Absolute crisis

The Absolute crisis was a series of events that transpired throughout the Western Heartlands and Sword Coast in the late 15 century DR, when the cult of the Absolute rose to power and caused great chaos across the region. It involved the Chosen of numerous gods, invading githyanki warriors, latent illithid corruption, and most notably, a returned alliance of the Dead Three gods.
==Description==
The crisis involved the machinations, and ultimately personal failings, of the Dark Three―the gods Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul, along with their respective Chosen. The gods' Chosen used a Netherese artifact to magically manipulate an elder brain, in order to harness its power to enslave others as its thralls. The elder brain would initiate an altered form of ceremorphosis in the innocents―potentially allowing, but ultimately preventing them from becoming illithids themselves.
The trio then concocted a new singular, monotheistic religion dedicated to an enigmatic deity known only as the Absolute, which was, in fact, a deific front for their own patron gods. The Chosen sought, in effect, to bolster the divine influence of the Dead Three by funneling souls bound to individuals controlled by the elder brain under that of their gods. There remained however a great flaw in their plan: any being that underwent complete ceremorphosis lost their soul, which would then wander the Fugue Plane as one of the Faithless.
==Location==
The events of the Absolute crisis spanned the breadth of the Western Heartlands, from the Emerald Grove and Shattered Sanctum in the east, the dark and malevolent Shadow-cursed Lands and Moonrise Towers within, to Baldur's Gate on the Sword Coast.
==Outcome==
The ascendance of the Absolutists led to many small battles in settlements and villages across the Western Heartlands, along with a profound refugee crisis that threatened the security of Baldur's Gate. Scores of unwitting people were infected with mind flayer tadpoles, while hundreds of other lost, deranged, or easily manipulable souls were unwittingly converted to a religion about which they truly knew nothing. Untold numbers of innocents were slain, families were torn apart, and much suffering was felt by the Faerûnian people.
The crisis attracted not affected the populace of western Faerûn, but people from other planes of existence. Divine aasimar were subjugated in order to empower the Dead Three's pawns and emotionally manipulate their loved ones. Natives of the Astral Plane were ordered to forcefully enter Toril's crystal sphere, and then subsequently killed everyone within a single settlement in order to establish an outpost to carry out a directive from their queen.
The events of the Absolute crisis were so profound that at least one god not among the Dead Three would feel compelled to personally intervene. Yet one other at the very least direct one of their own Chosen to monitor the events as they progressed.
==History==
===Origins===
The earliest origins of the crisis involved the Dead Three, most notably Bane, using the would-be politician Enver Gortash to concoct a convoluted plot to seize control over the Sword Coast. Utilizing the method of illithid ceremorphosis, along with a powerful Netherese artifact known as the Crown of Karsus, Gortash could carry out what came to be known as the Accelerated Grand Design. This fundamental schema of the crisis originated not from its perpetrators but from a maddened alhoon known only as Blue Apex.
Gortash and his Bhaalist ally, who was known only as the Dark Urge, were each recognized as the Chosen of their respective deities, two gods of the once-formidable Dead Three. They each had their own personal goals to further the agenda of their patrons―Gortash to seize dominion over the Sword Coast in Bane's name and the Dark Urge to commit countless murders in Bhaal's honor―but worked together as true allies.
===Setting the Stage===
The Chosen of Bane and Bhaal were want for a third ally to carry out the next stage of their scheme. The former god of death Myrkul contacted the once-mighty former Selûnite, and then-current pawn of Shar, General Ketheric Thorm of Reithwin, and offered him that which neither goddess could provide: the return of his daughter Isobel. Thorm readily took up the god's offer and arose as his new Chosen, in the years following the Era of Upheaval. Upon reaching Ketheric at Moonrise Towers, Gortash learned of the mind flayer colony in the Underdark below and conceived a plan to conquer its elder brain using the Crown of Karsus. 
With the aid of Helsik, a warlock who served the archdevil Mammon, Gortash and the Dark Urge orchestrated the theft of the Crown of Karsus from the personal vault of Mephistopheles, Lord of the Eighth. This artifact granted the duo power to access the magic in the Realms without being tied to the Weave and the divine awareness of the goddess Mystra. The Dark Urge placed the crown upon the elder brain that dwelled in the mind flayer colony beneath Moonrise Towers, and controlled it using three netherstones, jewels that had been separated from Karsus' crown.
