 Unity is a fragile thing, and unity of purpose amongst those of diverse mien and origin, all the more so. Working in concert for the shared common good is a worthy and lofty goal ever one to strive for, yet one must bear in mind that one's compatriots in such endeavours may not always share your aspirations. Some may have entered into such compact with less than noble intent, hungry for their own petty aims and short-term achievements. Some may have ultimately agreed with the ambitions, but quarreled with the means to achieve them, or indeed the morals that would restrict them. Some still may yet have simply brokered the deal upon a whim, their chaotic natures making them break oaths are not but fancy. Dreams and myths are redolent with tales of this, and in the darkest hours of the Terran night, one such sundering clamours around the corners of my mind. My dreams of these mortal realms grow more and more vivid, lurching from visions of one impossible deity to the next, with my ears ringing to the sounds of their bellowed tales. Know then that this is a record of the further dreaming of the Oculus, pertaining to a series of calamities that would herald the end of the Age of Myth and the fracturing of the Pantheon of the Order. The Age of Myth is counted as such in the mortal realms, for that it truly was, spanning an immense age of the world spheres while containing within it wonders beyond imagination. Those that dwell within the realms to this day can only begin to marvel at the works the citizens of the planes united accomplished under the beneficent protection of the Pantheon of Order. Sigmar and his godly kin wrought upon the mortal realms unprecedented progress and prosperity in both patronage and action, and for a time it was good. It appeared for all the world that ancient emnities present since the Age of the World that was, had been laid aside for the good of this new one. Sigmar and Nagash, as opposite in origins and character as was seemingly possible, waged war as comrades, in doing so bringing defeat to many powerful and wicked entities, such as the devouring light, the king of broken constellations, the coalition of the Abyssal Dukes, and Simir the First Fire. The Contlave, the mightiest meeting of the mightiest beings in all of the realms, gathered in Sigmar's realm of Ezeir, and the gathered gods, demigods, and zodiacal beasts appointed to each of the realms a protector. To Sigmar was Ezeir, the realm of celestial magic, while Nagash took Shaiish, the lands of death, as his own. Thus the plains of Gur, realm of beasts, thundered the twin-headed Uruk god Gorka Morka, while in Gairan realm of life, Alariel the Everqueen nurtured the world garden. In Chamon, realm of metal, Grungi stoked the fires of Dwarden industry, while his brother Grimnir brought the fire realm of Akshi to heal. The other families of the Pantheon worked in concert with their own inverted world spheres. The brothers Teclis and Tyrion, mighty co-rulers of Hish, the realm of light, while their dark mirror, Malerion and his mother Marathi, held sway over the gloom of Olgu, realm of shadows. Each of the eight realms had their gods, each of the eight realms prospered in accordance with their deities own idiosyncrasies. Gairan, for example, flourished like never before, its mortal residents delighting in never-ending harvests, while in Gur, Gorka Morka fought and tamed the great beasts that were more akin to living natural disasters than simply animals. In Hish, the guidance of Teclis saw the disparate Aylvan people see hope in their futures once more, wrought to the artistry of magic never before seen. Even in Shaiish, the realm where the dead outnumbered the living a thousand fold, the necromantic rule of Nagash brought an order to un-life never before seen, and his capital, Nagash-Shazar, was a city where crime, anarchy, strife and discord, were a half-remembered distant memory. Yet, while the pantheon of order was united in bringing its peace to the mortal realms, they were still gods of eight disparate and highly unique winds of magic, each embodying diverse and often opposing fundamentals of the universe. And as such, they had their own agendas, and would work their schemes and plots even while proclaiming their loyalty to the great alliance Sigmar had forged. This did not, necessarily, mean the goals of some were opposed to the rule of the God King, merely that they were far more personal of nature than bringing divine justice to the cosmos. The Ever Queen Alariel, wandering the halls of the verdant palace of Gairan, found herself longing for the world that was, her time there not but fragmented memories, yes, but happy ones, of Kith and Kin, and of a greater purpose. Gorka Morka rampaged and raged across the plains of Gur, stoking the world lust of its plentiful Uruk tribes, but their list of foes and challenges grew shorter, and the two-headed God grew restive and ill-content. Tyrion and Teclas, despairing with each passing year at their missing Alvan Kinfolk, had discovered that the entity responsible for lost souls was none other than Slaanesh, the twisted dark chaos God of pleasure and depravity. Desperate to rescue these tormented souls the dark prince had glutted himself upon during the destruction of the world that was, the brothers made a pact with Malerion of the Shadows, master of Algu, uniting foes ancient beyond time for the good of their shared race, but keeping their schemes occluded from Sigmar's gaze. While a full account of the Alvan exploits must wait for a future, a dream chronicle, suffice it to say that they succeeded in their aims, chaining one of the dark gods themselves in a pocket reality half way between the lands of light and the lands of shadow. Dred N'Gash, necromanic master of Shai-ish, had been far from idle too. He of all the Pantheon saw the Accords