The Great Flood

Before the current age, all the Ancient Gods lived among us lesser beings. It was not a peaceful time. The Ancient Gods constantly fought amongst each other, using mortal beings as their playthings - what was a game for them was death and suffering for mortals. In the years leading up to the Great Flood, a number of mortals began to aspire to become Demigods - mortal beings with the strength and abilities to rival the Ancient Gods themselves. It is unknown how they attained this power, or how many of them still live. The names of almost all the Demigods have been lost as well.

The Demigods gathered armies of almost all mortal beings on our plane, and led a campaign to slaughter the Gods - and hopefully bring peace to our world once freed from their games of war. Many of the Ancient Gods fell before them, and others escaped or were banished into the Aether and other planes of existence - magically barred from ever returning.

However, one of the last and most powerful of the Ancient Gods to be slain was Akean - God of the Oceans. With his death, he cursed the world to drown for daring to fight back against the Ancient Gods - Akean's endless blood filling the oceans and sinking civilizations across the world. Many of the Demigods sacrificed their lives and drained themselves of all their power in attempting to push back against Akean's divine and endless flood. They succeeded, but only the highest peaks remained as livable land - almost all civilizations on the world had drowned, and the remaining were desperate, impoverished refugees.

Many of the civilizations we know today are the result of a Demigod's blessing of a particular people - either their own, or a species they became patron of after the extinction of their own. Few of these Demigods are commonly known today, and the link between these contemporary cities and the Demigods that led to their existence has largely become buried. There are many who seek out histories to build a greater understanding of their people's connection to the Demigods, and particularly the incredible amounts of knowledge lost in pre-Flood history.