Date: 31–34 Yilaver, 8753 SE
Primary Threat: Othrazhul
Associated Artifact: Rift Spar
Principal Mortal Actors: Zhaken Amberheart, Brass Blades, Davrek Valzorwyn
Major Consequences: Global undead rising, widespread decay and famine, expulsion of Othrazhul from Creation, death of Davrek Valzorwyn, and ascension of Abendigo
The Harrowing was a three-day catastrophe in 8753 SE during which Othrazhul, a Primordial Change Spirit altered by contact with the Broken Hour and the First Paradox, was drawn into an increasingly direct relationship with Kor Sirok. To observers on the surface, Othrazhul appeared in the sky as an enormous new moon approaching the world. Its presence destabilized ordinary relationships among life, death, decay, identity, and temporal continuity, causing corpses across Kor Sirok to rise while crops, stored food, and other organic matter spoiled with unnatural speed.
The crisis began through the actions of Zhaken Amberheart, who used the Rift Spar in an attempt to establish contact with the Nascent Expanse and draw power from a being beyond Creation. Zhaken did not intend to summon Othrazhul or bring an existential threat toward Kor Sirok. The Rift Spar possessed relationships with time and continuity that neither he nor most contemporary scholars fully understood, and his attempt created a correspondence with a being unusually sensitive to exactly those forces.
The Brass Blades ultimately confronted Othrazhul’s moon-like manifestation and defeated the Aspect of Othrazhul, an avatar-like concentration through which the Change Spirit could be fought directly. Davrek Valzorwyn then used Wish to force the other Brass Blades to safety against their will and drove the Rift Spar into the Aspect’s heart. The resulting release destroyed the Aspect and the larger manifestation, forced Othrazhul back beyond Creation, and killed Davrek. The Rift Spar survived and moments later became the catalyst for Abendigo’s apotheosis.
Othrazhul
Othrazhul was one of the Primordial Change Spirits, beings whose earliest existence lay within the Nascent Expanse before stable Creation imposed the relationships necessary for persistent identity. At some point in its long existence, Othrazhul encountered the wounded realm of the Broken Hour and interacted with the surviving consequences of the First Paradox. The encounter altered it profoundly.
Most Change Spirits that interact with Creation acquire some degree of continuity simply because persistent reality forces them to remain themselves from one moment to another. Othrazhul acquired something stranger. Exposure to the Broken Hour and the First Paradox allowed incompatible states to become part of the same continuing identity, permitting the being to persist through contradictions that should ordinarily resolve or destroy one another. Ending and continuation, death and activity, decay and persistence could coexist within Othrazhul without immediately collapsing into a single coherent condition.
This did not make Othrazhul a conventional undead creature. It was never a mortal being that died and returned, nor was undeath its purpose in any ordinary sense. Its relationship with death arose because it carried a contradiction in which an ended thing could continue without ceasing to have ended. When that principle became strong enough to influence Kor Sirok, the distinction between a dead body and an active body became less dependable, while living biological processes lost some of the continuity necessary to resist decay.
Othrazhul’s immense apparent size likewise did not necessarily correspond to an astronomical body moving through ordinary space. As the forced relationship with Kor Sirok strengthened, its presence became increasingly physical and comprehensible to mortal perception. The result appeared as an approaching moon or planetoid visible across the world, and by the height of the Harrowing its manifestation possessed enough physical reality that the Brass Blades could confront it directly.
The Rift Spar
The Rift Spar was an artifact capable of manipulating relationships involving time, continuity, and the correspondence between otherwise separated states. Its powers were poorly understood even by those who successfully used it, in part because its effects could resemble several different forms of magic depending upon the circumstances. It could contribute to planar breaches, temporal anomalies, destructive releases of power, and relationships between events that ordinary chronology should have kept separate.
Its earlier history had already demonstrated its danger. Abendigo accidentally used the Rift Spar in the event that destroyed Mount Caraphat, a catastrophe that damaged the Twilight Veil and left the region more vulnerable to influences from beyond Creation. The artifact also became entangled with unusual temporal events surrounding Abendigo’s eventual ascension, including circumstances in which the Brass Blades interacted with an earlier period of history without creating a second or rewritten timeline.
