They sent Helldivers through the tears in search of Lazarus’ resting place in the underworld. The purpose of this undertaking soon became clear. They sought to resurrect him once again to serve as mankind’s shepherd into the next age. After the Fall, Lazarus returned to the world and set about implementing his vision for the world. To unify it under one world thought, one world nation, one world humanity. Not all kingdoms followed willingly, and so Lazarus pursued his goals by force. Legions of wraiths, released from the confines of the Shadowlands, swarmed over the earth.

Agriculture failed under the black sun. People starved to death and the Skeletal legion grew fat. Overwhelming despair took root. As people took their own lives and the Silent Legion swelled. The Grim Legion marched, decimating humanity through violence. They conscripted the wraiths of those they slew. The Stygian legions grew immeasurably, Lazarus' victory was all but assured.

Refusing to fight sick, and dying humans, the Ashen Lady became Stygia’s most infamous traitor. She betrayed the other Stygian Legions, choosing to aid the living in their survival. The tenacity of the Iron Legion turned to farming, and they brought life to once-dead soil. They produced copious amounts of food. The Wraith Legion required none for themselves, but many survivors came to depend upon it.

The united strength of Dischordia pushed Lazarus’ Unification forces to the east cost. To end the war, Balor unleashed balefire rockets on three major Unification cities. In an instant, Boston, New York, and Washington D.C. were ash. Witnessing Balor’s willingness to levy such destruction, even on his own continent, the Stygian forces withdrew. The Unification abandoned their remaining cities in Dischorda, forfeiting them to Balor's control.

Lazarus agreed to relinquish his claim on Constantinople. In exchange, he demanded Dischordia's non-interference in his dealings with Xibalba. The agreement allowed the tense peace to continue. Constantinople joined under Deus’ banner, claiming St Louis as its North American stronghold. Close ties between Al-Ashrad and Damien Vryce led to Constantinople joining Deus. While Dischordia gained new territory, Lazarus forged an alliance with Xibalba.

The disappearance of an Imperial prince was of great concern for the kingdom. Despite intense investigation, magistrates discovered no sign of him. Rumor ran rampant. The mystery of Ailil's disappearance spawned innumerable conspiracy theories about his whereabouts. Some believed it was retribution for Ailil exposing Balor's spies and assassins. Others believed the Giovanni killed him for his ruination of the Medici family. The absence of evidence led many to suspect that he was not, in fact, dead.

Many wraiths fell to their own darker halves. Only hell-divers and castigators would withstand them. Giovanni and Cappadocian necromancers stemmed the tide of Nul’s Spectres. Lasombra Abyss Mystics twisted the darkness to their own ends. Despite heavy losses, the Kingdom of Lazarus was able to fight to a stalemate.

Prince Mercer of the Empyrean Unification rekindled diplomacy with Lazarus' Kingdom. By acknowledging the greater threat of Aether, he was able to negotiate a truce with the Council of Stars. Though both sides had agreed to the truce, neither side trusted the other. An anonymous gift, the head of Gabriel De'Angelo, helped to ensure the success of the agreement. Not quite allies, but no longer enemies, the two kingdoms worked together against the Aether. And, once the Aether withdrew from the battlefield, they helped one another rebuild."

Buljiev’s machinations led to the abduction and brainwashing of a Whisper to the Voice of Balor. Blame for the abduction was placed on Dischordia’s allies in the Sultanate of Glass, briefly driving a wedge between the two kingdoms, and Buljiev took credit for his rescue. Months later, the Dischordian Ambassador uncovered word that Buljiev was preparing a dark ritual that, according to legend, threatened to end the world. In response, Dischordia launched a three-pronged assault on Carpathia in a cooperative effort to prevent the ritual, seize a city in Carpathia and attempted to assassinate Buljiev. The ritual was prevented and the city of Odessa was seized, but Buljiev eluded their assassins. In retaliation for their aggression, Lazarus declared war on Dischordia.

Confronted by a common enemy, Balor and Lazarus agreed to put aside their differences. For the two decades of the War of Aether, the two kingdoms put significant effort into diplomacy. They began to resolve centuries of turmoil, until a series of incidents drew them back into chaos. Alyosha Buljiev, the Tzimisce Prince of Carpathia, stood at the center of these plots.

Dischordia's Ambassador, Dorian Osbourne, uncovered rumors of a dark ritual Buljiev was planning. He investigated the matter with the aid of the Hierophant, Zachariah Baldric. They discovered legends that the ritual would end the world, and informed their lord. High Pontiff Radu Bistri saw a chance to prevent the ritual, dispose of a rival, and reclaim his homeland.

Bistri coordinated several domains in a three-pronged attack to achieve his goals. On the eve of the Samhain holiday, Bistri himself invaded Odessa. Though he claimed it was to draw Buljiev's army from defense of the ritual, he hoped to gain a foothold in Carpathia. The Hierophant led an arcane counterspell, to unweave the magic of the ritual. Finally, a covert team infiltrated Buljiev's castle with the mission of assassinating him.

Bistri's attack was successful, and he laid claim to Odessa. The Hierophant's counter-ritual succeeded in thwarting Buljiev's ritual. But the covert team failed in their task. His ritual in tatters, Buljiev escaped the attempt on his life. A formidable abomination known as Gangir nearly destroyed the would-be assassins. Lazarus declared war on Dischordia in response to this unprovoked attack. In retaliation for their aggression, Lazarus' response was swift and devastating. He launched a crippling nuclear strike against several Dischordian domains. Each target chosen would be a threat in the conflict to come.

