There came a time when humans became the most numerous of Trieste’s inhabitants, and tensions arose with the original gods, who had ruled the land for millennia.
Ultimately, the pride of humans and the pride of gods could not coexist without conflict, and the war was the result.
The humans were clever, and they had mastered some of the gods’ own magic to use against them, but they were no match for the gods alone.
It was then, about 200 years ago, that Kalizio Vacshu, known as one of the wisest among the humans, made his most tragic mistake.
Kalizio rightly saw that the tide of the battle was going against his kind, and he sought a way to even the odds.
His choice was to hold a Ceremony of Unsealing to unleash the creatures of the Abyss,
An underworld of monsters that had been sealed by powerful spells and wards to keep them out of the upper lands.
At first, this seemed to work, as the creatures of the Abyss, also known as the “Lower Bound” swarmed up and fought the gods, whom they hated more than the humans, providing the victory Kalizio had predicted.
Kalizio had always intended to reseal the Abyss once the gods had been vanquished, but he had miscalculated badly.
Karon, a demigod in his own right, had no intention of going back into the depths of the Abyss.
He turned his minions against the humans as soon as the gods were beaten back, intent on causing misery and destruction and an end to the human dominance of the land.
His intention was to kill many humans and enslave the rest.
Although Kalizio tried to control Karon, he was not strong enough, for Karon had grown in power since the time of the First Sealing.
In an epic battle, Kalizio died at Karon’s hand, even as he once again invoked the seals that would send his enemy back to the Great Darkness.
Karon was gone, for now, but monsters spawned in the Abyss, remained, and they all but decimated what was left of the human race, already ravaged by years of war and caught unsuspecting by Kalizio’s risky gambit.
What remained was but a fraction of the race that had once dominated the land and challenged the gods themselves.
This was called the Grand Fall, the Fall of Trieste.