These effects are better understood as exceptional manipulations of temporal relationship than as ordinary travel backward through time. Following the death of Aevareth, the underlying sequence of time within Creation remained fixed even where local temporal experience became distorted. The Rift Spar could force relationships across that sequence that should normally have been inaccessible, but the resulting events remained part of one coherent history rather than producing freely alterable alternate pasts.
This property made the artifact uniquely dangerous in the hands of Zhaken Amberheart. Othrazhul had already been altered by the Broken Hour and the First Paradox, leaving it unusually responsive to disturbances involving temporal continuity. When Zhaken used the Rift Spar to reach toward the Nascent Expanse, the artifact created a relationship that resonated with Othrazhul far more strongly than he intended.
Zhaken Amberheart
Zhaken Amberheart sought power from beyond Creation. His ritual was intended to establish a controlled relationship with an entity or source in the Nascent Expanse from which he could draw power while remaining safely within Kor Sirok. The plan was extraordinarily dangerous, particularly after the Sundering, but Zhaken did not intend to bring a moon-sized Change Spirit into the world or unleash a global catastrophe.
The Rift Spar undermined that distinction. Rather than creating a relationship through which Zhaken alone could reach outward, the artifact established a correspondence that could also be followed inward. Othrazhul’s history with the Broken Hour made it unusually capable of recognizing and exploiting the temporal aspect of that connection, while the older damage to the Twilight Veil caused by the destruction of Mount Caraphat had already weakened one of Kor Sirok’s principal defenses against the Nascent Expanse.
Zhaken’s ritual therefore created conditions in which several normally separate protections failed to reinforce one another. The Sundering made Kor Sirok’s physical universe difficult to reach through ordinary planar relationships, while the Twilight Veil restricted sustained intrusion from beyond Creation. The Rift Spar did not simply overpower both protections through raw energy; it manipulated temporal and metaphysical relationships until Othrazhul became increasingly relevant to Kor Sirok’s present circumstances despite those barriers.
By the time the consequences became clear, the relationship was no longer dependent upon Zhaken maintaining the original ritual. Othrazhul had begun to follow it on its own.
The Approach
The first widely visible sign of the Harrowing was the appearance of an unfamiliar object in the sky. What initially resembled a distant celestial body became larger and more disturbing as Othrazhul’s relationship with Kor Sirok strengthened, eventually taking the appearance of a vast moon drawing close to the world. Its presence was visible across enormous distances, making the threat impossible for governments or religious authorities to conceal once the Harrowing had fully begun.
The effects on the surface increased alongside that apparent approach. Dead bodies began rising without regard for the religion, culture, or magical traditions of the places in which they had been buried. Recent corpses were not uniquely vulnerable; old graves, battlefields, crypts, and other places containing mortal remains could all become sources of danger as the distinction between ended life and continued activity weakened.
At the same time, organic matter began decaying at extraordinary rates. Stored grain spoiled, preserved food rotted, crops withered, and supplies expected to last through entire seasons became useless within hours or days. The same metaphysical disturbance produced both phenomena. Othrazhul did not command the dead through necromancy while separately projecting a curse of famine; its presence weakened the stable relationships through which living processes persisted and death ordinarily remained an ending.
Three Days of the Dead
The Harrowing lasted only from 31 through 34 Yilaver, but its effects were global enough that duration provided little protection. Settlements with large graveyards or dense populations could become especially dangerous as the dead rose among the living, while rural communities faced their own disasters when food stores and crops failed. Local armies, temples, adventurers, militias, and ordinary citizens fought to survive without knowing whether anything they did locally could affect the source visible above them.
Cities often suffered the worst immediate casualties because their population density, burial practices, and dependence upon stored food made them vulnerable to several aspects of the Harrowing simultaneously. Even communities that successfully contained their undead outbreaks could emerge with most of their food destroyed. Regions already experiencing shortages, war, poor harvests, or political instability were pushed rapidly toward famine and social collapse.
The expulsion of Othrazhul did not reverse those losses. Ruined crops did not regrow when the Harrowing ended, spoiled stores remained spoiled, and those killed during the attacks did not simply return to life. Later estimates generally place total humanoid mortality caused by the Harrowing and the famines, violence, disease, and political disruption that followed at roughly fifteen to twenty percent of Kor Sirok’s population. In many regions, the greatest loss of life occurred during the months after Othrazhul’s destruction rather than during the three days when the entity itself was present.
