Fifth Void Invasion

Fifth Void Invasion
Historical Event
Event Name	Fifth Void Invasion
Dates and Times	1 BC - 0 AC
Location	Aloria
People Involved	Various

The fifth and final Void Invasion is considered the final stage in a cycle of apocalypses which took place throughout the history of Aloria. Unlike all of the others, which altered Aloria in various, unknown ways before ending and starting the Cycle over again, this Void Invasion eternally changed it. The Veil was ripped open allowing other dimensions to corrupt Drowda and other lands, while the Cataclysm which spawned from this forever altered Geography and the politics of Aloria. Despite the clear end to the cycle of Void Invasions as a result of these events, many Alorians live in fear of a second set of cycles beginning; one which will lead to perpetual suffering and damnation on Aloria itself.

Background Information

For millennia, the Void Cycle played its role as the cleanser of the world. The Seraph's remarkable civilization was annihilated in the First Void Invasion, which was caused by their experimentation with Magic and other arts. The Void would continue to do this each time Aloria reached a certain threshold of Magic use and knowledge. The Elves, successors to the slumbering Meraic (or Fourth Civilization), originally believed in the Cycle fervently; as such, the use of Magic was kept to the priesthood, which communed with nature and the Estelley gods. But as time went on, they deeply invested themselves in the use of Magic and some Elves ultimately plunged into communion with the Void. The power originally sought to use them as tools but ended up simply furthering their mortal agendas as a source of power when these Elves freed themselves from the Void’s control. However, these Elves came to see the Cycle as a necessary event, only this time they and their allies would survive because of their pacts and abilities with the Void to create a new and glorious Dread Empire. As a result, in the lead up to the Invasion, they aided in decentralizing the Allorn Empire and destroying heralds of Estel, who could sense what was to come. The worst case of this was the Night of the Weeping Stars when hundreds of leaders of the Estelley faith died, the vast majority of Va'sil Trees were destroyed or killed as they tried to flee, and their followers were slaughtered by what were now formally the Kathar. The Empress could do nothing about the event, kept under the gilded lock and key of the Void Elves and their allies in the great capital city. Thus, the Empire was simply not prepared for what was to come and would soon fall because of this.

History

The Great March

When the Void Invasion first began, it was contained. The Drovv, who were devoted to fighting the Void, managed to hold the tide off long enough to send messages of warning to Ithania. But, by the time the news reached the Empress, the Void was already rapidly establishing a foothold in the far north of Aloria. In response, the Empress broke from her confement, and called on her nobility to raise their armies and join her in a march north to defend the Empire. The Great March, as the Teledden call it, was massive; 300,000 troops of multiple servant Races, alongside ceremonial orders of Imperial Lancers and more, all marching against the Void. The Great March, however, quickly devolved into sixteen separate marches; the forces were close together for their vast size but ununited due to political infighting within the Allorn nobility. When the forces got to central Westwynd, two of the marching armies attacked each other, followed by a third attempting to keep the peace. The March then began again, but were forced a halt for several weeks when there was some sort of fight amidst the Imperial household. Two armies went on ahead, during which the surrounding countryside was largely destroyed by looting in an attempt to feed the March’s forces. Finally, near the end of the year, the March came to an end at a great and open plain in Ithania's north.

The Great Battle

The Void, a speedy and largely noncorporeal force, had infected dozens of animal and plant species on its way to face the forces of the Allorn Empire. What happened next is unknown. While the Teledden possess a supposed account of this battle, Ithanian, Daendroque and ignored Elven sources allege not a single person returned from the north. However, some Asha within Ithania claim in their oral stories the Elves lost horrifically to the “Darkness” and the Void’s army continued to advance before the “Thunderclap” made them all disappear. Many ignore these tales though as “Asha propaganda.” In contrast to this, here is the Teledden account of the event:

"And thus the Lancers were the first into the fray, their great and glorious shining shields of ancients metals endowed with remarkable properties, protecting them while their lances speared through the corrupted creatures the dark forces of the Void had taken for their very own. Behind them came the innumerable members of our most lesser workforces, serving for the glory of our great Empire, the glorious Empress, and the lands that they did harvest. Their great but unschooled combat was a great blunting force. Finally, there came the most illustrious Empress Melvaëia with her great and powerful family at her heels. They all wielded magics awesome and devastating which ripped the demonic beings from this world, returning them to the Void that they came from. But oh how vile were those forces and soon, their dark tricks and schemes and allies did help to fell this grand, powerful army, in jealousy at which powers we the Allorn wielded. The Archdemon itself did face our Empress in battle, and when she finally fell from that beast’s vile tricks, she expended all of her last strength to remove a host of Demons ten-score the population of Jenra Lealla from the earth."

