The Calamity

Description

The catastrophic war between the Prime Deities and the Betrayer Gods, fought approximately 800 years before the Pre-Divergence period — i.e. roughly 1800 years before the campaign’s present. The gods fought directly on the Material Plane, using it as their battlefield. The result was near-total destruction of civilization and most of Exandria’s population.

The Prime Deities won but were horrified by the destruction their direct involvement caused. They sealed themselves and the Betrayer Gods behind the Divine Gate — a barrier preventing divine entities from manifesting on the Material Plane — and left mortals to rebuild. This event is the founding trauma of Exandrian civilization and the reason every subsequent civilization understands itself as post-apocalyptic.

Aeor was destroyed during the Calamity — targeted by the gods specifically for constructing weapons theoretically capable of killing them. Vasselheim survived as the only major city because the gods chose to fight elsewhere.

Relationship to the Exodus: The Calamity established the template the Exodus would follow a thousand years later — gods causing catastrophic disruption, mortals left to rebuild, divine absence as the new normal. The difference is that the Calamity was violent; the Exodus was just departure.