Using the elder brain as their pawn, Gortash and the Dark Urge began inflicting a form of latent ceremorphosis upon innocent people of the Realms in the . They did so using illithid tadpoles that had been specially modified with a form of shadow magic by the crown. As the innovator of the Accelerated Grand Design intended, the infected would not transform into mind flayers rapidly―as during typical ceremorphosis―but remained enthralled to their elder brain, and by extension, Gortash and the Dark Urge. The infected individuals came to be known as True Souls, who served a seemingly newly-formed goddess of conquest, known as the Absolute. Once the zeal of the True Souls was witnessed by others, more followers came to the Absolute's beckoning call.
Myrkul's Chosen was recruited by Gortash and the Dark Urge and assigned his role in the ascension of the Absolute: raise an army of shadows and undead from the Shadow-cursed Lands, and provide the people with a grave threat from which only a singular savior could protect them. The Dark Urge would instill fear and paranoia among the people of Baldur's Gate by committing a series of grizzly and profane murders, while Gortash would ascend to power as the city's first Archduke, and defeat the dark forces let by Thorm with his own automaton army, the Steel Watch.
Unfortunately, their scheme was thwarted in part by Orin the Red, the Dark Urge's right hand fellow Unholy Assassin of Bhaal. In order to curry Bhaal's favor, Orin attempted to murder the Dark Urge, and implanted him with a mind flayer tadpole beneath Moonrise. She then successfully usurped his role as Bhaal's Chosen, at least for the purposes of the Accelerated Grand Design.
===Early Conflicts===
From their fortress of Moonrise Towers, the Chosen of the Dead Three brought in new, and more influential True Souls. Notable among them were the paladin of Lolth, Minthara Baenre, the hobgoblin warlord Dror Ragzlin, the cunning goblin priestess Gut, and Disciple Z'rell, advisor of General Thorm. Together, these lieutenants of the Absolute's chosen recruited monstrous humanoids, and other disaffected humanoids to both their new dark religion, and its ever-growing army. The chosen's lieutenants swept up individual drow renegades that were exiled from, or otherwise left, the cities of the Underdark; brought in duergar slavers after assassinating their monarch, and compelled packs of gnolls by implanting tadpoles in the minds of their flind war-leaders; and attempted to recruit orc tribes from the Trielta Hills by defeating their leaders in combat. The goblinoids forces led Dror Ragzlin and Gut, along with their ogre champions, formed the bulk of the Absolute's forces. 
Fighting under the same cause, The Absolutists raided settlements across the Western Heartlands. They initiated the Shadow Druids circle in order to negate the influence of the Emerald Grove, which had once rallied forces against General Thorm a century prior. 
A single cell of Absolutist cultists took over Knowledge-Hold in the great metropolis Baldur's Gate. The cultist Uddron Blass managed to conjure a mindwitness within the library, and initiated ceremorphosis in prominent Baldurian figures, including Father Alby and Coran, a member of the Parliament of Peers. Uddron attempted to bring forth an elder brain into the city, but was thwarted by the Heroes of Baldur's Gate.
The conflicts the Absolutists sowed in cities and settlements across the west displaced many innocents from their homes, and soon a great refugee crisis broke out across the Heartlands. After the city of Elturel was pulled down to the Nine Hells, only to return some time later, every tiefling was exiled from the city due to their infernal heritage. They were harried by Absolutist raiders, forcing greater pressure upon the already quarrelling Emerald Grove druids. Refugees from across the Sword Coast and beyond flocked to safety in Baldur's Gate, unawares that it was poised as the seat of power for future Archduke Enver Gortash, and the killing grounds for Orin the Red. Each of the Dead Three's chosen had more innocent souls to cull and claim as their own.
The lands along the River Chionthar and the greater Sword Coast were thrown into utter chaos. The Absolute crisis was broke out in full, and the Dark Three's Chosen believed themselves to be in complete control. There remained however, three individuals that could thwart their scheme: a long-imprisoned githyanki prince, a rogue illithid known only as the Emperor, and Orin the Red, who proved too unpredictable for her allies to control.
