Here is the official story.
Twenty-four years ago, in a kingdom by the name of Saimr, two very important events happened around the same time. The first was a puzzling surprise: God-King Kodezh, who had ruled his lands competently and with little fuss for nearly seven centuries, suddenly fell ill. This was not an impossible thing—even a god, under the right circumstances, could be brought low by some wretched affliction or another. It was simply… very unlikely. After all, God-King Kodezh was a deity in his prime! He was not the strongest god in the world of Ansera, or even especially close to it, but he was not weak. His rule was secure, his domain lush and thriving, his flock docile and bound by blood tithes. Since the days of his conquest so many centuries ago, Saimr had faced no great calamities, no invasions, only one bloody rebellion, and a mere handful of petty civil squabbles, all easily resolved by the king himself.
So it was with great surprise that the king's many demigod sons received the baffling news of his sequestration from the public eye. In this missive, there was no explanation of what illness had befallen him, and no indication of when it might be resolved. In the king's absence, his divine consort named her firstborn son Gamodar to the position of regent.
The king had no named heir. Why would he? He was not a mortal ruler; he had no plans to step down and certainly no plans to become otherwise indisposed. And he had no wish to set any of his sons above the others, lest the pointless position of crown prince become yet another thorn bristling between them. He'd had quite enough of arbitrating their petty disputes, after all. But someone had to occupy the throne until the king recovered, and of all his sons, Gamodar was perhaps the least ambitious (and the simplest). He was no great statesman, but he was a capable warrior and a devoted son who worshipped the very ground his father trod upon. He would do nothing to sully the king's legacy.
The divine-consort was no grasping harpy, either; even her husband's concubines respected her. Consort Hraila wasn't a full-fledged goddess, but what power she had she shared freely for the benefit of her husband's faithful. She was gentle and kind and pure (an embodiment of the ideal Saimerian woman, the priests claimed!)—ill-suited to ruling in her husband's stead, but certainly trusted enough to select the man who should.
So. The king was mysteriously indisposed, but as long as he recovered quickly, there would be no great danger to the realm. And there was no reason he shouldn't recover quickly! Hraila had summoned Saimr's finest apothecaries and physickers to the palace; his flock was eager to serve and his domain rich with power he might draw upon to heal should he require it.
And yet he did not recover. Weeks of silence from the royal palace spilled into months, and those godborn Red Princes who had been content to obey their cotton-headed brother until their father resumed his rightful place on the throne began to mutter their discontent. It seemed that the king was indeed drawing upon the reserves of his domain to restore himself, for the harvests that year were much slimmer than usual. The king's priests reassured his devotees that their god had not abandoned them, had not stopped listening to their prayers, but in secret, they too had begun to fret. The trickle of holy power that sustained the priesthood was slowing. The priests would not be powerless without His Worship's blessings, but they would be significantly weakened, their untouchable perch atop Saimerian society cracked.
It was under these strange and worrisome circumstances that the second notable event occurred: for the first time in a very long time, another god's influence began to creep through Saimr. From the provincial outlands of the mountainous north, there came news of a prophet. She hailed from lands unknown, spoke tongues no Saimerian ear had ever heard, and wielded magics forbidden by every mage sect in Ansera. She even commanded a vicious beast she called a dragon, though at the time the creature was apparently still young and weak (this was the prophet's assessment, and no other's). The prophet called herself Seda. She claimed that she was the chosen herald of a god more fearsome than any in Ansera, and she had come to spread the gift of her god's blessings.
Though the Prophet Seda was a dark mage of exceptional talent, she was only one woman (well, and a dragon). Had the Red Princes banded together then, they may have been able to slay her. But by that time, a false prophet was merely a small fly in a great deal of ointment: the kingdom was faltering. It had been nearly two years since God-King Kodezh's withdrawal from the public eye, and the limits of Regent Gamodar's power were becoming quickly apparent. He had never expected to wear his father's crown and had received no special training in statecraft (not that it would have stuck). He struggled to adequately resolve even minor disputes, and the disputes being brought to his attention by now were far from minor. There were reports of failing crops, of spreading sickness, of rebellious lordlings, of bandits on the royal highway and incursions on the border and corruption within the priesthood.
Regent Gamodar was a good and noble man, but he was not a good king. He knew not what to do. He could swing a blade with great prowess, but he could not summon wheat or gold or medicinal salves from thin air. It was only a matter of time, then, until the web of cracks spreading from the royal capital collapsed into a fault.
