Context
In the centuries following humanity’s emergence, the Alorama and the Nyx waged open war across the face of Eldara. Mountains crumbled beneath the footsteps of manifested gods. Seas boiled as rival deities clashed above the waves. Mortal civilizations rose and fell as little more than pieces on a divine game board, their prayers answered with devastating literalness, their lands reshaped at celestial whim.
The Aevari watched themselves and their children’s children tear apart the world they had been charged to protect. The elemental foundations of Eldara groaned under the strain of constant divine manifestation. The Aetheric Weave itself began to fray.
United for the first time since the shaping of the world, the four Aevari gathered at the Nexus of Elements, the point where all four elemental planes touch the material realm. There, they invoked the authority granted them by the First Pact, dominion over Eldara, and forged a binding covenant that would forever change the relationship between gods and mortals.
The Alorama protested that they sought only to protect and guide. The Nyx raged that they would not be caged. But the Aevari spoke with the voice of creation itself, and even gods must bow before the fundamental forces that compose reality.
The Terms of Separation
Article I: The Prohibition of Divine Presence
The Alorama and the Nyx shall not manifest upon the Material Plane in any form bearing the fullness of their consciousness or the wholeness of their divine will. No avatar, no vessel, no incarnation shall walk upon Eldara bearing the unified awareness of a deity.
The divine may not walk where mortals tread, for the weight of godhood breaks the ground beneath.
Article II: The Silence Between Realms
No deity of the Alorama or Nyx shall speak unto mortals with voice, word, or direct telepathic communion while the mortal walks in awareness. The barrier between the divine planes and the Material Plane shall remain impermeable to conscious and deliberate divine intent.
Let the gods fall silent, that mortals might learn to hear their own voices.
Article III: The Withdrawal of Divine Hands
The Alorama and the Nyx shall not directly alter, create, destroy, or transmute any being, object, or location upon the Material Plane through exercise of divine will. The shaping of Eldara belongs to mortal hands alone.
What mortals build, let mortals build. What mortals break, let mortals mend.
Article IV: The Boundary of Bestowal
No deity shall grant power, blessing, or gift directly unto any mortal being. Divine energy shall not flow unmediated from god to supplicant.
Power taken is power earned. Power given is chains disguised.
Article V: The Preservation of Mortal Will
No deity shall compel, command, dominate, or override the will of any mortal being through divine authority. The gift of choice, granted by the Ethyri themselves, shall remain inviolate.
Even gods may not steal what the cosmos itself has given.
The Sacred Exceptions
For even in separation, the threads that bind creation cannot be wholly severed.
Exception I: The Sovereignty of Domain
The Alorama and Nyx retain their essential connection to the cosmic forces over which they hold dominion. The natural expressions of these domains—the fall of rain, the turning of seasons, the spawning of storms, the fertility of soil, the rhythm of tides—remain within divine purview, for these are not acts of will upon Eldara, but the breathing of creation itself.
A god of storms does not send lightning—they ARE lightning, and lightning must strike.
Exception II: The Law of Answered Devotion
When mortal faith reaches sufficient resonance with a divine domain, the barrier between realms thins of its own accord. Through sacred sites, consecrated ground, and places where worship has accumulated across generations, the divine essence may seep rather than flow—answering not through action, but through presence.
Where mortals reach upward with true faith, divinity may reach down—but only as far as mortal hands extend.
Exception III: The Doctrine of Mortal Vessels
The divine may not grant power unto mortals. However, when a mortal demonstrates exceptional alignment with a divine domain through their own deeds, choices, and nature, they may attune to divine essence through the natural sympathy between kindred forces. Such attunement is not a gift bestowed, but a recognition of what already exists within the mortal soul.
The gods do not make champions. They recognize them.
Exception IV: The Communion of Symbols
Direct speech is forbidden, but the divine may communicate through the language of creation itself, through dreams that arise from a sleeping mind’s natural resonance with divine forces, through omens written in the flight of birds or the patterns of stars, through the synchronicities that emerge when mortal purpose aligns with cosmic will.
A god cannot speak the word, but they may arrange the world until the word speaks itself.
Exception V: The Covenant of Sacred Objects
Items of true significance—those that have absorbed centuries of devotion, been sanctified by great deeds, or been forged at the intersection of mortal craft and divine essence—may serve as anchors between realms. Through such objects, divine power may flow, though the object itself determines the manner and measure of its release.
The gods may not reach through the veil, but the veil has seams, and some threads were woven from both sides.
The Binding and the Price
For the Alorama:
- Their direct presence on Eldara ends, but their influence endures through faithful servants who choose to carry their light
- They may nurture and protect only through the natural expressions of their domains and through those who willingly become extensions of divine will
- Their temples become places of accumulated resonance, where the barrier thins but does not break
For the Nyx:
- Their schemes must now work through mortal agents who embrace shadow by their own will
- They may corrupt and challenge only through the natural expressions of their domains and through those who freely choose the darker path
- Their influence grows strongest where mortal darkness has already taken root
For the Aevari:
- They bind themselves as Wardens of the Covenant, eternally vigilant against violations of the Pact
- They alone retain the right to manifest upon Eldara, but only to enforce the terms of separation
- They accept that their children will resent them, perhaps for eternity
For Mortals:
- The age of gods walking among them ends; they must find their own way
- Those who seek divine connection must prove worthy through deed and devotion
- Free will becomes not merely a gift, but a responsibility—for the gods can no longer save them from themselves
The Hidden Truth
Known only to the Aevari, inscribed in no text, spoken in no tongue:
The Covenant was never meant to silence the gods entirely. It was meant to ensure that mortal choice would forever stand between divine will and mortal reality. The loopholes are not flaws in the binding—they are the binding’s true purpose.
For the Aevari understood what their children did not: gods who can act directly have no need of faith. And gods who have no need of faith eventually have no need of mortals at all.
The Covenant does not weaken the divine. It makes divinity dependent upon mortality.
And in that dependence lies the only true protection Eldara will ever have.
So it was woven. So it shall remain. Until the stars themselves forget how to shine.