The Final Confrontation
The Brass Blades pursued the crisis to its source and ultimately confronted the Aspect of Othrazhul, an avatar-like concentration within the immense moon-like manifestation. By that point Othrazhul’s relationship with Kor Sirok had become strong enough for the Aspect to possess a physical form that could be attacked directly, but defeating it alone would not sever the deeper relationship through which the Primordial Change Spirit remained established within Creation.
The Brass Blades defeated the Aspect, creating a brief opportunity for the Rift Spar to act upon that deeper relationship. The same artifact that had helped draw Othrazhul toward Kor Sirok could interact with the temporal contradiction embedded in its identity and with the connection sustaining its intrusion.
Phelps, the adopted son of Davrek Valzorwyn, took possession of the Rift Spar intending to make the necessary sacrifice himself. Davrek refused to allow it. Knowing Phelps and the other Brass Blades would prevent him from acting if they understood what he intended, Davrek used Wish to send them to safety against their will before remaining behind with the artifact.
Davrek then drove the Rift Spar into the heart of the defeated Aspect. The release destroyed the Aspect and the larger moon-like manifestation, severed the relationship sustaining Othrazhul’s presence, and forced the Primordial Change Spirit back beyond Creation. Davrek was killed, but the Rift Spar survived.
Davrek Valzorwyn
Davrek’s death was unusually difficult to reverse. The destruction of Othrazhul’s manifestation and the use of the Rift Spar to force the entity beyond Creation involved forces of identity, temporal continuity, and a being altered by the legacy of the First Paradox. His own relationship with ordinary life and death was consequently more severely disrupted than that of someone killed through conventional injury.
Restoring him required True Resurrection. Resurrection magic was commonly performed through rituals whose success was not guaranteed, with the difficulty influenced in part by the circumstances of death and the condition of the soul’s relationship with the living world. The nature of Davrek’s sacrifice made the attempt particularly difficult.
The ritual succeeded and Davrek returned to life. Nothing about that outcome had been assured when he made his decision, however. When he sent the other Brass Blades away and used the Rift Spar, he acted with the expectation that his death could be permanent.
Abendigo and Time
The Harrowing cannot be separated completely from the sequence that led to the ascension of Abendigo. The Rift Spar had already become involved in Abendigo’s mortal life through the destruction of Mount Caraphat and later through unusual temporal events in which the Brass Blades participated. Those events did not represent the discovery of a general method of traveling freely into the past. They formed a closed sequence in which actions taken through the Rift Spar were already part of the history that ultimately produced Abendigo’s divinity.
The interactions among the Rift Spar, Othrazhul’s First-Paradox-touched identity, the surviving wound of the Broken Hour, and Abendigo created an exceptional temporal crisis. Abendigo’s ascension established a new divine relationship with time long after the death of Aevareth. He did not undo Aevareth’s final act or replace a broken temporal sequence with a new one; the underlying progression of time remained fixed, while the future remained open to choices and possibilities that had not yet become history.
As Othrazhul’s moon-like manifestation collapsed, the Rift Spar descended from it and struck the mortal Abendigo like a meteor. A violent eruption of force threw everyone away from him, leaving Abendigo floating at the center of the blast. Witnesses described his skin as pale gray and metallic, his eyes glowing with dull gray light, and his voice as several overlapping voices whose words seemed to arrive both before and after the movements of his mouth. He then apotheosized. The Rift Spar survived and remains in his possession.
Aftermath
Othrazhul’s expulsion ended the immediate supernatural effects of the Harrowing. Corpses ceased rising because of the entity’s presence, newly stored food no longer decayed at the same impossible rate, and the moon-like manifestation disappeared from the sky. None of this repaired the damage already inflicted upon the world.
Famine became the most widespread secondary crisis. Communities that had survived the undead sometimes possessed neither seed nor reserves sufficient to support themselves until another harvest, while trade routes were overwhelmed by demand or disrupted by violence. Governments attempted rationing, emergency requisitions, migration controls, and military protection of remaining food stores with varying degrees of success. Crime, local wars, disease, refugee movements, and political collapse multiplied the deaths attributable to the event.
