Page 8 - Critical Role: Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting

tal’dorei campaign guide

Not trusting any but themselves, the self-interested and population survived, leaving the only remaining bastion of
singular humans beat their instruments of celebration civilization: the Dawn City itself, Vasselheim.
into instruments of incredible power: artifacts that could The world entered a long, dark period of recovery,
be wielded by singular heroes. The dwarves’ fascination when history had to be recovered and purpose had to be
with rock and earth turned toward isolation as they restored. The Betrayer Gods were banished once more to
burrowed further into the mountains, using their divine their realms of deception and hate, but the threat of their
gifts to animate legions of autonomous golems to protect return weighed heavily on the world. The Prime Deities
their ancestral halls. Elves used their understanding felt that their involvement in mortal conflict was to blame
of creation’s beauty and intricacies to weave spells of for the cataclysmic damage inflicted upon Exandria. They
unimaginable destructive force, the likes of which Exan- knew that while the divine gateways were left open, the
dria had never seen before. prison planes that held the banished Betrayers would
For the first time since the Primordials, the focus of remain imperfect and temporary.
magic was warfare. The gods themselves agreed to join Thus, in hopes of ensuring such ruin would not befall
their children on the field of battle, descending from Exandria again, they left their children to fend for them-
the heavens to take up arms once more for the war now selves within and beyond the walls of Vasselheim. The
Prime Deities returned to their own realms, dragging
referred to as “The Calamity.”
both Betrayer and Abomination with them and sealing
the calamity the pathways to the mortal realm behind them with the
Divine Gate. Only in this way could they prevent their
No record remains of the terrible war that followed, but corrupted brethren from physically returning to the
its effects are still felt today. The sheer magnitude of the material plane. Sadly, for the Prime Deities, this action
energies unleashed in the ensuing battles of gods and also carried with it a self-imposed sentence of exile. They
mortals alike was enough to fray the boundaries holding would henceforth never be allowed to visit Creation.
back the elemental chaos, spilling unbridled destruction The disappearance of the gods is known by many
into the world. It completely rearranged the known flow names: “The Second Spark” for those who study the
of magical ley energy across Exandria. The dark kingdom arcane; “The Penance” for those who seek closeness to
of Ghor Dranas was brought to ruin, but the conflict dev- their gods; but the most common name for this time of
astated Exandria’s peoples, reducing most cities to ash, warfare and separation is “The Divergence,” and it marked
inspiring in many a desire to flee from this plane of exis- the end of the Age of Arcanum.
tence entirely. So great was the loss of life during the war Much time has passed since, and the world has been
that historians believe no more than a third of Exandria’s reborn once again. The gods still exhibit their influence and

chapter 1: campaigns in tal'dorei 7