as a thing of convenience and little more. To the deathless one lay the conviction that all life existed only to serve what came after, and he, by right, was that thereafter's sole ruler. N'Gash recast his mortocs, left tenants of old, ensnaring their wandering souls out of the roiling depths of the winds of death magic. Arkham the Black, Queen Nefarata, Manfred von Karstein, these names had once rung loud in the closing days of the end times, and now they were born anew in the mortal realms, slaved to their gods will, but remaining uniquely themselves. The mortarchs and their master set about claiming the entirety of Shai-ish as their own. To this end, jealous N'Gash hunted and destroyed every single death god and afterlife spirit that was not directly ruled by his hand. Shai-ish was purged of its deities and entities, some of whom had seen the first mortals of the realms pass from life to death, leaving the great necromancer, the sole ruler of the realmsphere. The great citadel of N'Gash's are swelled and grew ever more vast, an acropolis in the truest sense, for no living being could set foot near it without the death magic of it permeating their flesh and decaying their bones to grave dust. N'Gash set his undead legions to build massive inverted black pyramids out of Shai-ish and realm stone, channeling ever more death magic into his being, and across his newly minted dominion, mighty skeletal armies marched, projecting the death god's material power as his own magic warped reality itself. As the gods sought their own aims, tragedy was to strike one of their number. Grimnir, having tamed all the lands of Akshi, founding Dwarden warrior lodges all the while, had yet one more foe to bring to heel. Having spent the age venting his fury at his former captivity, the Dwarden god demanded of Sigmar that he be given an enemy worthy of his axe, and Sigmar, greatly valuing the alliance and not wishing to name a foe unworthy, lest prideful Grimnir take offense, acted upon an all-too-human impulse. He named Vulcatrix, the mother of salamanders, she who had first birthed flame itself into the worlds, as this foe, and it was a decision he would come to eternally regret. Eyes at low with the spirit of the challenge, Grimnir strode forwards to the den of the great salamander, baying his challenge to the fiery mountains, proclaiming his martial prowess, and hurling around a brace of declarations about his enemy's lineage. Vulcatrix was not deaf to his boasts and insults, and uncurled her endless magma coils from her mountain lair, thundering towards a Dwarden like a molten avalanche. It is said their contest near broke the realm, as a very ground of Akshi vomited forth lava at Vulcatrix's every step, and the blows Grimnir wailed down upon her hide shattered the mountain sides themselves. The Dwarden of the realms tell that it was only through the spite of his foe that Grimnir fell, for as his axe landed the killing blow upon the mother of salamanders, she vented the noxious poison gases contained within her, and as soon as the toxic cloud encountered the fires of the surrounding volcanoes, the resulting explosion was greater than any the mortal realms had ever seen. For as far as the eye could carry, mountains were flattened, paved down to create the plains of Akshi. Grimnir and Vulcatrix were entirely vaporized, his form and hers fusing at a magical level to create the shards of Arcane Urgold, scattered across reality. The Dwarden god was no more, and the realm of fire raged in smoking ruin at his passing. As if the loss of his dearest ally was not significant enough, Sigmar's pantheon was to suffer yet another grievous blow. Morathi, unable to deny her eternal nature as the arch manipulator, had been attempting to inveigle her way into a position of significance with none other than Nagash. Unable to make headway with the great necromancer through simple, if nonetheless divine charm, she worked her sinister seduction magics upon him, subtle coils of eldritch power sneaking their way into his skull from realms removed. However, she did not reckon for the fearsome power the death god now possessed within the depths of Shai-ish, and during one council of the pantheon, he detected her workings. Flying into a terrifying rage at the betrayal, Nagash struck the elven sorceress, and in doing so revealed not only her treachery to the assembled gods, but also her true form. Long had Morathi withheld her blasphemous serpentine incarnation from her fellows through cunning glamours. But no more. Unable to bear her failure and the disgusted gazes of the pantheon, she fled in shame to the depths of Al-Gu. Squatting in the shadows, she begged her son Malirion for clemency, but the lord of the shadow realm would not hear of it, enraged as he was for how her scheming had damaged him in the eyes of the other gods. He refused to split the thirteen dominions of Al-Gu amongst them both, claiming them all for his own in light of his new role as the sole font of shadow magic. He granted to his mother but a small parcel of land in the Umbral Vale, the most occluded of all the lands in Al-Gu. Morathi, vowing to survive and flourish just as she always had, laid the first stones of her new temple, naming it Hagnar, and set to bending the shadows of the Vale to her will. As the gods bickered and feuded, the divine disparity becoming ever more apparent, decay and corruption began to creep into the mortal realms. Across the coastlines of every world sphere, villages and ports began to disappear, their populations stolen away into the depths of the foggy night by a sinister and unseen force. In the depths of Shaish, the first abhorrent ghoul king of the flesh-eater courts was created, once a mighty noble of Nagash's regime, but now cursed by the great necromancer, transformed into an anthropophagic monster. In