The Old Powers
Galhadria has a number of immortal powers that exert their influence over the world. They are usually called the ‘old’ powers because there are ‘young’ powers who have only been in the world since the Sundering about 1,500 years ago. The old powers have been around much, much longer than that. These powers are patterned from creation stories from a variety of cultures across our own world, with a good bit of extra conjured up and mixed in. Many stories of the ‘old gods’ include a powerful figure who banishes chaos, a titanic battle between a serpent/dragon and a lightning-throwing hero, and a cataclysm which divides the ancient world from the modern. Galhadria’s origin story for the old powers echoes all these themes, so it should seem familiar but different at the same time. Following is a short version of the struggles of the old powers.
According to Tiamat, said to be the oldest of the old powers, she defeated the Great Old Ones (yes, those Great Old Ones) and ignited the sun with her breath, long before any of the other powers were around. Naturally her act of devouring the universal embodiments of chaos and bringing light and (some) order to the world tends to make Tiamat and her mortal followers view everything around the star she lit as belonging to her. Tiamat was not alone; other primordial dragons had joined her in the great conflict with the Great Old Ones - but as the strongest, she dominated the others, and is said to have created (or mastered) magic itself. From these dragons all others of their kind descend, along with various mortal folk of scale and claw, created by Tiamat or her minions through all the long ages to serve their whims.
As part of her victory, mysterious arcane connections to another realm were opened - the realm of the fey. Here another of the old powers joins us - Shalokar, the immortal fey trickster, and all the fey lords and ladies of myth and legend. Tiamat and the primordial dragons were far too powerful to be directly opposed, but Shalokar was cunning, and he kept Tiamat from invading and devouring his realm by sharing much of his ancient knowledge with her - while tricking her into creating powerful personifications of the very elements themselves - the giants.
These giants were full of might and wrath (as Shalokar planned) and would never submit to rule by the dragon-kind, however powerful. The great giants and primordial dragons clashed for a long age of the world. Storm lord Gromm battled ancient and terrible Tiamat with his lightnings. Unable to defeat one another, both sides created more and more mortal servants - the giants making many kinds of lesser giants, then humans, and inventing clever tools to help them fight their mighty foes.
Shalokar, of course, was not done, and so he helped the giants steal the secrets of magic from the ancient dragons, and helped the mortal followers of the dragon-kind to master to making of tools - the more these powers fought one another, the safer Shalokar and his fey kin became. But in the end even Shalokar miscalculated, and taught Gromm to bind magic into a mighty tool, and the hammer Kveld was forged - a weapon Shalokar said could slay Tiamat.
Gromm met Tiamat in battle, and swung the hammer Kveld, and the result was the Sundering - a calamity that changed everything. Parts of the world were laid to ruin, and the old powers themselves were weakened and nearly destroyed - and the young gods were brought into Galhadria, and everything after was different than the ages which came before.
Now, centuries after the Sundering, the old powers are regaining strength, and working to reclaim the hearts of their mortals from the sway of the younger powers - a new struggle for the new age of the world.