Four Nightmares

The Four Nightmares were a series of catastrophic events which each embroiled large swaths of Weyard. These horrible events all occurred within the span of about 20 years, and they rocked the people of Weyard to their very core. The terrible nature of these four events and their aftermath was so impactful that they, as a whole, inspired the formation of The Custodians, who ultimately sealed away the power of Alchemy temporarily, only to be restored centuries later in the Golden Sun Event.

## The First Nightmare: The Eastern War

The Eastern War was so named because it eventually embroiled nearly every civilization in Eastern Weyard. It was the first of the Four Nightmares, and marked the beginning of a new era.

The Veridao Empire and the Ankohl Coalition were the main belligerents of the war, although their conflict dragged numerous other factions into the fray, including Lemuria, Altin, Tolbi, and several other groups.

## The Second Nightmare: The Attala Cataclysm

The Attala were a civilization of incredibly advanced Adepts who intended to create a brand new continent in the Western Sea which would serve as their own personal utopia. They built an immense, mobile Alchemy Machine, with some help from the Lemurians. However, their leader, the philosopher Plautes, was far too ambitious, and his plans failed; while he intended to raise a brand new continent, his Alchemy Machine actually fundamentally disrupted the plate tectonics of all of Weyard, causing major parts of nearly every continent to change its elevation, submerging and destroying countless coastal cities, while other ports were lifted out of the sea and rendered inoperable. Massive earthquakes and tidal waves also ensued, causing incalculable suffering.

## The Third Nightmare: The Axurm Cult

The Axurm Cult was a doomsday cult arising in northeastern Gondowan. They believed the world was predestined to end in the near future, and believed that they themselves were to play a part in its destruction. The high ranking members of the Axurm Cult were experts of Mind Domination Psynergy, which allowed them to brainwash other individuals into joining the Cult. They also created an alchemical method to separate a person's consciousness from their body, which would subsequently result in the death of their body as well as the prompt dissolution of their consciousness, effectively completely ending their life. However, they believed that a God called Axurm would actually take the consciousness of those who died and shepherd them to a new paradise.

## The Fourth Nightmare: The Anemos War

A new, militaristic leader of Anemos rose to power, in part due to fear caused by the previous three Nightmares. Even among the ancient peoples of Weyard, the Anemos were unusually advanced. Their new leader believed that after what they had seen in the previous decade, the only way to ensure peace in Weyard was to conquer the entire world. So they waged a bloody war with their advanced technology against every other continent.

## After the Four Nightmares

A few years after the end of the Anemos War, the idea of the "Four Nightmares" was widespread throughout Weyard. These four calamities, happening in quick succession, were regarded as not only catastrophic, but as inevitable - it became widely believed that horrors of this sort were guaranteed to regularly occur due to the immense Alchemical knowledge the world had amassed.

It was only a matter of time before an international group of Adepts, who eventually became known as The Custodians, would rally together to seal Alchemy away, with the goal of preventing anything like the Four Nightmares from occurring again... at least for a long, long time.