The Silent Hatred

*Excerpted from The Yothian Chronicles, Vol. LXIII*

"And so it came to pass in the 325th year of the Fourth Age of Asteria that there was a great upheaval throughout the land. This has been variously called The Plague of Words, The Death of Truth or The Great Turning-Away in the treatises of sages and scholars. Those of the common folk who survived simply call it The Hateful Silence or The Hatred.

The prophets and soothsayers of Govanna presaged this calamity, with the most famous of the time - Hyrialian of Elomh - saying 'From outside shall come The Word and The Word shall be born on the breath of mortals. Those whom The Word infects shall become blind and deaf to all else, their tongues passing it along as a miasma spreads pestilence. The divine shall be immune but shall also be impotent against its rise. By mortal minds shall The Word be conjured, and by mortal tongues must it be stilled.'

We now know that The Hatred was brought to Asteria by a fiend from beyond time and space who came in the form of a man, a loathesome creature known as The Gilded Regent to the people of Zurn'Kadeth and as The Prince With Topaz Eyes to the citizens of wealthy Ophenia. Whether its purpose was the overthrow of the world or mere chaos and destruction, the motives of the Gilded One are as yet unknown. The results of The Hatred, though, are all-to-well documented.

The Hatred manifests itself as a very specific kind of madness - a loss of belief and the inability to perceive of the divine works of the gods of Asteria. Those so afflicted were cut off from the foundations of their own reality, cast adrift in a sea of uncertainty. As a result, these wretched souls were easily duped by the willing servants of the The Regent who were themselves apparently immune to the effects of the Hatred. By speaking to others of their experiences, the Silenced (as they came to be called) would spread The Word to others, causing them to likewise lose faith, lose belief and lose hope.

From Ophenia, The Hatred spread across the land like a rushing flood. Victims begat more victims and the Prince and its minions began to weld the Silenced into a massive force, a chaotic horde that would march on domains near and far. Often in the beginning, emissaries from Ophenia who were secretly loyal to the Regent would inveigle themselves into different cities across Asteria, spreading The Hatred and softening the ground for the coming rabble of Silenced.

Suddenly, one day, the Gilded Regent was gone. It is believed he returned to the nothingness which spawned him, although it has been rumored that a band of adventuring heroes spelled his end with the edges of their swords. Whatever its fate, with the Gilded Regent gone, its servants turned on each other and tried to conrol the Silenced in their immediate vicinity, only to find that the Silenced were beyond control. Without the guiding will of the Regent to sustain them, the Silenced ran amok in the countryside. The Hatred was as potent as ever but now its victims were rudderless and creating more of their ilk.

It was during this period that a true pestilence spread across the land. Like the Hatred, this disease was virulent and deadly, ravaging the body as the Hatred ravaged the mind. Called the Gasping Death by the physicians of Zilos, the only cure was to receive a blessing of healing from a priest or mystic for only the divine power of the Thousand Little Gods was a sure counter to The Gasping Death's deadly grip. Tragically, the Silenced could no longer see or hear the works of the gods and turned from the faithful of the gods, calling them charlatans and fakes. Without the healing and protection of those gifted to heal, the Silenced fell prey to the Gasping Death, spreading the disease even as they themselves succumbed to its effects.

So began one of the darkest periods in the Fourth Age, a time of disbelief and fear, of disease and pain that was to last for a generation. This is the story of the Era of Silent Gods."