The first Red Prince rebelled.
His name is not important, for many of his brothers soon followed. This band of rebels came together and sent a missive to the Regent and the Consort demanding to be allowed entry to the capital, to ascertain the truth of the king's condition for themselves, and for the Regent Gamodar to step aside and allow a more competent brother to take his place. Precisely who that brother would be hadn't yet been decided. When this contingent of demigods and their bannermen marched upon the capital, Consort Hraila, well aware that her influence was fading, finally offered up the truth.
The king could not be seen. His condition was poor and contagious; no pill or poultice or healing array had yielded any effect. Worse: those who had treated him soon fell to the illness as well. God-King Kodezh was still alive, but he was no longer himself.
This humble author assumes what came next will be obvious. If the honorable reader answered "a godswar", they are wise and correct.
The Red Princes, who for centuries had not dared assume that the throne of Saimr might fall vacant in their long lifetimes, found themselves with the crown finally in their reach. Never mind the brewing famine or word of a spreading plague in the north: when a new god helmed the kingdom and claimed the land and its souls for themselves, all ills could be routed! And so the Princes, blinded by ambition and greed and even a genuine desire to save the realm, set off to battle. Alliances formed and shattered; blocs of influence bloomed and wilted. A few of the king's sons banded together to support Regent Gamodar in the hopes that their father might still miraculously recover. Some weaker offspring carefully threw their weight behind a sufficiently powerful and doting brother. Most staked out claims of their own, convinced of the righteousness of their cause. For the first time in hundreds of years, Saimr's soil was soaked with the blood of commoners and godlings alike.
And as the godswar raged, the Prophet Seda quietly gathered an army of her own. In the northern mountains and dales, far from the embattled royal capital, the Prophet's "blessings" took root. A different sort of sickness befell the people of the north. Those who contracted it babbled about the light of a far-off sun, a great dark star that sang the most beautiful song and flooded their veins with a power no god of this world could hope to match. This was the Prophet's god! This was the Fell Empress, the First Dragon, the Sun Unvanquished!
Some who fell ill survived. Some did not. Many tumbled into a state somewhere in-between: lapsed into madness or bloodlust, twisted mentally, physically, and spiritually. But those who lived, who maintained their faculties—those became the Prophet's devout followers. The numbers of those followers increased by the day, until eventually Seda established a sect of her own. She called it the Dawn. With it, she said, she would topple the reign of these petty pretender-gods; no longer would the common people grovel at the feet of the lords and princes who spat upon them. All who basked in the light of the True Sun had the opportunity to achieve greatness if only they were willing to work for it.
A touching sentiment! Not entirely true, but not quite false either, and compelling either way.
As the war dragged on and the Prophet's teachings spread farther and farther, they reached even the ears of those beyond the Worldrift—that great churning divide that separates Ansera into its constituent halves. Saimr belongs to the side of the Worldrift called Ulor, and upon the other shore is a land called Imtheria. It was Imtheria where Ansera's greatest powers, most terrifying monsters, and most potent magic resided. And indeed, one of those great powers soon crossed the Rift herself to investigate these curious rumors.
The astute reader will of course know precisely to whom this author refers!
Five years had now passed since the God-King Kodezh first secluded himself. The war showed no signs of stopping, and the Prophet Seda and her dragon Syuasi had only grown stronger. Saimr was awash with blood, writhing with hunger, and tainted by this "True Sun's" alien magic. This was the state of the kingdom the archmage Velnyr Napharos encountered when she exited the Worldrift.
Even in Saimr, which was not particularly close to the Rift, word of her deeds had spread far and wide. This young archmage was the scion of a most powerful goddess and a legend in her own right: in a realm overrun by godborn nobles and powerful mages, Archmage Primarius Velnyr was exceptional. Not only had she reached the pinnacle of the arcane hierarchy at such a tender age (for an elf, anyway), she had done so despite the meddling of jealous peers, cut-throat rivals, and even her divine ancestor! Hers was a reputation steeped in blood and glory, and already some nobles in her homeland had begun to whisper about how precarious her very existence rendered her divine ancestor's position. No doubt the God-Queen of Leviathan, that awe-inspiring underground metropolis, was more than relieved to hear that her ruthless descendant had turned her back on the city-state and set out alone to investigate rumors of dark magic across the world.
