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The Night of the Weeping Stars is seen today as a great tragedy for all of Aloria. For one, it allowed the Kathar Race to pave the way for their great and powerful overlord during the Fifth Void Invasion. For another, it led to the death and destruction of what remained of ancient Faith of Estel beliefs within the Allorn Empire. Altalar beliefs and the significance of the Avatars of the Gods would come to fully dominate the Faith until today, but the event can also be seen in causing the death and destruction of the Va'sil Trees. Great and powerful magical trees that grew tall in centers of Estel worship, the Va'sil were cut down and rendered extinct.
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| Historical Event | |
| Event Name | Night of the Fallen Star |
| Dates and Times | 0 BC |
| Location | Daen |
| People Involved | Allorn Empire, Va'sil Trees, Ancient Worshipers |
Background Information
The Night of the Weeping Stars was a long-coming end to the last bastions of Estel in what had otherwise become Avatar worshiping, pleasure worshiping, or Void worshiping territories. As the Allorn Empire had declined, so had the great tracts of nature and wilds that made up temples to Estel and her Pantheon. By the final few centuries, most temples and shrines to Estel were buried deep in cities or existing as an almost irrelevant afterthought at their fringes. From these areas first came the Va’sil Trees, magical beings capable of communication, who warned of the end that was to come if the Altalar did not reject the Void's evils. The Altalar did not listen, and considered them simple enchanted marvels, assured that Estel had not created these creatures. But then, someone took a more aggressive stance; emerging from the jungle depths came the tall and powerful proto-Yanar, the Grul-Yanar, fierce, aggressive, and uncompromising. They tore into territory around shrines and temples to Estel, bringing with them nature, life, and more but ultimately, it was fruitless. Altalar Archmages fought these creatures to a standstill, and they were limited in number. Not every shrine to Estel had such a guardian and so as the sky was torn asunder, the Drovv died, the Void sought to crush and end these last hardpoints to its rule.
History
Specifics of the Night of the Weeping Stars are tough to come by. The event's historical name has often suggested a single evening of chaos and destruction, but in reality, the annihilation likely came in waves. The leadership of Altalar cultists, in communion with the Void and the Arken, directed its agents and allies across Daen to end the last of Estel’s influence within the Allorn Empire. And thus, agents of the Cult of Shadows, Daughters of Chaos, Sons of Malice and many others prepared to strike. They fell swiftly on the temples, shrines, and sites that remained in the hands of often powerful, but aged priests and priestesses. With them were often small cults of loyal, devout Altalar and proto-Cielothar, who tended to the nature growing around them. And last, of course, were the Va’sil Trees and the Neefaar, who some claim sensed what was about to happen and made what preparations they could. But the Void’s servants were far greater in number, and one by one, each region was culled, and then the vegetation burned. Great fires roared, killing unrelated members of society who were unfortunate enough to be nearby, and sending many others into a panic, fleeing; the fires even killed some of the devotees to the Faith of the Dark Ancients. But while the mortals fell, the Va’sil Trees suffered the worst fate of all. Their haunting cries echoed for miles, and while some performed the miracle of rising from the earth and rushing away, obliterating any structure in their path, they could not escape the fire and so the fires burned, and the enemies of the Void died, and at last, when all was done, all that was left was the ashes. It is said that as one, the Altalar who would become Kathar called to this ash, and it would coat their skin, minds, and hearts, transforming them into that Race. The Kathar then left en-masse over the following decade as the Wildering further killed the spirit of the Empire, followed by the Eronidas Invasion. They went to Rokhara in The Far West where they established the Dread Empire which still threatens the world to this day.
Effects
The Night of the Weeping Stars is largely seen as the first event in a series of terrible disasters that destroyed the Allorn Empire. It killed off both the Va’sil Trees and whatever remained of the true and ancient Faith of Estel. Some survivors were known, but most immediately vanished or would later become Cielothar when the Yanar emerged, no longer the towering, aggressive beings of before, but a gentler Race more willing to co-operation. The Night of the Weeping Stars also marks one of the last uses of some of the most potent forms of Magic in Aloria, wielded by both pre-Cataclysm Estelian and Ancient Worshiping mages who fought to preserve and end the Faith respectively. The event was also, obviously, responsible for the birth of the Kathar in some form, but also was the point that Altalar Faith of the Dark Ancients devotees broke with what were now Kathar ideals. Names like the Princes of Osc’ird were co-opted by Altalar, who fled the burgeoning Kathar state in the west and continued to worship the Void, not in the way that the Kathar did. Finally, the Night of the Weeping Stars destroyed large portions of temples, religious sites, and regions of cities that dated back to even before the Consolidation. With the Wildering that came later, much of the land was then aggressively reclaimed by nature's forces, and most such sites are now lost to time. Still, every so often, an ancient spire or ruin is determined to have been a site to Estel in millennia past, but what knowledge and information such sites hold is often lost or a closely guarded secret.
Trivia
- Some have called the ritual that the Kathar perhaps used to make their Race the “Void Vacuum.” The term comes from a Qadir scholar's idea for a Clockwork device not yet invented called a vacuum, which could suck dirt and such into a container. Some hold that the Kathar sucked all of the energy they could out of the sites they destroyed, and then used it to transform themselves.
- Some historical accounts contradict official records, saying that the Va'sil Trees attacked their tenders as the Night of the Fallen Star occurred. While these are not confirmed stories, it has led scholars to question if the Va'sil perhaps panicked in their final hours, lashing out at even those trying to save them.
- The role of the Neefaar in these events is fragmented at best, with many claims of their presence being believed at the time, and still to this day by some, to instead be magical familiars or arcane creations forged of plant matter by the Mages of the Estellians.
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