It began with complaints of exhaustion, echoed quietly among the Elder
Gods to those followers closest to Them. Yet as the months wore on, so
too did the inexplicable exhaustion - a dark pall cast over it by the
sudden re-emergence of the Verses of Magnora, prophecies once uttered by
the Primal Goddess Keph of the Thousand Eyes, scribed by Mugowumpois of
the Fifth Circle. The first page was found by New Celest, after Sidalt
Sinenth discovered a blackened page and tossed it into Bondero Bay.
Retrieved from the jaws of a strangely malformed hammerhead shark
beneath the waves, Sidalt Sinenth soon therafter fell into a terrible
coma after reading what was scribed upon it, and there she still sleeps.

A second and third page of the infamous Verses foretelling the struggles
of the First World were later found, one clutched by the undead ancestor
of Sheena Goldfeather, Hieli, found locked within her attic. The other
page was found deep within the heart of Old Celest, buried beneath
charred paperwork in the desk of the last Lord General Inalai. Each bore
dark foretellings of the trials to come, and many began to puzzle over
their meanings. Yet as the Elder Gods began to assist those mortal
followers who sought them, they grew weaker still, culminating when
Maylea, Bloom of Serenity collapsed in the Serenwilde Forest, and
Alianna, who at the time had been visiting Eventru, Crown of the
Exalted, sought the healer's help for Her. Quickly the Elder Goddess
recovered under His care, though neither knew what ailed them.

As days went by the sickness plaguing the Elder Gods grew worse, until
They began to lose Their sense of self. Each Elder God began to
hallucinate, mildly at first, before losing their memories nearly
entirely, each settling back to a time long before the Divine Wars began
- and some settled into memories of the dark tragedies of Their time. As
the Exalted Lord began fretfully crying out about the coming attacks of
the Soulless and the Silver Lady sought to keep the moon company by
Herself taking to the sky, the Bloom of Serenity began to show
disinterest in flowers but instead make animals out of clouds and
castles out of water, Nocht, the Silent joining Her in several such
endeavours. The Crimson Masque and the Crown of the Exalted, now bitter
foes, struck arm in arm in greetings as old friends, while later
Terentia,the Even Bladed, was seen defending the Tainted Plane of Nil
alongside her compatriot Eventru, each crying out about the cruelty of
attacking the innocent half-formed gods left behind by Dynara. Still
Their madness continued as many could no longer comprehend the mortal
races, believing them to be variously Elder Gods and Great Spirits.
Eagerly seeking the Sidereal Prince, Eventru had sought out Crow, who He
believed to be Raven, looking for both Viravain and Lyreth - later He
had been seen accosting Revan n'Kylbar, claiming he was now the Great
Spirit Raven. While some began to chuckle at the oddities of the Elder
Gods, others worried of what it meant.

As the Elder Gods themselves began to murmur of abandoning the First
World to escape from the Soulless Gods, mortals began to convince them
variously to stay. Yet the Elder Goddess Lisaera could hardly manifest
Herself in any form, while others began to simply disappear entirely. It
was not long before Avechna's Peak began to rumble ominously, sending
earthquakes across the Basin of Life and slides of rock and mud down the
sides of the mountain ranges that so earned the area its name. Rabid
animals began to attack the Serenwilde Forest, while the Earth Lords
murmured amongst themselves of the 'hunters', before withdrawing into
the Dreaming, fleeing before what they claimed were terrible hunters and
devourers of elemental energies, warning that their departure would be
one of decades or centuries, lest the call of a fellow elemental lord
return them. As nightmares plagued the Glomdoring Forest in both their
slumber and their waking wanderings, the city of New Celest quickly
found themselves in a terrible predicament - the floor of the Inner Sea
began to erupt with volcanic uprisings, sending the creatures to higher
levels or worse fates.

The Tide Lords joined the Earth Lords in their flight from their
respective planes, abandoning their physical forms for the elusive ones
of the Dreaming, uttering similar warnings of their extended absence and
the reason for which they fled. It was only shortly after the Earth
Lords fled that the Plane of Earth began to witness its own problems, as
massive worms burrowed up from deep within the plane, feasting upon the
tainted essence. Likewise in New Celest bloated starsuckers began to
surface, gargantuan creatures many times the size of those previously
seen - devouring hungrily the elemental energies of the Water Plane,
spewing out an acrid, stagnant fluid as waste.

Penned by My hand on the 8th of Dvarsh, in the year 225 CE.