And so the Archmage Velnyr sought the Prophet Seda. She traveled across the land in solitude, observing the war and the scars it left behind. When finally she reached the Prophet's northern fortress, Kachai, she proposed a compromise: she would help the Prophet usurp the Saimerian throne, and in return Seda would help her take Leviathan from her ancestor. To Seda, this was a remarkable stroke of good fortune. Not only was Velnyr a peerless warmage, her lineage and position granted the Dawn and its witches a measure of legitimacy in the eyes of lords and commonfolk alike. And Velnyr was in possession of wealth, resources, and allies that the Dawn could not hope to rival. What luck!
It was here that the tide of war shifted, and the Red Princes who had been utterly focused on slaughtering their own kin in the name of ascension suddenly realized that they had allowed a much greater threat to fester under their noses. The remaining demigods rushed to call for truces and reforge alliances in the face of this daunting new force, but it was far too late. As the Prophet and the Archmage struck out on campaign, city after city after city fell to their combined might. Warlords and Red Citadel mages toppled with hardly a whimper. The Red Princes raised mighty generals; the Prophet raised Dreadsaints to slay them. The Red Princes retreated to enchanted palaces; the great dragon Syuasi scorched them to ash. The Red Princes scrambled to forge bonds of matrimony to secure their legacies; the Prophet wed the Archmage's own disciple.
The ending of this tale was already written. The Red Princes had only realized it once their fates were sealed.
But as the Dawn and its illustrious leaders approached the capital, the Prophet's heart began to sour. Before the Archmage's arrival, she was the True Sun's only mouthpiece, the sole vessel of its will. She was as a god in all but name. But the Archmage was a prodigy, and she embraced the True Sun's power like a fish embraces water. In every battle, the Archmage displayed her own mastery of the True Sun's magic—a mastery that threatened to surpass the Prophet's own despite her decades of meticulous study. Now, there were whispers. Perhaps the Prophet was only ever meant to be a lieutenant? Perhaps the True Sun had really chosen the Archmage to inherit its strength, and the Prophet was only a pawn tasked with laying out the carpet before her arrival?
Jealousy had sprouted, and blooming from its stem was treachery.
As the Dawn marched, the Prophet began to scheme. She and the Archmage had split their forces some time back to pen the capital in on multiple sides. Now was the time to act. If she wanted to surpass the Archmage, she needed to be stronger… and to be stronger, she needed to feast. In secret, Prophet Seda began to prey upon the souls of the soldiers she felled in battle. The True Sun acknowledged no taboos, but this was a dangerous tactic. To consume a soul, one must first master it, destroy it, absorb it. Every soul would fight; every fight came with a price. The more souls the Prophet devoured, the more her mind frayed.
And still it wasn't enough: the Archmage was simply too powerful. The Prophet needed more. She slaughtered indiscriminately, soldiers and civilians alike falling to her blade. Her once-devout followers, their faith in her divine providence already shaken by the Archmage's blistering strength, began to dissent. Many of them had been hapless commoners once, after all. Hadn't the Prophet promised that she would rule differently? Hadn't she promised that she would not step upon the corpses of peasants to rise to the throne?
These portents of mutiny drove the Prophet to madness. The mere week before she and the Archmage were set to reunite in the battle for the capital, she struck: she ordered the Archmage assassinated. She sent three of her saints to finish the job, and she put her own disobedient followers to the sword. Even Seda's own wife—the Archmage's disciple!—was ambushed and hung from the gates of their most recently captured stronghold as punishment for her long loyalty to her master. But three saints were not enough to bring down Leviathan's Archmage Primarius.
Infuriated by the Prophet's betrayal, the Archmage turned her own army towards the Prophet's scattering forces. Now truly desperate and truly maddened by the many souls she had consumed, Seda's mindless hunger drove her to strike down and gorge herself upon her own loyal beast. The dragon Syuasi sacrificed herself for her master, and in the aftermath, the Prophet spread her wings: a dragon reborn!
The Archmage's army and the Prophet's limping band of zealots clashed in the royal capital for their final battle. Though the Archmage's forces far outnumbered the Prophet's, the Prophet herself had transformed into a foul and blasphemous god, a tremendous emerald-scaled dragon with frenzied eyes and breath of scorching black flame. The battle raged long into the night, buildings that had stood proudly for centuries crumbling beneath the onslaught of dark magic. Soldiers and commonfolk and nobles and merchants alike died by the thousands, burned and slashed and crushed and trampled. The sky roiled with the force of the magic brought to bear; the ground quaked and the stars trembled.
