Beneath the waning sun in the heart of the desert, Ivoln's chosen had gathered in communion to reap the bounties of their faith. For months their captives had been forced to fight one another for survival in preparation of a ritual unbeknownst to them. Would they continue to beg and plead for release? As thumb found eye and knee shattered bone, would they yet cling to hope? Or would they finally yield to instinct and sate the need for survival? From some fifty-odd captives cast into a pit of violence, seven emerged atop corpses as kin by tragedy on the brink of madness.

Nipsy, Almol, Yettave, Kurak, and Alela were unmoved by the captives' plight as news dawned upon them that their suffering was not yet at an end. When Ivoln turned His back to draw power from one of the five towering monoliths of the Apocalyptia, a captive broke rank and dared fate by charging the Earthen Lord. Fingers curled into fists and teeth bared in defiance, she screamed for justice while swinging with reckless abandon. Instead she found a shard of earth crushing the breath from her for her insolence as the pitiless proxies of the Earthen Lord sneered. It is often the folly of mortals to think they can dictate what a god can or cannot do.

Twice sundered, gasping for life through a haze of blood, the captives howled for mercy yet the Earthen-kin harbored none. Scabrous shelves of shale and grit convulse through the desert until the nigh majestic golden sea of sand and stone turned to an ominous burgundy-vermillion mulch of earth, blood, and death. Violent tremors permeated through the region as the Mhojave desert itself seemed to come alive with a thirst for blood.

Shaken with fervor, Everly and Gryph joined their Earthen-kin with a bustling zeal, touting their faith in unison to the heavens for all to hear as the desert sands grew more and more ravenous. Unable to escape the burgeoning hunger of the Earthen Lord and the desert, neither fauna nor flora were spared from the onslaught of the living inhabiting the region as they were brutally consumed in ritual sacrifice. And from their deaths, a mighty mountain was birthed to blight the land around it in a devastating wave of earth.

What came next in the heart of the desert astonished even the most seasoned and devout of the Earthen Lord's brood. Wrought from a tumultuous sea of carnage and earth on the anniversary of the Falling of Grumagh came the rebirth of a creature thought lost to legend: Azmogol, the great Earthen wyrm. The imposing silhouette of the monstrous creature wreathed in hardened ebon-scaled flesh settled unto the land and bellowed a dreadful cry that wracked the realm.

With questions aplenty on what the future of the realm might hold, one thing was for certain: Peace is not an option.

Penned by my hand on Kinsday, the 4th of Severin, in the year 504 MA.
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