An ancient tome bound in scorched leather. The pages are brittle with age, and some sections are clearly missing or illegible. Scholars believe this is one of few surviving firsthand accounts of the war against Taelkor.
I write this because someone must remember. The bards will make songs of glory and triumph. The priests will speak of divine intervention. But I was there. I saw what we lost. And I will not let that be forgotten.
When Taelkor turned against the gods, he did not come with armies at first. He came with whispers. He found the fearful, the resentful, the ambitious, and he offered them power. He promised that the gods were usurpers, thieves who had stolen a world that belonged to greater powers. Some believed him. Some simply wanted what he offered.
By the time the gods realized the danger, Taelkor had built an army. Not merely of mortals—though thousands had flocked to his banner—but of creatures pulled from the void itself. Things without names or mercy. Things that did not die as we understand dying.
The war lasted… I do not know how long. Time became strange near Taelkor. Days bled into nights. Seasons passed in hours or not at all. I remember fighting in snow that burned like fire, under a sky that had no stars.
The gods could not fight directly. They had sacrificed their physical forms in the Awakening, becoming dependent on our belief and worship. So they gave us what they could: weapons forged from divine essence, armor blessed against corruption, and most importantly, knowledge. Knowledge of Taelkor’s weaknesses. Knowledge of the rituals that could bind him.
The Last Battle was fought in what is now the Elfwood, though it was not a forest then. It was the gods’ first garden, they say—the most beautiful place in the world. We burned it. We had no choice. Taelkor had made it his fortress, corrupting every tree and stone. The only way forward was through fire.
I will not describe what I saw in that battle. The minds of mortals were not made to process such things. I will say only this: we won. The united armies of every mortal race, wielding Relics of Power crafted by the gods themselves, drove Taelkor back. The greatest mages of the age worked a ritual of banishment that shattered his physical form and cast him into the void beyond the world.
The cost was… everything. Entire cities ceased to exist. Bloodlines that stretched back to the Awakening ended in a single day. Knowledge accumulated over millennia was burned or corrupted beyond recovery. The land itself was scarred—the Deadlands are the wound that never healed.
But we survived. The gods survived. And Taelkor was gone.
They tell me he cannot truly die. That he was never mortal to begin with, and the void cannot hold him forever. Perhaps that is true. Perhaps one day our children’s children will face this horror again.
But we will leave them what we can. Weapons. Rituals. And this account, so they know what they face.
We defeated Taelkor once. We can do it again.
—Fragment attributed to Commander Saevrin, date unknown (approximately 3,300 years before the Solaran Calendar)