Demmazon's Realm

Demmazon's Realm was the home realm of Demmazon, separate from the mortal world but intimately connected to it for much of the history of the Age of Wonders. The connection between the two realms was created by Demmazon himself when he used the power embedded within the world to create the The Five Gifts.

The realm later became the prison and battlefield of the newly ascended gods. Its final separation from the mortal world marked the end of the Age of Wonders and caused the catastrophic reshaping of the world that became known as the Fall of the Age of Wonders.

Creation of the Connection

When Demmazon created the Five Gifts, he drew upon an enormous amount of magical energy embedded within the planet itself. Using that much power directly would have destroyed the world.

To prevent this, Demmazon merged a portion of his own realm with the mortal world. His realm filled the gap created by the removal of the planet's power, allowing the world to survive while it slowly healed.

The connection created an actual physical boundary between the two realms at the End of the World. The ocean appeared to fall over the edge of the world in an enormous waterfall. Crossing that boundary carried a traveler into Demmazon's realm, effectively functioning as a gigantic permanent Gate. The boundary stretched for miles and was once enormous enough to span much of the world.

This connection also had an unexpected consequence: it supplied the world with access to the magical power that had previously been embedded within it. During the Age of Wonders, virtually everyone possessed some inherent ability to access magic without having to undertake dedicated magical study.

The connection was intended to be temporary. Demmazon expected to separate the realms once the mortal world had healed sufficiently to sustain itself again. The healing process, however, took centuries.

The Imprisonment of Demmazon

During the final years of the Age of Wonders, Demmazon became unable to intervene directly in events on the mortal world.

A Korvak named Marstalbin had somehow survived the Korvak War. Marstalbin became the hidden force behind the chaos surrounding the rise of the new gods and constructed a prison within Demmazon's Realm that prevented Demmazon from interfering.

The prison combined technology and magic, including magical elements that were alien to the world. Demmazon was held within a globe-shaped structure powered by enormous beams of energy.

Marstalbin also revealed to the Heroes of Aegea that Demmazon was not a purely benevolent deity, but a Neutral god. This revelation challenged the Heroes' understanding of their god, but they nevertheless continued their effort to free him.

The Temple

Demmazon's temple stood within his realm and became the site of the final confrontation of the Age of Wonders.

The Heroes entered the temple while the conflict between Correries, Magerris, and their respective allies was reaching its climax. Correries, unable to confront the Heroes personally while fighting the other newly ascended gods, sent an avatar to stop them.

The Heroes defeated the avatar and continued toward Demmazon's prison.

The temple later became significant again when Thorn Runehammer and the other survivors returned to the mortal world. Thorn believed that a Rogue Stone containing the soul of Jack remained somewhere within the temple, having been created or left there during the Heroes' confrontation with Correries' avatar. A surviving remnant of the original gateway eventually provided access to the realm again.

The Flow of Time

Time does not pass at the same rate within Demmazon's Realm as it does in the mortal world.

During the party's visit to the realm in Under the Bus, they spent only four days there. When they returned through the gateway, they learned that four weeks had passed in the mortal world during that same period.

This establishes that time within Demmazon's Realm passes at approximately one-quarter the rate of time in the mortal world: four days within the realm corresponded to approximately four weeks outside it.

The difference has significant consequences for anyone traveling between the two realms. A relatively brief expedition into Demmazon's Realm can consume considerably more time for those who remain in the mortal world. This also helps explain how the survivors who escaped the realm could experience their own passage of time differently from those who remained behind.

The available campaign material establishes the difference through the party's experience, but does not establish why time flows differently between the realms or whether the ratio is perfectly constant under all circumstances.

The Release of Demmazon

The Heroes eventually reached Demmazon's prison.

The prison could not simply be opened or destroyed. The Heroes discovered that the energy beams powering it had to be blocked, and the only means available to them was to place themselves directly in the beams.

One by one, the Heroes sacrificed themselves. Their bodies were destroyed, but their sacrifice gave Demmazon the brief opportunity he needed to break free of the prison.

The liberation of Demmazon did not end the danger. The newly ascended gods were already engaged in a battle of immense power, and Demmazon recognized that allowing that battle to continue in the mortal world would destroy it.

The Separation

Demmazon's solution was to separate the two realms permanently.

The newly ascended gods were drawn into Demmazon's Realm, where their conflict could continue without directly destroying the mortal world. Once they were within his realm, Demmazon severed the connection between the two worlds.

The separation occurred before the planet had completely healed from the power that had originally been drawn from it. As a result, the consequences were catastrophic.

Mountains collapsed in some places and rose in others. Oceans rushed into areas that had previously been dry while other bodies of water disappeared. The landscape was fundamentally reshaped.

The massive gateway connecting the realms rapidly closed as the separation took effect. Thorn and the few surviving companions who had accompanied the Heroes attempted to escape back into the mortal world. Fewer than a dozen succeeded. Thorn was the last to escape, actually standing on the boundary when it closed.

The destruction caused by the separation became the defining event of the Fall of Age of Wonders.

The End of Magic

The separation also ended the world's easy access to magic.

The pervasive magical ability possessed by ordinary people during the Age of Wonders had depended upon the connection between the mortal world and Demmazon's Realm. Once that connection was severed, that inherent magical ability disappeared.

Only those who had dedicated themselves to the study and practice of magic retained the ability to manipulate magical forces. Technology that depended upon the combination of magic and machinery likewise began to fail.

This collapse transformed the world almost overnight and contributed directly to the end of the civilization that had produced the Age of Wonders.

What Became of the Realm

The separation left Demmazon's Realm once again isolated from the mortal world.

The new gods remained there, and their battle was contained within the realm rather than continuing to devastate the planet. The original gateway spanning the world disappeared, although a small remnant survived in the region where the mortal world had once been connected to Demmazon's domain.

By the Under the Bus era, that remnant was a magical gateway less than twenty feet across. It still led into Demmazon's domain, but its existence was apparently unknown to the wider world. Thorn discovered it while exploring the new land created in the aftermath of the separation.

Thorn himself could not pass through the gateway. His escape at the moment of separation had severed his connection to magic completely, leaving him unable to interact with magic in the normal manner. The gateway was therefore unusable to him despite leading directly back to the realm he had once escaped from.

The New Land

The place where the mortal world had once been joined to Demmazon's Realm did not simply return to its previous geography.

After the separation, an entirely new continent rose from the ocean in that region. The land was initially barren and volcanic.

Among the survivors who reached it was a druid. With the druid's help, the survivors established a forest and introduced plant and animal life. Thorn eventually made his home there and remained after the other original survivors died.

This land therefore represents the physical aftermath of the connection between the two realms: what had once been the boundary between worlds became part of a radically transformed mortal world after the realms were separated.

Significance

Demmazon's Realm is inseparable from the history of the Age of Wonders.

It was:

the source of the connection that allowed the world to survive the creation of the Five Gifts;
the source of the pervasive magical environment that supported the Age of Wonders;
the location of Demmazon's imprisonment;
the site of the final confrontation between the Heroes of Aegea and the forces responsible for his imprisonment;
the refuge into which the newly ascended gods were drawn;
the place where the conflict between the new gods was ultimately contained;
and the realm whose separation from the mortal world caused the catastrophic changes that ended the Age of Wonders.

The mortal world and Demmazon's Realm were therefore not simply two adjacent planes. For centuries, they functioned as parts of a single interconnected system, and the eventual severing of that connection was one of the defining events in the history of the world.