A BRIEF HISTORY
For millennia and longer King Hades reigned over the kingdoms of death, charged by his kin to be the keeper of souls and all manner of dark or querulous spirit. All the dead and horrible were his slaves, his pets, his complex puppets. The after-life and underworlds were grey and bleak. There were other creatures and royalty, lords and ladies, across the planes but none higher nor more powerful than Hades.
Wars came and went as fleeting excitement in the Bleak King's eternity but there came a day when he could take not another false laugh and grew too bored of every fearful flinch. He quit the Omega Planes and no God living or dead, no soothsayer nor Fate could find him.
After Hades' abdication of his throne the cities and inlets of the Omega Planes fell into a pitiful state. His power and majesty evaporated in a steady trickle.
Persephone, once a martyr for the people knew all fitful hope she held for her own restoration to the lands of the living were extinguished with the exit of her husband. She became cruel and bitter and her crown twisted and snarled upon her head. However beautiful or sweet she had once been now the people reviled her with increasing openness as she descended into madness until she was no more than a shadow in a dress.
Centuries pass.
Normality is just to exist and a fugue descends as the inhabitants of the Omega Planes and any new comers lose their self identities. Antiques and the bric-a-brac of ancestors are squabbled over amongst families as all fear the encroaching numbness that comes with no memories to tell us who we are.
A new story begins. A Siren Queen who's heart-song reverberates through tribe and clan and shakes family trees to their very roots to stir them all to action. First to vengeance, her own army under a spell of determination, then to creation. 13 Gallows she takes as her city of home and the army around her awaken from their obedience to find their minds alive with color once more.
13 Gallows is rebuilt, restored and repopulated while throughout the planes the fog of lifetimes lifts and other breeds have their lives and practices returned.
Existence becomes festive in a way it could never have been under Hades, an after-life worth dying for.
