The Story of the Golden Empire

In the age after the Dawn War, when the gods won their victory over the primordials who wished to destroy the world, the heavens turned their gaze towards the mortals. For a brief span, the gods themselves walked upon the earth, guiding the people of Vallyn. It was during this age that the gods forged what would become the Golden Empire. They blessed its founding, shaped its lands and walked its streets in radiant splendor.

But alas, with the creation of the Divine Order, the gods were bound by decree not to interfere directly with the affairs of mortals. Their age upon the earth was ending. But before they withdrew to the heavens, they bestowed a final blessing upon the Golden Empire - the gift of Ascendance. Select mortals of great virtue, the finest the Golden Empire had among them, became Primals - gods in their own rights, and protectors and stewards of the Golden Empire. Through the Ascendance, the divine host grew in number, each new god taking on the strength of beasts and the brilliance of the heavens.

Thus the Primals rose, walking where the Gods once had, and the Golden Empire entered its first age of glory. Where the Primals walked, the land flourished. Cities rose in their honor, temples were carved from marble and gold. Mortals lived under their guardianship, and for a time, the Golden Empire knew peace.

But mortals are ever swift to forget blessings.

In Sai’Mazeth, a kingdom rich with ancient pride, the people had once sworn loyalty to the gods. But in their arrogance, they came to believe themselves above the Primals. They cast them aside, defied their temples and sought forbidden powers in their own name.

When the Primals came to restore truth, the people of Sai’Mazeth invoked their forbidden powers to tear open a gate into the deepest places beyond our plane. From this rift poured the Nightborn, horrors without shape or mercy, children of the starless places beyond creation. In the first moment of their arrival, the Nightborn consumed the capital of Sai’Mazeth and laid waste to its lands.

For years, the Primals battled against the horrors, driving them back step by step, each victory paid for in blood. The Nightborn tried to spread their influence across the lands, until at last, the Primals prevailed, and the wound in the world was sealed. But victory had come at a terrible cost. The Golden Empire’s own capital had been ravaged in the struggle, its holy citadels toppled, and the Emperor himself had been struck down by the Nightborn as he drove them back. The Primals themselves had returned scarred, both physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Some of the Primals began to change in unforeseen ways. They could not handle the horrors of what had befallen them during the war, and cracks began the show beneath their divine masks.

Pride. Desire. Ambition. Vengeance.

The same vices that plague humanity now crept into some of their hearts. Some demanded worship instead of devotion. Some reshaped themselves into grotesque forms of divine tyranny. Some turned on each other. And some mortals, whether misguided or merely opportunistic, swore themselves to these fallen gods. They were rewarded with wealth, power, and prestige - but only by forsaking their principles, and in the end, their very souls.

The Primals turned upon one another, and the Golden Empire descended into chaos. This war would come to be known as the War of the Feral Primals.

Amidst this devastation, when all hope seemed extinguished, an unlikely savior would emerge. A young cleric of humble birth knelt among the ruins of a fallen shrine and prayed for salvation, and against all hope, one Primal, uncorrupted and unbroken, heard his plea. Moved by the cleric’s devotion, he revealed himself, and he chose the young man as his Aspect, binding their fates together.

Together, they traveled the land, purging all traces of the fallen gods and their followers, and as the people healed, so too did the land. The fallen gods were gone, and the ones not yet fallen had retreated to let the land be as it was. Yet as the land healed, a horrible truth was revealed to the Aspect. The Primal confessed that a shadow had taken root in him - one of the same wounds that had scarred the other Primals. Though he had fought it with all his might, the corruption stirred in his spirit, threatening to twist him into the very thing he had sworn to destroy.

He asked the Aspect to seal him away. The Aspect wept, begging him to stay, but the Primal would not risk bringing ruin to the people he had saved. And so, they journeyed to a place hidden from mortal eyes, where divine essence could be bound. There, the Primal offered himself willingly to be sealed, choosing exile over the danger of becoming a false god. But his Aspect refused to abandon him, and so, rather than return to the world without his protector, he chose to join him in exile, swearing to watch over the seal for as long as it endured.

With their departure, the last divine light faded from the Golden Empire. But though their footsteps no longer fall upon the earth, the Primals are not gone - their light still remains in their temples, their voices still echo in the hymns of the faithful, and their strength still lives on in the Golden Empire. The Golden Empire still continues to offer prayers to the Primals - not to call them back, but to honor the guardians who once walked the world, and who even now keep watch from beyond mortal reach.

And it is said that when the last true Primal withdrew from the world, he did not leave the Golden Empire unguided. Before he vanished beyond the mortal realm, he granted a final blessing to a single mortal family, entrusting to them the stewardship of the realm. From this line came the Emperors who rule today, chosen by divine charge. As long as their blood endures, so too does the line that binds the Golden Empire to the light of the Primals.