War for Heaven

> "*The Gods gazed upon the work of their terrible might, and they wept, for nothing had ever felt so bitter as the realisation that the guardians of the world had just become its murderers.*"
> ― Ticai Baca, Book of Aceron
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**This page currently uses outdated names for the Elvetan deities.**

Although the War for Heaven is generally known as an Elvetan religious myth, it is known to be historical fact, although doubtlessly some elements were embellished by later Elvetan writers. The Elvetan Gods were originally Titans, of course, and the catastrophic battles between them and their legions are believed to be not only amongst the most devastating actions of the Annihilation but possibly the very first actions, which began the cascade of events that led to the apocalyptic situation which wiped out an estimated three-quarters of all life in Inecuria.

The War for Heaven was fought between two opposed factions of Titans whom the Elvetans now worship as deities. There were those under King Yakela, which included his wife Queen Itaena, his son with Itaena named Akras, his brother Jakras and Etana; these were opposed to those under King Cetamucos, which included his brother Casadut, Yaesan, Kinetas and Hacaetos. Nemitus and Kalaesan, who were kin with the other Titans and who came to be worshipped as deities, did not participate in the war. The two factions of the war did not fall neatly across family lines; Jakras ended up on the opposite side to his wife, Yaesan, and his son, Kinetas. Likewise, Casadut ended up on the opposite side to his wife Etana, and Hacaetos ended up on the opposite side to his two brothers, Yakela and Jakras. It should be pointed out, though, that the idea these Titans had family bonds is debatable, as many suggest it is an invention of the Elvetan prophets.

Although the Ticae Baca, the holy scripture of Elveta which details the War for Heaven, only makes brief mention of other Titans involved with the war, archaeological evidence and several fragmented historical records point towards there being multiple other Titans involved in the War for Heaven. However, the extent to which the conflicts involving other Titans were directly related to the War for Heaven is debatable, and many suggest that they were separate battles which happened to coincide and overlap. What is known, however, is that the fight did rapidly spill out beyond those originally involved, and eventually nearly all the Titans were locked in bitter bloodshed after several years, the majority of them no longer truly knowing why they were fighting, but locked in a fight to the death and enraged by some chaotic magical presence.

## Causes

The Book of Elvet and Book of Bacaster in the Ticae Baca both offer causes for the catastrophic war, but they slightly differ both in the reasons they give and in the approach they take to these reasons. Both writers explicitly state that both sides were in the wrong and they recognised as such when the bloodshed was done, retreating into Heaven in shame, however both do generally depict King Cetamucos as far more unreasonable than King Yakela.

There is no evidence of the causes of the War for Heaven beyond those immediately found within the Ticae Baca. The writings found in this book are obviously full of religion, naming the Titans as Gods and ascribing to the Titans perhaps both more power and more person-like emotions than they really had; most other records of other Titans describe their thoughts and motivations as enigmatic, beyond the realm of mortal understanding, totally unlike the understandable and very person-like emotional motivations presented in the Ticae Baca. The writings found in the Ticae Baca should not be discounted as false, but neither should they be accepted as wholly true, either.

According to Elvet, the emnity between the two began at the dawn of creation, when they had ideological differences over how the universe should be ruled; Yakela refused the power of the Gods directly to the mortals but allowed them to invoke this power through prayer, whereas Elvet gave his followers - the Elfkin and Dragons - direct access to divine power, which Yakela saw as dangerous and irresponsible. Indeed, Yakela's fears were proven right when the Elfkin and Dragons began wreaking havoc upon the world. Yakela demanded that Cetamucos revoke the power, whereas Cetamucos demanded that Yakela give the power to all the other races so that the balance would be met. The two sides refused to give in, and the situation only worsened as more and more of the Gods joined the argument, and eventually Kinetas provoked Akras into striking him, beginning the war.

Bacaster acknowledges the ideological conflict about how the universe should be ruled, but his writings focus far more on the personal relationships between the Gods, citing many examples of interactions both between Gods and between Gods and mortals, which also serve a double use as giving lessons on morality. For Bacaster, the conflict was not just about how the mortals should be taken care of, but how the Gods argued over the fates of specific individuals or groups, set amongst the backdrop of the grander ideological conflict. The arguments over the fates of mortals grew increasingly heated until Bacaster gives the story of the fight that truly sent the two sides over the edge into inevitable open war; the tale of the orphaned Dark Elf, which is incidentally the only time in the entire Ticae Baca - and indeed one of the few instances in any historical record from within the Great Shield - that a Dark Elf is portrayed in a sympathetic light.

