The War of the Shifting Throne: An Overview
A Foundational Document for a Major Narrative Arc
Archivist's Note: The conflicts documented elsewhere were skirmishes. The War of the Shifting Throne was a paradigm shift: not a war between nations, but for the soul of magic itself, triggered by an unprecedented cosmic event. This document is a high-level overview of the conflict.
The Catalyst: The Great Silence (525 AE)
The war began not with a bang, but with a silence. For the first time in recorded history, the flow of raw potential from the Ein Sof through Keter appeared to cease. Mages everywhere felt it as a sudden, terrifying emptiness. New Awakenings stopped. Divinations of the future returned only blankness. The Silent Throne was, for all intents and purposes, empty.
The cause was unknown. Was it a natural cosmic cycle? An act of celestial sabotage? The death of a god? In the absence of truth, the three great factions supplied their own. - The Adamant Concord declared it a failure of the System—a bug to be corrected. They believed a new, logical order must be imposed on the Throne to restart the flow of magic. - The Flowing Garden claimed it was a natural process—a cosmic "fallow season" to be endured. They advocated for adapting to a world with less magic. - The Way of the Middle Pillar suspected a profound imbalance and sought the root cause, fearing a Qliphothic incursion of unparalleled scale.
Phase 1: The Sundering (525-526 AE)
The immediate aftermath was chaos. Without the regulating influence of Keter, the world's magic became unstable. - Wild Magic Zones: Random, unpredictable magical effects plagued the world. Rivers might flow with memories, gravity might reverse itself for an hour, or the laws of sympathy might strengthen, causing a broken doll to injure its owner. - The Scramble: The factions scrambled to secure territories and resources, each seeking to implement its own solution. This led to a series of brutal, short-lived conflicts over key nexuses of power.
Phase 2: The Three Fronts (526-528 AE)
As the chaos settled into a grim new status quo, the conflict coalesced into three distinct fronts.
1. The Severance Front
- Conflict: A conventional war between the Adamant Phalanx and Living Tide over the Glass Plains, a strategic region crystallized into a maze by unstable magic.
- Stakes: Control over a vital strategic region and a clash of fundamental doctrines: could the Concord impose order on a land defined by chaos, or could the Garden adapt to a world hostile to life?
- Key Event: The Battle of the Glass Plains, where traditional tactics failed and victory depended on radical innovation.
2. The Shadow Front
- Conflict: A covert war fought by the Hidden Dagger against a Qliphothic "superweapon"—a Thaumiel-aspected "anti-throne" that was nullifying Keter and causing the Silence.
- Stakes: The very soul of reality. If the Hidden Dagger failed, the Qliphoth could permanently sever the world from its divine source.
- Key Event: The Infiltration of the Warring Kingdom, a high-stakes psychic heist into the heart of the Thaumiel realm itself.
3. The Ideological Front
- Conflict: An ideological war for the hearts and minds of a terrified populace, with heretical Arcanum Legions exploiting the chaos.
- Stakes: The future philosophy of the magical world. Would people turn to order, nature, or balance for salvation, or would they embrace the radical heresies?
- Key Event: The rise of heretical ideologies, such as the "Gospel of the Void" preached by Prophet Caiphas. Internally, each faction faced its own schism during The Sundering of the Pillars, with each group fracturing over the very meaning of their society's core principles.
Phase 3: The Relit Throne (529 AE)
The war did not end with a single victor, but with a fundamental alteration of reality. The Hidden Dagger succeeded in shattering the anti-throne, but the damage was done. The connection to Keter was restored, but it was no longer a single, unified point. The Throne was now a trinity, a fractured but stable reflection of the three great factions' philosophies.
The world that emerged was one of diminished but more varied magic. The Concord could draw upon a Keter of pure, structured law; the Garden could access a Keter of wild, untamed potential; and the Middle Way could channel a Keter of perfect, silent balance. The Great Silence was over, but the age of absolute unity was gone forever.