This note is obtained as a reward for the Mastering the Shattered Realm quest and completing the 50th level of The Shattered Realm.
The earth beneath my feet trembles and the few candles I have left are all the light I have by which to read these tomes and record my final hours. The archivists too have fled. To where, I do not know. Nowhere remains that is safe from the hungering darkness.
My reading has brought me to the chronicles of the defining moment in our people's history, the day we vanquished a god. The date of this event is unclear, but it had to have been at least several generations ago as nobody I've known had been alive to witness it.
The texts describe the final years of the divine's presence as tumultuous. The stars grew dimmer and the god was almost never seen outside the ziggurat. Some stopped worshipping it entirely, convinced that they had been forsaken and left to their own devices. Angry mobs took to the streets. Monuments were toppled, shrines desecrated. Temples burned.
Discontent turned to riots and the riots into an angry mob that marched towards the grand ziggurat. Priests concocted powerful runes, the arcanists crafted spells they hoped could subdue a god. With death in their eyes, the people climbed the steps to the divine's throne. There they found it, angered by the desecration and revolt, but its once brilliant light had faded. The divine stood, towering above the people, and demanded fealty; but none bent the knee. Evidently infuriated by this defiance, the god cursed the very land and its people and vanished in an eruption of flames that toppled the ziggurat and claimed the lives of all that dared confront their deity.
Ralyoth was rid of its divine. Its name was scoured from all records, all art. Its monuments were toppled and disfigured. The temple was left abandoned for nature to reclaim.
What followed were months of grieving for the brave souls lost at the ziggurat interspersed with celebration and feasts. Our once god was all but forgotten. It was not until centuries later when our star faded and the hungering darkness encroached that we realized what our ancestors had truly done.
As I sit here under the waning light of my candles, I ponder a future where we are still under the heel of a celestial being. Not knowing the repercussions, would we, as our ancestors did, resent our god? Or would we show greater appreciation for the lands and boons we were given? As the darkness takes me, my thoughts spin with questions of what if, but there is no one left to answer...
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