The Manifestation

The Manifestation is the name given to the brief but devastating return of a vestige of the Darkbringer to the Material Plane in 1099AG.

Though lasting for less than a few days, it resulting in the death of over 95% of the populace of Ahlus, as well as the collapse of the Astedian Empire and all the remaining Realms.

## History

When the Darkbringer was sundered from Caihrnn in the age before Aita's First Gift, its essence of being had been scattered and left to drift in fragments within the void between the Planes, where logic and reason and time cease to be. In the babbling chaos of the Far Realms, one of the fragments of the Darkbringer into the being known as Hadar, the Elder Evil had long bided its time. It saw the ambition in the hearts of the Astedians as they started their first steps towards dominion with the establishment of the College of Claxinns. Hadar sent forth his servant Akmod and within the deepest stretches of the Lowerdark they began to lace the soil and stone once shaped by the hand of Caihrnn with otherworldly and alien magics. By twisting the creation of the Lord of the Quiet Places directly, they could create a substance that would be able to bypass the ward placed by the very same deity.

And yet, Caihrnn's power continued nonetheless, for he had fashioned the lands themselves. What would become the Wayfinder Stones had been created, but could not harness their full power for they were still not purely of the lands. Akmod himself was grievously wounded by the subsequent experimentations, and instead they would require the native residents to manipulate them, for each and every mineral and substance that made up their form came from the soil and stone. It would only be after the people of Ahlus discovered and refined the ore that the next stage the Darkbringer's machinations could come to fruition, and so seeking a distraction sufficient for his servants to further consummate the magics, the Seven Harbingers were loosed unto the lands.

While the Realms of Ahlus, assembled and unified beneath the Astedians scrabbled to rally against the Seven Harbingers, the Hanbalani Atlantes were constructed through the lands, huge monolithic structures made of smooth crystal ceramic. Resonating with an intense psionic energy, the Cores contained within a perfected form of the Wayfinder Stones, made to bind the Prime Material Plane to Dal Quor, in which Hadar the Cinder Star had come to reside following a chance encounter with the Kalashtar-Elven noble Eordemos Lightvale centuries prior. Leader of an isolationist group known as the Last Day, Eordemos had come into possession of a trio of Remnant artifacts created by the Great Light il-Yannah following their rediscovery in 599AG. After being lost in the wake of the religious purging known as the Cleansing of the Glare, the three artifacts collectively referred to as the Legacies of Distant Reverie were uncovered by an expedition party headed by the Guild of the Velvet Rose and immediately requisitioned by the Guild for further research. After a series of investigations over the next three years, they were handed over to Baron Eordemos Lightvale in 602AG. Lightvale, secretly descended from a family that escaped persecution drew a few others to his side, forming the organisation known as the Last Day. In a secluded location within the Duchy of Nolheimia they utilised the artifacts once more - findings themselves lost in Dal Quor in idyllic joy, again reunited with their patron deity. They experienced lives as kings and queens throwing balls and fêtes that stretched across the horizon, as adventurers and explorers delving ancient ruins hidden behind waterfalls, in the wildest forests and at the depths of the oceans. By comparison, their waking hours seemed mundane, exhausting.

A few amongst the Last Day started to make draughts that would encourage deep sleeps that would last for days at a time, their bodies withering from the lack of attention given to them. Some resisted the allure of such substances for a while, but in time all amongst them routinely used the mixture. As their bodies atrophied, their minds flourished, existing in the dreaming world even after their eventual and inevitable mortal demise. By standard measures upon the Prime Material Plane, the Baron had been exploring Dal Quor for decades. By reckoning of his own mind, accelerated as it was, it had been millennia. Far beyond the demise of his mortal body, Eordemos Lightvale continued to explore deeper and deeper into the heart of the Plane of Dreams, finding himself within the centre of Eventide Recesses. There in the darkest gloom of the Plane of Dreams he slipped from Dal Quor into the Far Realm, coming face to face the the Hunter in the Ephialtes, the Dark Hunger, the Distant Nightmare, the Darkbringer, Hadar. Madness immediately consumed the elf, his mind dominated by the presence of the Elder Evil.

Connected as he was to the Legacies of Distant Reverie, Eordemos' powers allowed Hadar to transfer his consciousness and form from the Far Realm into the Plane of Dreams through Eordemos' mind, bypassing the first aspect of Caihrnn's ward that had been placed upon his transition from the Far Realm into those that existed more closely with the Prime Material Plane. This encounter altered the Darkbringer's plans of return to the Prime Material Plane drastically, instead allowing putting him in place to consume il-Yannah, and install himself as the ruler of the Quori - further bolstering the potential for his return to influence in Ahlus.

All the while, the tethers of the Far Realm that had been drawn into Dal Quor by Hadar's inhabitance of the Realm of Dreams had bound the two Planes tightly apiece, and so as the Hanbalani Cores activated in unison, the maddening chaos of the Far Realm and its inhabitants were unleashed. Though the members of the Last Day's corporeal forms had over the centuries become naught but ash, before they found themselves reborn as the Unhallowed. As armies of Kaorti, Star Spawn and Quori descended upon Ahlus by means of theft of the bodies of those fallen into slumber, consuming all to deliver the will of the Dark Hunger, the Unhallowed continued their wretched work, forging a mighty weapon known as the Drowning Void with which they sought to definitely slay Caihrnn. Connected as they were, fragments of the same original presence, the Void wrought destruction unto the Lord in the Quiet Places and the Hunter in the Ephialtes alike. Into Dal Quor Hadar was cast once more, whereas Caihrnn found himself bound elsewhere, the connection between the pair finally and resolutely severed. Diminished as the Hunter was, the nexus of connections between the Hanbalani Cores faltered, and with it the path onto the Material Plane barred once more.

Nonetheless, the Harbingers still wrought destruction upon the soil and stone, until each in turn were subject to a binding behind Seven Great Seals, sequestered and secured by a faction known as the Guardians of the Flock - a process that brought about their own destruction. And yet, the lands had been sullied, cities irredeemably shattered, populaces mere fractions of the decades prior.

Facilitated by the Theamera the Eternal Minstrel and Divinus the Three-Eyed Light, the memories of the survivors were modified to mollify the loses afflicted, as well as ensure the process by which Hadar had previously been summoned could not be again replicated.

With it, the Realms of Ahlus fell quiet for one hundred and fifty years as those few that remained maintained isolated colonies without knowledge of their neighbours, before the interests of a single individual would stir widespread civilisation into life anew.

That individual was the Vedalken Wizard Nelenet.