The Civil War of the Gods brought divine conflict into the mortal world until the Heart of Earin rose from the Underdark and made every god upon the battlefield kneel.
They did not know that Earin had returned. They knew only that they could not risk remaining standing.
War upon creation
The Civil War of the Gods was fought among divine powers whose conflict crossed the boundaries of their realms and fell directly upon Earin. Mortal lands became battlefields for disputes older and larger than the people dying within them.
The war's complete causes remain contested, and later religions describe the allegiances differently. What is certain is that no mortal army could force a conclusion. Marlo Quince therefore sought an older power rather than another side.
The mortal expedition
While the gods fought above, Marlo, Erynd Solen, Vorstag and the Devil descended into the Lower Underdark. Their destination was the Heart of Earin, an object of immeasurable power buried within an ancient temple.
Marlo used the magical feedback of Erynd's silver bracelet to awaken it. The Heart beat once, tore free of the temple and rose through the world as though stone had become air.
The kneeling
The Heart appeared above the battlefield like a new star. Its power was older than every god present. Fighting stopped. Weapons were lowered and the divine hosts knelt, believing the First Light had returned to creation.
Earin had not returned. The Heart was not a literal organ and the expedition had not resurrected the Creator. Yet the possibility was enough. The war halted because the gods, for the first time, feared being judged by something above themselves.
Legacy
Histories often remember the war as a conflict ended by the Heart. That phrasing conceals the mortals who reached it: Vorstag and Merynn's final intervention, Erynd's painful contradiction, Marlo's last great deception and the Devil who erased his own true name so the others could escape.
The Heart's rising did not settle every divine grievance, but it broke the battle and saved the mortal world from the immediate conflict. The ending belonged not to a victorious god, but to four adventurers beneath the earth.
Notes and record
This article combines campaign record, spoken lore and the mythic account preserved in the Earin archive.