And in the midst of this terrible clash, a once-proud king opened his eyes for the first time in many years and began to scream. Beneath the shuddering roof of the palace, a profanity had bubbled for years. With an ear-shattering roar, it finally erupted from its chrysalis, bursting through the palace's stone walls with ease. The God-King Kodezh had been transformed! An august monarch had devolved into a colossal living obscenity. Even the True Sun's magic was dull against his warped hide. His putrescent aura blighted everything it touched; and with every inch of reality he corrupted, he grew yet more powerful.
At once, the Archmage turned to confront this new threat, but the mad dragon cared only about crushing the Archmage beneath her feet. Despite all her ferocious strength, all her conniving and cruelty, Seda had yet to inflict so much as a scratch upon the Archmage she so despised. Wild with jealous rage, she saw the God-King's massive, defiled corpse lumbering towards them and screeched with joy. Surely the Archmage could not defend against them both! If Seda's teeth and claws and flames could not destroy her, then let her rot!
The Archmage was now surrounded by enemies on all sides. Betwixt the walls of devouring dragonflame and the swelling tide of filth, the Archmage bowed her head. And for the first time since her arrival in Saimr, the Archmage Primarius placed a hand upon the ornate leather hilt strapped to her side and drew her spiritual weapon from its scabbard. The air chilled. The screams of the dying quieted. In that dark night, the fathomless saber Žanha swallowed the light of the moon and stars and roaring flames, nestling it safely beneath the strangely pellucid surface of its blade. Within this shard of the Archmage's soul given form, a riotous vision of the cosmos churned. When the Archmage raised her peerless saber, it was as though the world itself bent to her will.
After all, in that foreign tongue which the Archmage and the Prophet shared, the word žanha meant dominion.
The truth of what came next is a mystery to even this humble author. By the time the false sun crested the smoldering horizon the next morning, the royal capital was in ruins. In the ashes, the corpses of the old king and the dragon goddess lay side-by-side, battered beyond recognition. Only the Archmage remained standing, radiant and untouched.
After nearly two decades, Saimr's godswar was finally over.
By now, the honorable reader will be able to fill in the rest. From that day forward, the Archmage Primarius shed the robes of her former office and took up the crown of a God-Queen. For the next few years, she solidified her reign, mercilessly routing every whimper of opposition, establishing a new royal capital in the balmy south, and reshaping the pitiful remnants of the Dawn into a new arcane order loyal only to Her Worship.
Now, five years into the God-Queen's rule, Saimr has finally begun to heal. The Red Princes are dead, their descendants bound tightly to Her Worship's will. The new capital, Tsimeda, is the glittering jewel of the south, a pristine monument to the queen's incredible power. Temples and shrines to Her Worship's might are erected with increasing frequency. Her priests call her the First Dragon Reborn, the True-Born Daughter of the Fell Empress, the Bride of the Sun Unvanquished. The surviving witches of the Dawn have become members of a holy order; their covens span every corner of the kingdom, recruiting fresh blood and cleansing the realm of monsters, restless spirits, and hostile dissenters alike.
A new era blossoms beneath the God-Queen's guiding hand. The future is bright! All hail the Dragon Come Again!
…And that is how the story ends. Officially. A perfectly tidy resolution! But life is not a story, and no knot remains tight and unfrayed forever. If this humble author might be permitted to say so… the old king did not fall ill out of nowhere. The Prophet did not appear from thin air. Even God-Queen Velnyr, praising Her name for a thousand years, showed remarkable aptitude for an arcane art to which she had evidently only just been exposed. This neat and orderly skein has more snags than it appears at first glance.
Ah, and there is another matter as well: the tale of a measly side character in this drama, cut short without fanfare. Does the clever reader recall mention of the Archmage's disciple—the one who was wed to the Prophet and eventually strung up above city gates as a message?
Yes, that one. Well, this humble author happens to know a secret: that meager plot device has not yet outlived her usefulness! There is another tale ready to unfold, and it all begins in the north—where the Prophet Seda made her first appearance, and where an entirely forgettable woman who died years ago has adopted another identity altogether…