The Shattering of the Divine Mandate

In the late Second Era, the Oxze Empire stood as a colossus among nations, its power absolute, its dominion unquestioned. This strength was built on a singular, unshakeable foundation: the worship of their emperors as living deities, with the most glorious being Gewani the Ascended. But this divine right, so long the empire’s greatest strength, would prove to be its most catastrophic vulnerability.

The schism began with Haetorius, Gewani’s own Arch-Praetor and most trusted general. After a miraculous victory in the neighboring Ikros desert—a victory he claimed to have won through a divine revelation—Haetorius proclaimed that the Mandate of Heaven had passed to him. He declared Gewani a false idol, a mere man clinging to a stolen divinity. This act of supreme heresy ignited a civil war that tore the empire in two. It was a holy war, fought with the fanaticism of competing faiths; armies clashed for the soul of the empire and to dictate its future instead of fighting over territory. The conflict culminated in the siege of the imperial capital, Oxxos, where in a final, desperate gambit, Haetorius, cornered in the great temple, attempted to unmake Gewani’s godhood. He brought the gathered power of a thousand enslaved priests and a trove of forbidden Vaelorian artifacts to bear in a ritual designed to sever Gewani’s soul from the divine wellspring of the empire’s faith.

The ritual was a catastrophic success. It did not just sever Gewani’s connection: it shattered the vessel itself. A wave of raw, psychic power, the accumulated faith and worship of a million souls, erupted from the temple, and with no god to anchor it, it detonated. The city of Oxxos was instantly annihilated by a tidal wave of pure, chaotic faith energy. Gewani, Haetorius, and everyone within the capital were obliterated, their souls torn apart by the very power they sought to control.

This cataclysmic event left the Oxze Empire headless and godless. The divine mandate was broken forever, the line of emperors extinguished, and for what was left of the Second Era the empire collapsed into squabbling, paranoiac successor states, each led by warlords who claimed mundane, mortal authority. With the recent rise of the Hanath’Ar dynasty in the Third Era, the rebuilding of Oxxos as the empire’s capital has commenced, and order is returning to the land. There are rumors of Empress Serya attempting to ascend to godhood, and the recent call for volunteers to delve into the untouched ruins of Oxxos that has recently been made in order to recover ancient artifacts that would help such endeavor seems to give validity to those rumors.