TLDR Design Note: If your systems uses Clerics, it works very differently in Omesa. Looking at you, 5e!

The Time of The Gods

There used to be gods. Of this there is no doubt. Their temples still exist, their prayers still put children to sleep at night. However, no one knows if the prayers are being heard. Or if the Gods even still exist.

The Elves say the Time of the Gods was wondrous and terrible. The last elf who remembered the Gods died at the age of 937 just before the war broke out. There were dozens of Gods, Gods of every element, Gods for every need, fear, and desire. Their avatars walked the earth, delivering their judgments and blessings. And when things were monumental, the Gods would walk the land themselves, they say, changing the fate of nations with a single glance or breath.

The Elves also say there were Dragons. They say that the god's power was absolute… but static, fixed. The Dragons, however, grew not only wiser with time but also more powerful, mastering and fueling the magics of the world that the Gods did not create.

They say an avatar of a minor god commanded a dragon to leave Omesa forever, and was obliterated in seconds. After that, things literally went to hell.

The conflict raged for countless years, with mortals being an afterthought, and the Orcs and Elves fleeing as far East as they could, and the Dwarves making a new home underground.

They SAY the Gods finally saw the suffering of their people, and in one final conflict, pulled the Dragons into the depths of Hell. They say the point they landed is now the Dragonpit Maelstrom off the Elven coast.

One thing that people know for sure: No one escapes the Malestrom, and no god nor dragon has been seen in living memory. As far as the regular citizen is concerned, they are legend, not worth believing in. But everyone believes in Hell.

Hell and The Devil

The Orcs say the Devil is older than the gods, and the Gods created Orcs, with their strong convictions and stubborn character, just to spite him. Plenty of Orcish folklore involves a clever Orc outsmarting the Devil, or a foolish human falling prey to temptation, while a noble Orc remains strong. The Dwarves have similar stories, with fewer of them winning fiddle contests and more violent battles in Brimstone mines. These old stories were seen as grandiose during the war. But some elves remember, and there are stories handed down that aren’t meant to be entertaining. They speak of the truth everyone knows in their heart: when war breaks out, all the Devil has to do is watch.

So when the war ended, new dreams and ambitions arose for a new frontier, and suddenly, the Devil seeped into the world in ways that could not be denied.

Elvish scholars say the Devil isn’t a singular, malevolent being, nor an unthinking force of primal evil. They say there used to be Gods of wickedness, strife, and suffering that were contained to Hell, serving their purpose but only being able to tempt mortals, gods, and dragons from afar. The current academic theory is that when the gods plunged into the Malestrom, their primary adversaries were now their prey. If the gods and dragons survived the Maelstrom, they certainly didn’t defeat what awaited them there, or we would know by now. If there was a conflict, the Gods of Hell won.

Demons of the Frontier

When immigrants began making homes out west, they expected bears, wolves and other dangerous beasts from back home. They didn’t expect manticores, harpies, hellhounds and worse. Many people died from attacks of things never seen or spoken about. People kept heading further west, hoping to find a place where these things could not prey on them. That place was never found, but eventually they headed far enough to make new contact with the Dwarves.

The Dwarves knew what these things were. Some of them were creatures native to the frontier, warped or created by ley-line magic run amok. A good sword and some bravery could deal with those, and happily many of them could be felled by these human “bullets”. But some of these were things they had seen deep below the surface and learned to avoid. Creatures that not only attacked the flesh, but the mind and the soul. These were demons.

And the Dwarves were very concerned that they were now on the surface. That wasn’t supposed to happen.