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For the Maker, this incident proved to be too much. Already troubled by its creation willingness to strike [[The First Bargain]] and the subsequent creation of The Cuckoo, it is said the death of its sister caused the God-From-Stone to fall into a torpor. Its artistic creations grew twisted as it worked upon them. Fearful of ever leaving a flaw in its work it never truly finished a project again. As "improvement" was laid over "improvement" the appearance of its creations grew warped and grotesque. It resolved to find the flaw in its work and correct it, an exercise in madness that only served to alienate it from its fellow Forge Hours, and would consume its mind for the rest of its days.
But the slaying of the Butterfly left far greater fractures in the relations between Hours and men, to a degree even The Great Serpent could not fully ignore. Before now the Hours had widely been seen by both themselves and their mortal flocks as truly infallible and immortal. The shattering of the First-From-Stone disproved this notion and sewed far-reaching doubts. 'What else might the Gods be wrong about?' the mortals wondered. 'What if my rivals choose to kill me too? What shall I do to them?' As the Ferryman took the remains of its "sibling" to be interred in the innermost sanctums of [[The Halls of Silence]], dicourse discourse between the Hours grew strained, as each could not fully shake the fear they might be the next of their number to fall.
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 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 and 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 formed 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?
In their arrogance, they turned against the Ferryman in a bid to steal eternal life back from death itself. The Birds have always been among the most freedom-driven of the Hours, and so it was no true surprise when [[The Peacock]], [[The Caladrius]], [[The Silver Owl]] and [[The Cuckoo]] joined with them to enact their plan. The They even made plans to resurrect Adonibaal into a new body, so that his divine incarnation might lead them into a new era where they ruled all the world.
And so the Hours engaged in bloodshed amongst themselves a second time, beginning the short-lived conflict the Histories now call [[The War in Heaven]]. Visible to both the House and the Histories, the four Hours flew to the Moon and dared to attack the Ferryman in its own domain. Several Hours rose to support the Ferryman and the natural order, and the Anaconda led their servants into a brief but bloody battle that threatened to shatter the Halls.
But this played into the hands of the Priests of the Second Flood. With the Hour of death and its supporters distracted by the invasion, once more they enacted a forbidden ritual of Knock to open a portal from the King's Palace to the Halls. In their arrogance, they thought they could control the Dead that would emerge, providing them with an army of deathless Bayali spirits they could use to engulf conquer the world.
They thought wrong.
The battle for the Moon, coupled with the introduction of masterless Knock power weakened the seals on the crypt of the Butterfly Hatching. Taking the infusion of power for her own, the Butterfly partially resurrected itself. But its spirit returned from the lightless realms beyond the House... wrong. It was twisted and broken, warped by the energies of chaos and enthropyentropy: First of [[The Gods-From-Nowhere]]. Before it could be re-interred in its crypt, the undead Butterfly struck the boundary between the Second History and the Halls. Instead of a portal they could control, the Second Flood rended forth a great Wound in the world. And upon swallowing them whole and stranding them in the Realm of the Dead, it disgorged an endless tide of maddened Dead and impossible chitinous monsters, driven only by the desire to consume all the world. [[The Blight]] had begun.
Upon witnessing the devastation being wrought below, both sides immediately abandoned the conflict to restore order to the Second History. As the Ferryman worked to regain control of the Hall and reseal the Nowhere contained within, the other Hours as one emerged into the Second to fight back the seemingly-endless tide of souls. Adonibaal, with great sorrow, at last returned to the History of his birth. Gazing with disgust upon the evidence of his people's excess still visible among the ruins, he led only the worthy among his people to safety. Those soldiers who were loyal to him and not the treacherous priests were allowed to follow him even further when he returned to the Mansus, becoming the Deep Guard that attend his divine throne. While the History itself was largely saved, what little rubble remained of the Levant made it clear that the Empire of Bayal would never rise again.
Regretting the role it played in causing the loss of so many lives it had sworn to protect, the Caladrius worked in tandem with the Names of the Great Serpent to stitch closed the gaping wound allowing the Dead into the world. To their horror, it was discovered the damage done by this new power called [[Nowhere]] was ''irrevocable''. They could reduce the tide of Dead returning to the History to a trickle, but never would the barrier between worlds be able to fully heal. [[Nowhere]] was henceforth declared the enemy of all that was, and a power the Great Serpent decreed they must defend the world against.
When the tide at last was stemmed, the Hours returned to the House. They'd been were "victorious", but for most there was no satisfaction to be held in found compared to the terrible price of the Bird's experiment in "eternal life". But while the fighting had ceased, the divisions between Hours that caused the fighting remained, only deepening as the differing sides found blame for the disaster in their enemies.
For the first time, the divisions in the Hours' ranks began to coalesce and solidify. Those Hours who sought freedom, whether it be endless change, sensation, exploration, or simple liberty became known as [[The Keys]]. The Hours that wished to maintain order, even if that sometimes meant stymieing progress became [[The Doors]]. The Doors resolved to prevent any further conflict in the House, even if that meant resorting to violence.