### The Orphaned Dark Elf

The tale of the orphaned Dark Elf centres around the Dark Elf named Elasha, whose mother died in childbirth and whose "father" (always a contentious term to use with the hermaphroditic Dark Elves; many modern scholars prefer to use the terms the Dark Elves themselves used, which were "birther" for mother and "giver" for father) was seemingly randomly murdered when Elasha was only six. No family was willing to take her in, and she ended up being captured by slavers (their race is unknown, but are thought to be other Elfkin) who put her to use as a sex slave, renting her out to clients whose desires were very specific. Queen Itaena, who was known for her compassion and who is now worshipped as the Goddess of love, saw this situation as absolutely insufferable, but she could do nothing about it for the Dark Elves were under the dominion of King Cetamucos. Itaena repeatedly begged Cetamucos to help Elasha, but he refused to intervene, citing the rule that had been laid down in the first days that the Gods were not to intervene in the free will of their creations. King Yakela came to the aid of his wife, arguing that both he and Cetamucos himself had intervened in the affairs of mortals plenty of times before - but Cetamucos countered this, saying they had only intervened by teaching or showing, not through physical action. Cetamucos still refused, stating that he found the situation just as despicable as them, but he repeated Yakela's own words that the role of the Gods was to teach and guide, not to be autocrats enforcing their will with divine power.

Eventually, Cetamucos decided to appear to the slavers who owned Elasha and asked them to let her go, and he named their actions as vile. The slavers laughed in his face and told Cetamucos he had no business interfering. Cetamucos then gave them a display of his power and threatened them, informing them they would die if they rejected his command, to which the slavers were initially terrified - but their leader, fearless, stepped forward and stated that he knew the Gods had no right to do such a thing. Cetamucos agreed he could not kill them - but he also informed them that he never claimed that *he* would.

Whilst Cetamucos was distracting the slavers, however, Elasha - now aged nineteen - found herself unguarded, and she fled into the night, desperate for freedom, much to the delight of Queen Itaena. She appeared to Elasha and guided her towards a nearby Black Elvish town, telling her that she was now safe. King Cetamucos let this infringement upon his jurisdiction slide. However, to Itaena's horror, that town was promptly raided and sacked by a Dark Elvish army, and Elasha was taken as a slave yet again, eventually finding her way back to the very same masters she had been the property of before, who were willing to pay a high price for the opportunity to have vengeance upon their runaway slave. They brutally raped and tortured her, leaving her almost dead, and Elasha wept.

The tears of Elasha caused Itaena to also weep, which only enraged Elasha. She cursed Itaena for lying to her, and cursed all the Gods for abandoning her. Her screaming attracted the attention of the masters, who readied to resume their torment, but the sheer force of Elasha's rage and the abysmal depths of her trauma shattered the invisible magical chains upon her power, which "opened her veins up to the raw, unrestrained, unmerciful wrath of the conduits of the universe". As Elasha roared in hatred and agony, the slavers were torn to shreds before her eyes, and a storm of plasma engulfed the encampment.

Elasha's rage, though, extended beyond merely those who had wronged her - she had nothing but hate for a universe that hated her, and she flew to every town and village she could find, slaughtering all she saw. She eventually came to mighty Unkhori Orcish city of Ashwakor and made the inhabitants her her playthings, finding increasingly excruciating and depraved methods of murder and torture for its inhabitants. After growing bored, she flattened the city with a wave of her hand, but then the magical power coursing through her body began to corrode her from the inside. Bacaster gives a vivid and gruesome description of how she was destroyed. Her blood began to boil inside her veins and her skin began to crack and rupture, her organs spilling onto the ground and her muscles oozing out as they turned to a mushy pulp. Her eyes melted, her spine tumbled out her back, and she screamed until she had no lungs to make air with, a scream that echoed across the entire world and into Heaven. Elasha died in agony, having taken "almost a million" with her.

Queen Itaena immediately blamed King Cetamucos for the castastrophe, saying that by merely taking to Elasha to safety, countless innocent lives could have been saved. Cetamucos, on the other hand, blamed Itaena for giving Elasha false hope, which was ultimately what drove her over the edge. King Yakela blamed Cetamucos, not for not intervening, but for giving the Elfkin magical power, saying that if they had no such power, the catastrophe would not have occurred. The traumatic circumstances of the event deepened the irritation and dislike both sides felt for each other into open hatred, and both sides accused the other of being mass murderers.