The effects were severe enough that societies far removed from Zhaken Amberheart, the Brass Blades, or the site of the final battle still dated family histories and political changes around the Harrowing. Empty settlements, abandoned farms, mass graves, emergency fortifications, and demographic gaps remained visible for generations.
The Brass Blades emerged from the event as figures known far beyond the regions in which they had previously operated. Whatever controversy surrounded their earlier history, the fact that they had confronted the source of a global catastrophe and prevented Othrazhul from establishing itself permanently within Kor Sirok made their role impossible to dismiss as a local matter.
Aegis Regnum
The Harrowing demonstrated that the protections established by the Twilight Veil and the Sundering were powerful but not infallible. Othrazhul had reached Kor Sirok through a combination of damaged defenses, an extraordinarily dangerous artifact, and relationships that existing planar theory did not adequately understand. Waiting until another such threat became visible across the entire sky was not considered an acceptable strategy.
The aftermath therefore contributed directly to the founding of Aegis Regnum, an organization intended to identify threats associated with the Nascent Expanse and intervene before they could develop into another world-scale incursion. Its mission reflected a lesson that had appeared repeatedly in Kor Sirok’s history: barriers and divine protections could reduce danger enormously, but mortal vigilance remained necessary because intelligent forces could exploit weaknesses those protections were never designed to anticipate.
Mortal Understanding
Unlike the First War or the earliest events surrounding the Twilight Veil, the Harrowing occurred within recent recorded history. Its visible events are therefore well documented. There is little serious dispute that an enormous moon-like entity appeared, the dead rose across Kor Sirok, food supplies decayed, the Brass Blades confronted the threat, and the entity disappeared after the defeat of its Aspect and the collapse of its moon-like manifestation.
The deeper explanation is less widely understood. Most mortals do not know Othrazhul’s origin as a Primordial Change Spirit or its ancient interaction with the Broken Hour and the First Paradox. Even among scholars familiar with those concepts, reconstructing exactly how the Rift Spar manipulated temporal relationships strongly enough to draw Othrazhul toward Kor Sirok remains difficult because the artifact participated in an exceptional temporal sequence that remains difficult to reconstruct even though it survived the crisis.
Zhaken’s intention is likewise frequently simplified in popular accounts. He is often described as having summoned Othrazhul deliberately, which is understandable given that his ritual caused the catastrophe. More complete records indicate that his objective was to acquire power from something within the Nascent Expanse and that Othrazhul’s arrival was an unintended consequence of the relationship he created. This distinction does little to absolve him of responsibility, but it matters to understanding how the Harrowing actually happened.
Legacy
The Harrowing was the most recent event in recorded history to place civilizations across Kor Sirok in immediate danger. Unlike the Twilight War and the Sundering, which transformed the metaphysical defenses surrounding the world, the Harrowing demonstrated that those defenses could still be circumvented when mortal ambition, damaged ancient protections, and forces from beyond Creation interacted in ways no one fully understood.
Its duration was measured in days, but its consequences extended across decades. Entire communities disappeared, governments were weakened or replaced, food systems and trade networks had to be rebuilt, and populations throughout the world inherited direct memories of a sky dominated by an approaching moon while the dead rose around them.
The catastrophe also completed a much older sequence surrounding time. The Rift Spar, which had destroyed Mount Caraphat and become entangled with extraordinary temporal events, was driven into the Aspect of a being shaped by the Broken Hour and the legacy of the First Paradox. Davrek’s sacrifice forced Othrazhul back beyond Creation, while the Spar survived to become the immediate catalyst for Abendigo’s apotheosis. The Harrowing therefore ended one world-scale incursion while creating a new divine relationship with time that did not exist when the crisis began.
The Harrowing also produced a lasting mortal institution. Davrek Valzorwyn founded the Aegis Regnum after the catastrophe to identify and counter future incursions connected to the Nascent Expanse before they could develop into another global crisis. Davrek remained with the Brass Blades and placed the new order under his lieutenant Zurok, who left the Blades to become the Aegis’s first Grandmaster. The order’s later network of chapters became one of the most direct institutional responses to the vulnerabilities exposed by the Harrowing.