>>225819
Sure. How long you want? Because I can give it some real depth here. I'll run the basics, and you tell me if there's anything you want elaboration on.
A thousand years ago, High Magic ruled everything. Freed people from hunger, want, sickness, all that. Everyone was totally awesome with their mage-god empires. But of course nobody could be happy with that. Everyone else had to see their way too. So they went to war. Bad stuff happened. Then someone had a bright idea. Why don't we just go into heaven and ask God? He'll know which one of us is right.
So they do. The angels fought desperately to keep back the invading theurges, but they were too few to withstand the human sorceries. A hundred- odd armies marched at the theurges' sides, great engines and terrible war-beasts grinding the celestial legions before them.
Countless mortals perished, but the angels were driven back at last, forced to flee from Heaven and seek refuge in the fires of Hell below. The triumphant theurges approached the holy heart of Heaven, the Throne of God where the creator of all would answer at last. And yet when the great doors were opened, when the thousand Names were spoken, when the burning wings of angels no longer veiled the sanctum, the Throne stood empty before them. God was not there.
So some of the theurges scattered in despair. "We drove God away with our sins," they cried. Some in anger. They thought God was never real. We had been deceived.
Others saw opportunity. If the Throne is empty, why can't we put a God of our own on it? So they started looting heaven for all the celestial artifacts they could, then they returned to the world and began working. The war didn't end, it changed. Theurges created Made Gods. Things that ranged from technological autonomous marvels to champions exulted with the prayers and magic of a civilization.
They fought each other here and in Heaven. Some looting more celestial power, wrecking even more of the celestial engines that kept the world spinning. This continued on for a long time until attrition killed the Made Gods.
Now there are only the heritor nations, the crumbled fragments of the Former Empires eking out a meager existence in the far-scattered realms. The wonders of the fomer age no longer function, and the theurgy that once shook Heaven is now a brittle, capricious art wounded by the very destruction it caused. Kings and commoners alike must live in a world that no longer welcomes them.
Every year, things grow a little harder. The celestial engines among the shards of Heaven are often broken and always ill-kept, now that the angels have fled. Seasons grow uncertain and nature grows whimsical or malicious. Sickness comes at strange times and monsters are birthed in hidden places. Sometimes the skin of the realm puckers and splits, a Night Road erupting into the realm from some fathomless depth of Uncreated Night. Creation unwinds slowly, but without halt.
But there's something new. The Godbound. The lost Words of Creation are igniting within the flesh of common humans, imbuing them in a stroke with the power that once required a Made God's shell to contain.
You are one of these, and you can change the world as you like.