Playing IN in the DT universe (Part 2, cont.)

[pyrephox]

The Great War...the exact causes of the war are lost, but the trigger event doesn't really matter, anyway. The war started because too many people had too much killing power, and thanks to the soft whispers of Dis and their own natures, had pretty much gotten tired of playing nice. There were over a dozen warring factions across All-World, all armed with the bleeding edge of war technology. After a couple of years, they forgot what all the fighting was about, anyway.

They did not, however, forget about the Dark Tower and all the power it held. Various factions attempted to capture or destroy the Tower, and Blandine and her remaining servitors were hard-pressed to repel the various invaders. By the end of the War, civilization was in ruins, ravaged by the slo-trans bomb fallout, and the Archangel of Dreams had lost most of her idealism and love for humanity. It was then that Dis began to make his move.

For a long time, Blandine sheltered many humans, fleeing the War, under her wings, huddled close to the Tower. The towns of the Tower, Thunderclap chief among them, tried to retain some manner of civilization and truth, guided by the few remaining can calah in charge of Dreams. But Blandine was becoming weary. Dis' whispers found a fertile ground in her mind, even as they had in Lucifers. Why should the humans have the Tower? They did not deserve it. No one deserved it but she. They would only use it for evil. She became jealous of the Tower, closed it to humanity, and started plotting to use the power therein for her own purposes. Perhaps as Gan's final overt act in this world, or perhaps as a concerted movement of the Archangels of the Beams, the Tower slammed shut, and was closed against her.

This final rejection drove Blandine mad. She raged against the Tower she'd attuned herself to, battering the blackened walls, using all her power to force it to admit her once again. It all failed, and the massive amounts of dissonance she aquired from the attempt were enough to drive her into Falling. When she did, she cast off her female seeming forever.

Where there had been the Archangel of Dreams, there was now only the Crimson King.

To say that things became bad after that would be an understatement. It took the King several centuries to completely subdue his former Servitors (and even then, some escaped into the wider world), to break the citizens of Thunderclap into his servants, and to gather the 'slow mutant' outcasts of humanity under his banner. The Crimson King had only one objective now...to force the Tower open, to make it submit to his mastery. He began to send his servants out into this world, and then to ours and others, looking for humans gifted enough to learn the ways of Breaking. Once the Beams were seperated from the Tower, it would open to him once again, he thought. Dis was embraced, and the Crimson King built the terrible Castle Discordia from which to oversee his operations.

But all of the initial work took a very long time. Long enough for one of his former Servitors, the angel whose true name is still unknown, but who would be called 'Arthur of Eld' by the humans he served, to establish a bastion of the White far away from the Tower. It was his plan to train and gather an army of Soldiers and his Children (yes, he had Celestial Frutition, and used it liberally. Nephallim were weeded out by the Gunslinger training if they could not be used as tools of the White) to liberate the Tower. One of his first Children was not a Gunslinger, but rather the powerful Sorcerer and Enchanter named Maerlyn. Maerlyn was instrumental in the building of the Inner Baronies, and wove wards to keep the darkness at bay. He was most famous, however, for his creation of the Rainbow, thirteen glass balls that opened the past, the future, and other worlds to their bearers. He was the most beloved child of Eld, but almost a century after the Baronies' founding, Maerlyn and his Rainbow disappeared. Eld was heartbroken, and his ka-tet rode out to attempt to find the enchanter. They were never heard from again. Unfortunately, before he left he had failed to reveal the final purpose of the Gunslingers, and they did not know of their destiny, or of the Crimson King.

Eventually, the King turned his eye to them, and sent among them one of his most cunning agents: the Balseraph Flagg, who was known in many worlds by many names, none of them good. Flagg championed the so-called 'Good Man', while his Servant, Walter, corrupted the wife of Stephen of Gilead, and tried to end the line of the Gunslingers for good. The Gunslingers were unprepared for such an assault, and eventually they fell, when the Beam near Gilead broke, all was laid to ruin and waste and injustice ruled above reason, along with the death of the Archangel of that Beam, Dominic.

Everything, perhaps, except Roland of Gilead, last Gunslinger and one already touched by the White.

Note: This does not explain how the Rainbow (and possibly Maerlyn) became corrupted. That's intentional. I have an idea, but I'd rather GMs came up with their own explanations for it.

Next: Facts and Figures. (Who /are/ the Archangels of the Beams, etc...)