the mighty cities of the God-king, shadowy cults were forming in the cracks of society, coalescing around sinister demagogues who spoke of older gods that promised power to mortals disaffected by the pantheon of order. But it would be in Gur, the realm of beasts, that the first of such deities would split from the pantheon. Gorka Morka, the avatar of destruction, had grown bored with what they saw as the petty bickering of jaded gods. Discontented and yearning for some true sport, they inhaled a realm-sphere worth of air into their godly lungs and let loose a bellow that shook the world, a mighty war cry that became known as the First Wah. To the call flocked greenskins from every tribe and clan imaginable, a monstrous crusade that trampled whole civilizations to dust under their crude iron boots as they rampage from one end of the mortal realms to the other. When the armies of the two-headed god reached world's end, the very precipice of reality where the realms meet the void, Gorka Morka simply turned around and tore back the way they had come, smashing to pieces the barely rebuilt cities and kingdoms all over again. This final round of devastation proved to be the Wahs undoing, however. For with no more enemies left to devastate, the vast horde turned, as greenskins are wont to do, to savage and heedless infighting, the tribes of Uruk's suddenly remembering all of their long-held grudges and vendettas, or simply inventing new ones when the excuse for a good fight was needed. Such strife was not restricted to the mortal greenskins, however, for their god was too consumed, both haves fighting each other to a standstill until their divine self-antipathy grew so tremendous it literally fractured Gorka Morka into two separate beings. In Gairan, Alariel too dismayed at the cracks forming in the pantheon, but unable to influence or placate her fellow deities simply grew disenchanted with her lot and retreated ever more into the depths of her kingdom, contenting herself to nurture the life energies of the realms and let the gods squabble. Elsewhere in Gairan, a mage by the name of Sanase Bela had quested far and wide across the realms, seeking knowledge no other scholar could have uncovered, and was deeply troubled by what he had found. At the end of his travels, he had encountered a mythical beast unlike anything written in any tome he had ever read. Disturbingly avian, the massive thing had wielded more magical energy than any god-beast or monster Bela had ever encountered. Returning from the meeting by the skin of his teeth, he created a powerful artifact known laterally as the Mirror of Bela, presenting it to Sigmar himself. With the Mirror, the gods of order could scry any location in any one of the realms, and its use came with a warning from Bela himself. Powers, greater and more terrible than imagination were at work, and their plans were seemingly already afoot. The truth, as the truth so often is, was far, far worse than Bela or even the Pantheon had ever realized. Deep within the space beyond space, where reality was liquid in roiling magical currents, in the nothing realm where the very winds of arcane energy themselves blew, the dark gods of chaos had not been idle. It was they who had sundered the world that was, and had supped upon its destruction with glee and delight, and despite Sigmar's greatest hopes, they had discovered the new mortal realms and all the possibility they represented. In the realm spheres, they saw opportunity for dominion undreamed of, for unlike the mundanity of the world that was, these new planes represented, just as they did for the Pantheon of order, possibilities limited only by imagination. And oh, were the dread intelligences of chaos ripe with corrupt schemes and dark desires. Unlike the world that was, whose sundered polar regions allowed the influences of the dark gods to pour into reality, the realms presented no such easy access. So with the patience only a deity could muster, they enveigled their tendrils into the realm spheres, through the tiniest cracks in the scheme. Sigmar and his Pantheon had spent the long span of the age of myth uplifting all within their reach to the heights of civilization, fashioning their utopias from the clay of the mortal realms. Their works were mighty and wondrous, and to be duly lauded, but not as comprehensive as they would have liked to believe. Even gods are fallible, it seems, for everywhere in the secret corners of the world lurked the remnants of ancient tribal traditions, rituals and beliefs that gave veneration of primal powers far, far older than the Pantheon of order. Wearing the glamour of venerable, if detached deities. The gods of the dark persisted, gradually extending their reach and wrecking secret quiet evils upon the mortal realms. The martial contests of the tribes of Gur and Akshi grew bloodier. The harvests of the villages of Gairan swelled unnaturally, with plants growing into strange and quietly disturbing forms. In cities across Chamon and Algu, the wealthy and powerful gathered under cover of night to indulge dark desires, and in the soaring libraries of Hish, scholars produced texts and treaties ever more arcane and delved into studies and experiments ever more dangerous. Slowly, as the gods of order feuded and withdrew, the gods of chaos waxed stronger and stronger. The corruption seeped into the bones of the realms, eating away at the heart of civilization like the foulest canker. Where this would lead? Well, my dreams are occluded from that, but I fear, oh I fear, are the worst of these visions yet to come? Another night may tell, and until such a time, Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. This video and this channel is made possible through the incredibly kind support of my Patreon subscribers. 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