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Bayal, meanwhile, began to stagnate. With everyday citizens regularly practicing magic and occultism, Bayal became a superpower its neighbors and rivals could not hope to match. However, with that sense of superiority came complacency and excess, just as Adonibaal predicted. The Bayali civilization's cultural development screeched to a halt, too focused on their own pleasure to focus on anything else.
From his divine throne Adonibaal could not see -or maybe refused to see- how his people were changing, so focused he was on establishing his own power within the House. To Hours like the Peacock, the Maker and the Ferryman they gave all they had to give for tastier food, finer wine, and inspiration for ever more profane works of "art". Many of Bayal's advances became lost, their inventors trading the very ''idea'' of them to the Ferryman, so that they could never again be learned. As the Bayali lost their reason to excess, the Peacock "learned" more and more about humanity's desires. To this day the argument it remains a matter of hotly contested debate whether the Peacock corrupted the Bayali or the Bayali corrupted the Peacock.
Even the council of magi were not immune to the corruption, and as the years went by the original members passed into the Mansus, they were replaced by a loose-knit cabal of hedonists and jingoistic patriots. This group and their followers made up the composition of a movement calling itself [[The Church of the Second Flood]]. They believed that as they shared the same blood as a now-divine being, it was their right to do whatever they pleased. Why, then, should they be bound to the covenant that their foolish ancestors had made over a thousand years ago?