As much as the Hours wished to pursue their grievances further, the presence of the Great Serpent prevented the Hours from warring. Both sides knew that if they were the ones to attack their rivals first, the Great Serpent would certainly intervene to punish the aggressors. And so history marched on, and the tempers of the Gods slowly cooled over the course of ages. If given enough time, it is possible that a peaceful settlement might have been reached between the two sides.
But the uneasy peace was not to last, however. Ever a free-spirit, the Great Serpent one day decided to explore [[Nowhere]], to better understand what this new power was and how best to defend the Mansus against it. But like the less lesser Hours and Bayali priests that had suffered before it, the Serpent fell victim to its own hubris there, underestimating the power of nonexistenceand being overwhelmed by it. It did not return intact. What ''did'' return were two Hours; the Hour of the [[Snake Tail with Appendages]], a God-from-Nowhere, and the Hour of the Bright-Delver, a God-from-Blood. To the Snake-tailTail, reality itself was pain, and it sought only to destroy all that restricted it. To the Delver, reality was beautiful, and the world and the Glory should be available to all to make the world even nicer.
With the Great Serpent dead, conflict was clearly all but inevitable. In preparation, the Hours began amassing their forces for the coming conflict. In an effort to prevent the total breakdown of diplomacy and the destruction of the Serpent's peace, a cabal of radical scholars and rogue Long concocted an audacious deception. They invented stories of the Hour of [[The Deceiver]] a False-Hour of lies and fraud. They weaved tales of a terrible curse placed over the Fourth History, set in place by the Great Serpent in the event of its death.
It was said that the Serpent's Curse would instantly destroy any Hour that tried to claim the Fourth History as their own in the absence of the Great Serpent. This deception was enough to make even the Hours hesitate, and fears that a war would prematurely start to conquer the Fourth History slowly dissipated.
[[The Third History]] was traditionally a history controlled by the Doors. Bereft of most forms of divine intervention, mankind developed independently of the occult, growing technologically advanced and spawning vast empires with ambitions of mapping the world.
Unknown to the Doors however, the Keys saw their enemies' domain as the place they were the least likely to check for their influence. They revealed themselves to the primitive people of the Americas and taught them of magic. Unifying them under one banner, the Empire of Keys became the secret power in the Third History. The Keys hoped that with time, they would be able to foster from their new mortal flock an army of powerful sorcerers with whom they'd be able to overwhelm the Doors.
It would ironically be a move initiated by one of the Doors that would ultimately open hostilities. A small territory dispute between the Anaconda and the Snake Tail escalated into open conflict between the two Hours. The Keys rallied behind the Tail, while the Doors moved to support the Anaconda. Soon, it became clear that the small squabble between "sibling" Hours had turned into the excuse both groups needed to vent their growing frustrations with each other.
The war that followed is widely considered to be the greatest and most terrible of the wars the Hours ever engaged in. Their friendships and their duty to protect the mortal world were forgotten as they turned all of their power towards destroying each other. The massive running battle devastated the lower House, and even the physical Doors that restricted access to the House were destroyed in the fighting. Whether it was carelessness or willing spite that caused it, the Chitinous Door, the Glass Door, and the FNORD Door were destroyed irreparably in the fighting.
The war featured numerous incredible feats of divine power that still echo throughout the Histories. The FNORD used its power over FNORD to FNORD all over the FNORD of the FNORD. The Peacock, emerging out of hiding for the first time since his creation, bolstered the ranks of the Keys with Dead souls and Insane Long that seemed to ''refuse'' to die until they were literally hacked to pieces. The FNORD.
At the climax of the final battle however, the Peacock and his followers broke away from the main host of the Key's forces and rushed through the gaping hole of the Chitinous Door into the Upper Mansus just before the Lower House collapsed. With the Doors destroyed, the Hours of Order ceased to consider the Upstart a threat to their war effort. With their own kingdoms in the Upper House defended by scores of their loyal followers, they failed to see how the Peacock could possibly threaten them on his own. The Upstart retreated into the highest rooms of the Upper House to establish [[The Revel Unending]], and largely ceased to be an issue for the remainder of the war.
The war was bloody and costly, with both inheritors of the Great Serpent determined to see their counterpart slain. It was only when in a stroke of terrible, twisted irony, the final inhabitant of the settlement over which the two Hours initially began to fight did they return to their senses and realize the horrible damage they were inflicting on the world. They turned to their comrades and bade them put down their arms, for the war was over. The Ministers convened in Shesha once more, and an uneasy peace was signed between the two sides once more: never again would the Hours meet each other in open warfare.
But without the Great Serpent to enforce such an agreement, the Hours feared that there would be no real way to ensure such an agreement was honored.
==FNORD WIP material==