===Faults in the Plan===
While the Dark Urge, and subsequently Orin, managed to terrify the Baldurian people with their series of gruesome murders, the latter Chosen of Bhaal went too far. Her killings went beyond what Gortash could control, and incited too much interest by the beleaguered Flaming Fist. Gortash's Steel Watch maintained order in the city, but other organizations, such as the Guild led by the so-called Underduke, sought to seize power in the city for itself. Powers from the celestial planes above even sent agents to the Prime to investigate.
There remained in the Realms an illithid individual, known only as The Emperor, who had previously been freed from the dominion of Moonrise Towers' elder brain centuries prior to the crisis, but was returned under its control by Gortash and his allies. The elder brain, however, influenced and instilled fear in Grotash with knowledge of a githyanki artifact known as the Astral Prism, an artefact that would protect anyone nearby from the influence of the elder brain's mind control. To prevent it falling into the wrong hands, he sent the Emperor to retrieve it. The elder brain had foreseen this, knowing that the Emperor would bring other powerful allies with him, who would eventually kill the chosen, and let the Emperor escape once it reached it. The Emperor piloted a nautiloid vessel to travel across western Faerûn, recruit his own team of infected True Souls, and began his search for the prism.
The Astral Prism was recovered by one of the Emperor's True Souls―a half-elven woman named Shadowheart―and briefly remained within the Emperor's possession, before his nautiloid crashed some miles east of Moonrise Towers.
===Threats to the Absolute Emerge===
The Astral Prism contained within it a demiplane, in which was imprisoned Orpheus, the fabled Prince of the Comet and True Heir of the first gith queen, Gith the Liberator. It was said by the gith people that only he possessed the power to unite the gith people and defeat the illithid threat once and for all.
Worse yet, elder brain beneath Moonrise―the netherbrain as it came to be known―sought to exploit the fact that individuals transformed into illithids lost their souls, should it have received any opportunity. The netherbrain planned to fully transformed all the mortals the Dead Three's Chosen exploited, preventing the gods from harvesting any souls entirely.
As Orin and her murders continued to run amok in Baldur's Gate, and Gortash remained ever-focused on his schemes to wrest more control over Baldur's Gate, General Thorm led the efforts to recover the Astral Prism, as it proved the one of the most grave threats to the false Absolutist religion. Fortunately, the surviving True Souls, Shadowheart, the human Gale of Waterdeep, the vampire elf Astarion Ancunín, and the githyanki Lae'zel, that were caught aboard the Emperor's nautiloid received help from an ancient adversary of the Dead Three: Withers, the avatar of the god Jergal, from whom the three gods originally claimed their power.
The crisis of the Absolute ended with the defeat of the Netherbrain, and Baldur's Gate began the arduous process of recovering from the devastation it had wrought in the last battle. As a final comment, Jergal, as Withers, stood before a mural depicting the Dead Three - Bhaal, Myrkul, and Bane. In front of this, Jergal revealed that turning mortals into Mind Flayers caused their souls to disappear, which did not strengthen the power of the Three Dead. This was an important fact that had not escaped the notice of the other deities. Jergal expressed his contempt by calling Bhaal, Myrkul and Bane fools and dismissing them as "vermin". With these final words, he left the mural and declared that the Dead Three would no longer trouble the realms.
==Appendix==
===Gallery===
Refugee checkpoint bg3.png|Refugees piling into the Gate, fleeing from the encroaching army of the Absolute.
Refugee protests bg3.png|Refugees protesting mistreatments and being denied entrance to the Gate.
Earthquakes cause panic bg3.png|Earthquakes causing panic in Baldur's Gate.
===Appearances===
===References===
Category:Conflicts
Category:Banite events
Category:Bhaalist events
Category:Myrkulyte events
Category:Religious events
Category:Events in Baldur's Gate
Category:Events on the Sword Coast
Category:Events in the Emerald Grove
Category:Events in the Trielta Hills
Category:Events in Moonrise Towers
Category:Events in the Shadow-cursed lands
Category:Events in the Western Heartlands
Category:Events in West Faerûn
Category:Events in Faerûn
Category:Events on Toril