Regarding History and Reasons

I've recently been struggling trying to make sense of some of the causes of the effects that we have decided we want for our world. Namely what I am referring to is: if the gods were here on the planet, why did they leave? I came up with a few ideas such as maybe some cosmic horror creature from outside reality and drove them all crazy, maybe Ral Sei made some rules up or something like that. But I just came up with an idea that I think I really like, although it may change how you want to write up some of the party members.

My idea is this

At the beginning of this world, Ral Sei and his party created the planet, and then created mortals to live on it. They then spent 1000 years happily interacting with and helping these mortal races grow and develop on this newly formed planet. I like the name Age of Dawnwalkers for this period of time. However after that 1000 year mark, Ral Sei got bored and bounced. Essentially saying "you guys are on your own now." He enchanted his name so that no mortal could remember it, and magically erased any trace of his influence on the planet or people. This caused an argument amongst the party as to who would take his place as like the God of Gods. This argument became a holy war that has now lasted another 1000 years. I think our general storyline can then be that our bad guy is now making a huge play to try and help his side of the war. Maybe he has enlisted one of the demon lords to help him win? Maybe at the beginning of the war there was a sort of gentleman's agreement to keep mortals out of the war but now he is breaking that agreement? This also gives a reason as to why the party has to go contact the gods and get them to agree to a meeting because I imagine that a war like this would make communication between them very difficult. I was thinking that this war takes place off planet, possibly some of it directly above the planet. With that we can have some night sky phenomenon like the northern lights or similar, that is actually just a battleground of this holy war. As far as the party goes, I still don't know much about them. So to make it work, I was thinking you could either have it be sort of a free for all, where they are all vying for it on their own terms, or if you think maybe some of the gods wouldn't want it, you have them team up with another god or something and maybe its just two sides to the war. I think I am leaning more towards the idea that there are several sides to the war, because it gives our party a reason for why they have to go contact the gods themselves, because they are currently refusing to listen to each other, but like on of the gods has figured out the bad guys plans and is desperately trying to get them to make a brief truce to make sure he doesn't cause some serious damage or something. I like this idea because it gives a reason as to why the gods don't interact with mortals much anymore, as they are all wrapped up in this conflict. I think it works for Ral Sei, and maybe he was even trying to cause something like this just for his own entertainment. I think setting the story to happen right as there is some serious and/or dark turn to the war can introduce some really fun things that are happening to the world and our characters. I would also like to say that I think all of this is stuff that the party finds out like super late into the first campaign, if at all. There are things that are happening that affect the world and players, but we tell them how they are affected, and maybe they figure out how to fix symptoms, but they don't actually get directly involved in the fight. The good side may enlist them to help stop whatever play for power the bad side is attempting, but that doesn't mean they have to know all the details as to what is going on in the heavens.

Let me know how you feel about this idea, and if you have any clarifying questions or maybe want to change it at all. Once you give me that I will try to write up a more lore friendly version of events. Also, if you could finish at least basic write ups for the gods of the party and their motivations, it would help me a lot.

I also thought it would be kind of funny if the guy in Clearsummit essentially just cut himself off just to party for eternity. He isn't involved in the war at all and is still on planet because he couldn't care less about it.

I have been thinking more about it the last couple days and I am really liking this idea. I said earlier that I thought we should just use Faeruns Hell/Devil/Demon system and I'm not totally walking that back, but what I think we should do is place this campaign during the creation of our planes nine hells. I really like the idea of our big bad god becoming the parallel of Faeruns Asmodeus. We can even have people calling him Asmodeus and then it turns out in the end he's not even a devil yet, but maybe becomes one during this campaign. I think that something about this war should have him cast down, creating Devils and the nine hells. I think having the "devils" of our world be actually angels like in the process of changing would be really cool. I also think our big bad should be essentially Odium, in that he represents passion. We can have two separate worships for him, one group worshipping "the god of love" that is him, but also cults worshipping the demon lord of hate that is also in the end just going to be him. I think that we can make him unique enough to different from Odium, just using that idea that love and hate are so similar that in the divine sense, they are the same domain of passion.