of their public appearances. Often, these skirmishes were short lived, with the minor gods quickly brought to heel or killed for their acts, replaced with heirs far more favorable or even fearful of the majors to prevent resistance or to neaten alliances. Many historians believe that Ferventi's ancestors may have been closely aligned with the wind god of this era, hence his later adoption by Kizu, a staunch supporter of Vega, who was closely aligned with the wind god for much of the war. For a time, Ferventi himself was allied under Vega's forces, though later on was dismissed to deal with another conflict, thought by many to be his war with the fallen badger god in The Rage of Ferventi.   Despite numerous head on battles between the major gods, for much of the war their conflicts were unable to cause lasting harm or keep their opponents at bay for long, and so the majors turned to higher and higher extremes. Lapi began to move the continents in order to better counter the other gods as well as reach them easier without having to cross the ocean, where she was vulnerable to attacks by Nagi, and in turn, Vega erupted volcanoes as way of slowing her progress. Nagi and the wind god both conjured powerful storms at sea to devastate one another's allies and in part to deliberately erode shallow land bridges created by Lapi and Vega. By the war's midpoint, there was wide scale devastation across the planet caused by the gods' direct interventions into landmass movements, oceanic and air currents, and volcanic activity. Many regions had become entirely uninhabitable both by people and animals, resulting in them being abandoned. This was particularly evident following a battle in which Vega attempted to use the Yellowstone Volcano as a weapon when beset upon by Nagi and Lapi, without the wind god's aid, and was unable to stop the eruption that followed, beginning The War of Black Ash and One Hundred Years of Flame.   Vega had already long since retreated to Hawai'i, which had begun to be known as Shanai, treating the islands as a fortress that only the wind god could intrude upon without risk of retaliation from the many volcanoes under his control. Although protected from the other gods, Vega was also likely unable to leave due to the region's waters being heavily patrolled by Nagi himself as well as his own forces and allies, such as Olrath. During this period in 6,438, the exact date lost due to widespread volcanic eruptions blocking the sun for months at a time, the wind god was killed in battle against Lapi. The wind god had previously been wounded when trying to come to Vega's aid and break blockades created by Nagi, and was attacked by Lapi who is said to have created great splints of stone to impale the griffon and then bury them underneath a landslide once speared through. Why none of the major gods had fallen in previous battles is unknown, but it is theorized there may have been an alignment with a battle between the gods of life and death, during which time Mora, The God of Life, was resurrecting.   Whatever the cause of the wind god's death, it brought about a great fury of storms, no longer being controlled. Lightning storms, hurricanes, and tornadoes raged in the region unable to be quelled until the newly appointed Fallen God of Wind, Ryoumother had amassed enough power to brave them and redirect their potent energies elsewhere. It's widely believed that this act kicked much of the ash and dust into the upper atmosphere, contributing to the newly forming ice age due to diminished sunlight. Minor skirmishes amongst the majors continued, though none of them rejoined the battles in earnest until 6,430, wherein they declared the war to forever remain unsettled, and never fought again. All four elemental gods, alongside Shia and Mora, began efforts to clean up the volatile magics left behind, as well as artifacts of their warfare, though for much of the world it was too little and far too late- the globe itself had been irreparably changed and altered. Many thousands lost their lives directly in the fighting, but estimated millions lost their lives due to the war's secondary effects, vast climate change, and an untold number of species went extinct.   For millennia since the War of the Majors, the pantheon's primary focus has been on stabilizing a world in flux caused by their own hand. Oceanic currents have been controlled by Nagi in effort to slow the encroach of the ice caps and bring warm waters north, Ryou doing much the same with the gulf and jet streams, and Lapi and Vega both attempting to slow the march of landmasses for a long since abandoned war. It's believed that the minor gods only became a more united pantheon as a result, with their modern roles as protectors of their species, at the cost of so many of their brethren that did not survive.