Lore: The Year of Falling Stars

The gods of old fell into two schools of thought over how they interacted with the human world.

One side, the so called Light Gods, believed in a light touch, gently guiding their followers so that they could grow to do bigger and better things, and never demanding anything in return other than respect for their domains. They would accept offerings made in good faith, but would also happily bestow blessings on anyone who asked politely. These blessings were always relatively weak, but were always designed to help their recipients grow stronger for themselves.

The Dark Gods, on the other hand, believed that everything came with a price. They still wanted humanity to succeed, but they firmly believed that how far you deserved to go was proportional to how much you were willing to give up to get it. They respected a soldier willing to give his life for his kingdom far more than the king sending an army to fight his battles for him. How much they respected you then affected how much they would demand if you asked them for a blessing.

Tensions had been brewing for a long time, and eventually led to a bloody war between the gods.

No one was quite sure which side struck first. The first sign that humanity received that something was wrong was when shining chunks of magical energy began to fall from the sky. They didn't know at first that these were actual body parts of the gods.

Then, several gods manifested avatars in the mortal world, hoping to escape the fighting. They were branded cowards and hunted by both sides. The destruction caused when their pursuers found them was legendary.

Some of the magic which fell to the ground was absorbed by humans, the first sorcerers. Other parts, by animals or plants. The early magic was powerful, but extremely unstable, often causing horrible mutations in those who absorbed it, and making everything about them go into overdrive, including their libidos.

The more stable ones reproduced, their children better adapted to handle the magic flowing through them. The children carried some of their parents' mutations but in a more stable form. The first monsters were born.

Of the original sorcerers, seven were more powerful than the others, having absorbed the entirety of the power of a single god. Their powers, being complete, were stable. Fed up with the destruction being caused as the war spilled over into the mortal world, Lady Bensta, who had absorbed the powers of the Goddess of Fate, brought the seven together with a plan. Working as one, they cast a spell which rent the heavens in two. The Light Gods were trapped on one side, the Dark Gods on the other, and both were cut off from any influence on the mortal world. The seven were themselves pulled into the void between the three realms, doomed to hold them apart for all eternity, partially existing in all three, but able to interact with none.

After the damage that the gods had caused, most of humanity renounced any interest in worshiping anything, as it would only lead to destruction. A minority, however still wanted something to focus their beliefs upon.

Some saw the monsters as the heirs to the gods' power, and devoted themselves to one monster species or another. Others saw the acts of the seven sorcerers as treasonous, and sought a way to destroy them and reunite the heavens, ignoring the fact that this would most likely lead to a resumption of the war, or even to the gods turning against the humans who had sealed them away.

To this day, monster cults and reunificationists still exist, and sometimes have to be stamped out by the authorities if they start to go too far with their beliefs.