The Cataclysm and the Wildering

Within mere hours after battle was joined in northern Ithania, a magical shockwave originating in distant Drowda rocked across the world, being the result of the Veil tearing as the Cataclysm began. Unlike in previous Invasions, where the Void forces found themselves sucked back into their realm to wait again for the portals to reopen, now they were sent into a realm with shattered fragmentary portals while many Demons were themselves outright destroyed. The Veil was now forever damaged, leaking both Exist and Void power into the world. This event also served to trap the Archdemon in Aloria; unable to sustain his form, he entered into the body of an Ailor woman. Some Teledden associate this woman with the Kathar and supposed treachery on the battlefield, but most conclude she was merely a servant. As the sound finished echoing across Aloria, two things occurred simultaneously. First, the world’s continents and landmasses quaked as tectonic plates, disturbed by magical forces, rubbed, smashed, and ground against each other. This drove the seas to become turbulent, landmasses to sink into the sea, new ones to rise up, and menacing weather patterns to explode across the world. The major area this did not affect was Corontium, which had long benefited from a lack of major regional fault lines or magical disturbances, though other lands escaped disturbance as well.

The second event was the Wildering. To the Teledden, the Wildering serves as almost all they focus on when discussing the Catalcysm. While disasters did strike the vast coastline of the Allorn Empire, whole sections falling off and sinking into the ocean (one particular area in the south was entirely submerged, and is now called the Sundered Lands), the main destruction came in the form of an explosion of nature. Trees erupted from the paved streets of the Elven cities, lashing out with thick roots and branches as long-repressed nature reclaimed thousands of miles of urbanized territory. The Allorn capital was struck by a sudden earthquake that collapsed hundreds of millennia-old structures on their aristocratic inhabitants before plants engulfed the area. Even living people were not safe from this event, as fleeing individuals reported to see their neighbors, children, friends, turning into plant life before their very eyes. The only major cities to survive largely unharmed by these events were the Fin'ullen coastal settlements, located away from the heartland of the Allorn Empire, as well as Elven cities further north in Westwynd (though most had long seceded from the Allorn Empire proper). As a result of all of this, the Teledden believe it was punishment from the gods for their failure.

Effects

The full effect of the Fifth Void Invasion is virtually incalculable. The Allorn Empire, and the Altalar people as a whole, were no longer leaders of the world. The collapse of their Empire into squabbling states paved the way for the easy arrival of the Eronidas on Altaleï’s western shore, while also finally removing an oppressive foot from the backs of Ailor populations in the Regalian Archipelago and Ceardia. The collapse of the Empire also saw the freeing of millions of their slaves in the violent uprisings by Daendroque Ailor and Asha which created the dozen or so Daendroque states which now populate the far southeast of Westwynd, along with the rebirth of the Asha identity and their own nations nearby. The event also birthed Races like the Sihndar, who went to Drowda to continue the fight against the Void and were mutated by their experiences there. As for geography, the Wildering had transformed up to 90% of Altaleï, in some recent estimates, into dense forests, jungle, and underbrush which required exploration all over again. Across Aloria, seas would be tumultuous for the next decade, and even once they calmed, currents were often different and required recharting. There was also a great loss of life from the many massive environmental disasters, sections of continents falling into the sea, villages swallowed by the earth or buried in volcanic ash, while other areas sometimes rose to replace them or form new islands.

Finally, it is essential to mention how this event changed Magic. Before this time, Mages and others magical beings could wield massive amounts of power with diverse spells and abilities making all of them masters of the world. But with the Cataclysm, this changed. When Mages finally started to reconnect with their lost powers, they found themselves much weaker and more easily exhausted by even simple spells. They also couldn’t even access powers which had once been easily produced by them. As a result, today, dozens of ancient spells are lost to the ruins of the Allorn Empire. There are many other effects that are unseen or unknown to most Alorians (due to their intense focus on their own story related to the Invasion), but it is important to note that only recently have people begun to reassess this event as it did not “damage” the entire world. Sendrass, for example, was unaffected by the event entirely while Jadeheart has never even experienced a Void Invasion, leading to many trying to go back and learn just what the Void Cycle was and what happened to the Veil to cause the Cataclysm. But such things will likely take time to learn, and the effects of this Invasion continue to shape the modern Alorian world.

Trivia

• The regions least affected by the Fifth Void Invasion were Corontium, Farahdeen, Farsouth, and Westafar.

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Accreditation
Writers HydraLana Processors WaterDruppel, AlphaInsomnia, Dosier	Last Editor HydraLana on 11/23/2023.

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