The Year of Carnage — Eight Hundred Years After the Age of Vordor
Time devours even the greatest of kings.
Eight centuries have passed since the age of Vordor the Blessed, and the glory of his reign has withered into little more than a ghost of memory. Once his name shook the world like thunder rolling across the heavens.
Now it is spoken only by old men beside dying fires.
The temples of the Sky God stand abandoned across Afriterra.
Their once-sacred halls are choked with dust and spiderwebs. The carved pillars that once echoed with prayer now crumble beneath creeping vines. In many places the roofs have collapsed entirely, leaving broken altars open to the sky.
The Djinn wander those ruins freely.
They coil through shattered sanctuaries like drifting smoke, whispering laughter through empty corridors where priests once sang Eledumare's praise. They remember the age when men believed themselves chosen.
They remember how quickly that faith died.
Those who still honor the Sky God are few.
Most have turned their faces toward other powers.
Greed has become our law. Pleasure our devotion. Power our only truth. Men barter their souls as though they were nothing more than dried cowrie shells.
Each passing year pours another grain of sand into the Creator's hourglass.
And still we mock the heavens.
Poets twist sacred stories into vulgar songs. Actors dress in mock robes and perform drunken parodies of the divine. Once, in the arrogance of our age, men even raised a tower of stone meant to pierce the sky itself.
They claimed they would stand beside the Sky God.
They claimed they would look Him in the eye.
Before the tower reached its final height, the heavens answered.
Lightning fell like spears from the clouds.
The earth trembled.
The tower collapsed into dust and ruin.
Yet even that did not humble us.
Famine followed. Disease spread through the villages like a curse. Entire clans vanished into shallow graves while the cities filled with beggars and corpses.
Afriterra, once radiant beneath the blessing of Vordor, became a kingdom hollowed by its own decay.
Even then the Sky God showed mercy.
Elders rose among the people, calling for repentance. They traveled barefoot across the land, pleading with kings and commoners alike to return to the old faith.
Their warnings were met with laughter.
Their sermons were drowned beneath the drums of revelry.
It was during those years of rot that Prince Tobias Nnaise, younger brother to King Jeje, began walking a darker path.
Tobias was clever. Charismatic. Hungry.
But ambition is a poison that grows in silence.
Where others turned their eyes toward heaven, Tobias turned his gaze towards the Underworld.
And there he found Oro.
Oro, the fallen one.
Oro, who whispers promises of endless wealth.
Oro, who teaches men that power is worth any price.
The bargain was simple.
Gold for loyalty.
Prosperity for devotion.
And souls for tribute.
Soon the temples of the Sky God were desecrated. Grey Shamans were hunted through the streets like animals. Those who refused to abandon the old faith were dragged from their homes and sacrificed to the Wendigos, monstrous servants of Oro that prowled the forests and devoured the living.
Afriterra sank deeper into darkness.
Still, some resisted.
Warriors of the old faith gathered in secret. Shamans whispered forbidden prayers beneath the moon. Elders spoke of restoring the covenant of Vordor.
But we were divided.
And division is the grave of kingdoms.
Tobias struck swiftly.
He murdered his own uncle beneath the palace roof and seized the throne of Afriterra. The starving masses hailed him as a savior, blind to the shadow coiling behind him.
Thus began the war we now call The War of Carnage.
Armies gathered from every corner of the kingdom. Spears were sharpened. Shields painted with ancestral symbols formed ranks across the plains.
The battlefield was Phagus, where the savannah stretches wide beneath the burning sky.
I was there.
I remember the drums.
War drums thundered across the golden grasslands, their voices carrying the courage of our ancestors. Horses and Elephants stamped the earth beside us. Archers strung their bows. Warriors lifted their spears toward the heavens and swore that Afriterra would not fall to the fallens.
For a moment, hope lived.
Then the wind changed.
A cold wind swept across the plains, bending the tall grass until it bowed toward the south. The war drums faltered. Even the elephants began to shift uneasily.
Something was coming.
At first we saw only dust rising along the horizon, thick and black, like a storm crawling across the earth.
Then the animals began to panic.
Horses screamed and reared against their reins. Birds fled the sky in frightened flocks. Even the vultures circling above Phagus abandoned the battlefield.
The other shamans standing beside me began whispering prayers.
One name passed through our ranks like a spreading sickness.
The Butcher.
He emerged from the dust like a shadow rising from the grave.
His armor was blacker than night, jagged with cruel iron spikes that caught the dying sunlight. A long cloak trailed behind him, dragging across the earth like the shadow of death itself.
Beneath him thundered a monstrous steed, one of the dreaded Damned horses, said to be born in the burning caverns beneath the world. Its eyes glowed like embers, and every step shook the ground beneath its hooves.
Behind him came the army of the damned.
The Adze drifted through the air like living shadows, their bodies flickering between flame and darkness.
The Wendigos marched behind them, skeletal giants crowned with antlers, their hollow eyes searching the battlefield for flesh to devour.
And among them ran the Werehyenas, their laughter rising across the savannah like the cries of hungry spirits.
The Butcher raised one gauntleted hand.
The monstrous army halted.
Silence swallowed the battlefield.
No drum spoke.
No warrior moved.
The Butcher drew his sword.
The blade drank the sunlight until it gleamed like a shard of midnight.
Then he lowered it.
The army of the damned surged forward.
What followed was not a battle.
It was slaughter.
Phagus became a river of blood. Spears shattered. Shields splintered. Men screamed as the army of the Damned tore through our ranks like wildfire through dry grass.
Courage died that day.
Even I, a shaman trained to battle evil spirits stood powerless before the horror that walked among us.
We were broken. It was an inevitable loss.
Those fortunate enough fled north into the mountains.
The rest of us were taken.
Now we rot in Tobias' dungeons, waiting for the gallows.
Above us the city celebrates. Drums thunder through the streets. Bards sing of Tobias' victory.
Oro is now the new god of Afriterra.
The Sky God, Eledumare has been abandoned.
And Tobias Nnaise is praised as the savior of our people.
This is the Year of Carnage.
The year we fought.
The year we fell.
The year sin became a religion.
And I, Grey, remain alive, if only for a little while longer, to record the ruin of my people.