Following Dischordian's unprovoked attack, Lazarus declared war. His kingdom launched a devastating first strike against Dischordia. They launched four warheads, relics retrieved from the shadowlands, against Dischordia. The first target was the Empyrean Unification capitol of Neuropolis. The goal: to destroy Dischordia's intelligence on Lazarus' Kingdom. The second target, Bermuda, crippled Dischordia's dominance of the seas. The third and fourth, were to destroy Dischordia's most strategic military holdings. Yet the attacks against the Wheel of Ptah and Constantinople, were successfully rebuffed.

The Grim Legion launched coordinated attacks against Dischordian interests. From the ruins of Bermuda and the crater of Neuropolis, they marched on the Dischordian mainland. They cut a swath through the east coast territories of Dischordia. Across the Mediterranean, they decimated the Sultanate of Glass, and their former allies in the Middle Kingdom.

Set and the Middle Kingdom had no desire to take part in the war. Lazarus had spent considerable time in Egypt in a past age, in pursuit of his sire's goals of apotheosis. He had forged an alliance with the Setites of the region. Despite the ongoing conflict, they still considered Lazarus an ally.

Lazarus and his Stygian allies had other plans. The Council of Stars counted them as an enemy from the moment they swore Oaths to Dischordia. The Grim Legion brought war to the shores of the Middle Kingdom, as a massive force of wraiths attacked. The armies of Archive and the Middle Kingdom repelled the main force.

Yet it proved to be nothing more than a distraction. A smaller force infiltrated the Library of Alexandria. They retrieved Lazarus' research from centuries past, and burnt many more volumes. It was not long before the librarian identified the missing texts. They contained Lazarus' research of the spell of life. It was the knowledge which would allow Lazarus to achieve apotheosis, and godhood.

The first sign of the Cataclysm was the haze on the horizon. Blood-red and fire-orange, it was visible even in kingdoms across oceans and hemispheres. Storms of fire raged across the European continent. Those who survived the strikes saw clouds of dust and fire, and felt the ground shake from the impact. The reverberation of the catastrophe could be felt all around the world. Tsunamis, floods, and hail storms devastated the Jade and Iron Lotus. Earthquakes rumbled and volcanoes erupted in Ukhu Amarumaya and Aztlan. Sinkholes opened in Jukurrpa swallowing stretches of land. Heat waves ravaged the Diamond Congo, withering the jungles. Great sandstorms blasted across the African deserts. The Antarctic Aether grew even colder as it’s blizzards raged. Across the globe, maelstroms tore their way through the kingdoms of the world.

The entire European continent shook with the impact of each realm. Entire countries were destroyed in mere moments. Cities within the impact zone ceased to exist. Even those few scattered outside the blast radius did not survive unscathed. Lazarus' citizens watched as entire countries vanished beneath pillars of fire. Each collision sent reverberations through the land, leveling buildings with the resulting earthquakes. Mountains shook with each strike, erasing whole cities under rockslides and avalanches. Each imact sent shockwaves through the spiritual world as well. A series of great maelstroms stirred forth, tearing across the continent.

Dischordia's ritual brought forth ten realms to devastate Lazarus' kingdom to end the war. But only nine struck. The final realm, targeting Italy, did not fall as intended. Within the Vatican, Lazarus' faith protected his country from the attack. Lazarus poured all his remaining essence into his faith. He sacrificed himself to twist the Dischordian magic. In the end, he pulled the Stygian Underworld into the physical realm. With his sacrifice Lazarus completed his apotheosis, elevating himself to the God of Death. Still, his ambition had cost his followers dearly. Much of his kingdom was destroyed as the realms merged, only to re-manifest as a wraithly echo.

As Europe reeled from Dischordia's devastating attack, Aether seized their chance to cripple both. Cities which had fallen to darkness during the War of Aether bled shadows like an open wound. Abyssal armies swarmed from these tears in reality. Shadow-eaten vampires, spectres, and demons laid waste to surrounding territories. The Aether fought without regard for their own destruction, and inflicted considerable damage.

Yet in several of the battles, Dischordians and the Stygian Legions put aside their war. Turning from their fight with one another, they faced their common enemy together. The Aether could not withstand the combined might of their enemies' armies. They vanished back into darkness, but had reminded the world of the threat they posed. Both kingdoms agreed that peace would be necessary, to avoid total annihilation.

The decimation of Lazarus' kingdom by the Sublime Cataclysm was only the beginning. Following his apotheosis, without Lazarus' strong leadership, his empire began to fracture. Some of his more ambitious followers sought to install themselves as his successor. Queen Guil saw herself as the only one worthy to inherit Lazarus' Empire in his absence. Her efforts to bring the European Alliance under her was soundly rejected by the Treaty delegates. Instead, the Vatican, and the Council of Stars, would remain the center of the Alliance.

Many former Lazarean domains remained a single kingdom, the Stygian Alliance, which spanned much of Europe. But the Treaty granted independence to several of Lazarus’ former princes. King Arthur Pendragon gained independent rule of his Kingdom of Avalon. Wilhelm of Berlin led the German States to freedom, distancing themselves from Guil's machinations. Rasputin, having achieved his long-sought conquest of the Nightmare Lands, claimed his independence. Though he parted from the Stygian Alliance, he maintained close ties.