The Calamity

The Calamity is the cataclysm that begins the Post Calamity era (PC; year 0 of the Skyfire calendar), about a thousand years before the campaigns. Three betrayer gods, the Three Dooms, rose against the other gods and tried to destroy the world. The first heroes to be called Fatemakers stopped them.

The Three Dooms

A myth recorded by Bralmur in 1019 PC: "three great evils rose up against the gods":

• Tharizdun, Chained Oblivion.
• Zarok, the Thrice Scarred.
• Mol'maroch, the Nethershaper, the strongest of the three "lords of chaos". He ascended through fiendish collaborations and "roared in the faces of six gods".

The dragons of The Chromatic Conclave served the Nethershaper.

The first Fatemakers

In March 2020 (real time) the campaign 1 players replayed the end of the Calamity as level-20 heroes: Herentor (wizard), Kilseth (also written Killysthir, a dragonborn fighter), Drawurum (a dwarven gunsmith), Sploosh (a bird-folk paladin of Helm), Farberos (an elven shadow monk), Hordal and Zaleon (a snake-woman warlock). Tapestries in the Scale Keep of Fort Obsidian still show six of them fighting a great black beast.

The last battle took place in the mountains where Fort Obsidian now stands. Herentor turned the Nethershaper to obsidian, and Kilseth shattered it. The soul of Mystra was then called on to seal the southern continent away. Herentor cast Planetary Schism, which changed the world's weather, then Global Suggestion, then Cosmic Lock, and Mystra's soul became the building blocks of the lock (see Herentor's Wall). Herentor was torn apart, Pandemonium leaked into the world, and she and her ring vanished. Four dragons of the Chromatic Conclave were slain to end the Calamity, and their teeth are magical.

Kilseth's "god" was really an aspect of a death-being who wanted the betrayers held in stasis so that it could rise later.

Aftermath

• The Divine Gate was sealed so that no god could walk Eavaros again. The gods took new names (The New Gods).
• The obsidian remains of the Nethershaper were scattered as the Shards of Obsidian. The largest block lies in the Shrine of the Last in Fort Obsidian. Campaign 3 learned that the Gate stays anchored because "the last god was turned into obsidian and is spread across the galaxy".
• The Fatemakers of campaign 1 took their name from these first heroes.

Other accounts

The campaign 3 Soul Forge murals give a god's-eye version. About 1,010 years ago, five gods (The All Seeing, the Master Maker, The Dawnbringer, the Voidmother and The Orb Weaver) betrayed The Harsh. About 1,000 years ago the Divine Gate fell "after the Calamity". The 2019 campaign 1 notes, which predate this, credit Grix "Fatemaker", a goblin prophet of Tymora, with naming the party.

The Fatemakers' notes

The campaign 1 party's shared notes frame it this way. The gods rose up against the Old Gods, causing or during the Calamity, and trapped the three Calamity gods for trying to destroy the world: Zarok under an Everbright seal, Tharizdun in the "meat pocket" (The Meat Dimension) and Mol'maroch somewhere unknown. Mortals helped the gods overcome them. Of the gods who fought, Mystra "departed the world", Umberlee's mind was shattered trying to push the Calamity back, Gond was wounded, and Gond sent back into the void three forces of nature that had come out of it. Helm, Loviatar and Tymora also took part.