Mysterious prophet of The One, assumed into Heaven on his death, returned and laid waste to Nhased
420-453
The mysterious prophet of the deity known only as The One. In the year 420, a mysterious prophet appeared in Lanirkos and began preaching the faith of a god he would call only The One. His own name he never revealed, saying only that he was "the voice". The cult was a simple and undemanding one, involving a basic respect for all forms of life, and an energy created by harmony between all living things. The only drawback was that the faith of The One precluded tolerance of the existence of any other gods. This was not popular with the Imperial authorities. Over the next few years, The Voice of The One was persecuted and hounded, though his followers - some of them in high places - managed to preserve him from major harm. Claims of miracles were alternately voiced and denied. Finally, in 453 Imperial, The Voice of The One died in Karsten and was immediately and publicly assumed into Heaven. The cult of The One has been growing ever since.
No details are known about The Voice, other than his gentle refusal to justify himself by miracles right up until his death.
Everything changed in 1792 when the Voice of the One returned to Alair with the Word of the One.
Preaching at first at the very front line, he entered the holy city of Karsten and spoke to enraptured thousands in the great Cathederal of The One. The People of the One, he said, should not seek to conquer the infidel, only defend and protect themselves against his wiles and assaults. In a paroxysm of religious remorse, the commanders of the Light Ones pulled their forces back to Nhased's original borders and opened negotiations for an armistice.
It was this point that Cardinal Gilraid, Commissioner of the Designators of the True Faith, made the shocking claim that the newly-appeared prophet was not what he claimed to be, but an Imperial imtelligence agent. While the presentation of evidence and counter-evidence, witness and counter-witness lashed back and forth, the theological debate and accusations of heresy and blasphemy were more fiery by far. The monolithic Church of the One had never known internal disagreement on this scale, and the schism split the entire Theocracy into fragments, with adherents of each side scattered randomly across the country, each man examining his own faith to choose his side. After several bloody years of confusion the two factions established themselves into stronghold areas and settled into a protracted and savage civil war.The Gilraidists, the larger party, were hampered by fighting a war on two fronts, with both the Empire and with the Voicers. The latter were still guided by the Voice of the One, upon whose head the Gilraidists placed an astronomical price.
In 1850 the Voice of the One, desperate to end the sectarian war between the Voicers and Gilraidists, began a complex and powerful piece of ritual magic, the Ritual of Flaying. The spell was targeted on the largest concentration of Gilraidist troops, somewhere in the Brinnon region of Nhased. It took a year to complete and when released, inflicted unbelievable amounts of damage to both land and life. The effects were far in excess of what was intended; shockwaves rippled out from the original target for nearly two hundred miles, exterminating all life and reducing the countryside to a magically poisoned wasteland. Technically, this won the war for the Voicers, but their country was effectively destroyed. Over half the population of Nhased was killed in one day. Karsten and Lanirkos were both ruined and the Cathederal of the One, centre of their faith, was destroyed and inaccessible. The Voice was not seen again after the Flaying, and it is supposed that he was destroyed by his own apocalypse.