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The Calamitous History of The Steel Realms
The impact of the The Calamitous History of The Steel Realms is generally understood; Prevalent recorded knowledge.
The calamitous history is the direct cause of its lack of progress (especially in Science and Technology on Helca) and unity. Forces have aligned against the living and Lands of Light to constantly besiege it. This has resulted in the once united species and nations of the realms seeing large areas of the eastern continent as The Broken Lands. In recent memory, the The Long Summer of Elancil in CY 9000 provided a small respite in the constant string of calamities. This string of calamity includes large-scale deaths, massive threats and setbacks that have forced the population to rely on direct ties of religion and occult ideas rather than the slow progress of discovery and science.
A State Purposefully Maintained?
Some sages and those of great wisdom believe the pace of progress as been forcibly manipulated.
An Unsolved Problem: All things being even, the minor manifestations of divine power can be countered when the followers are leveraging them to attain political goals. A divine principal and their followers may have overall goals, but every ounce of energy isn’t focused on a single goal to which all all others are subverted. That is a global crusade, and only the Orrish and the Unholy Trio yet practice it – it is their sole purpose and it has become that for their Followers. The Godspeak Accord has limited the amount of crusades because principals have agreed not to manifest directly or by Avatar in order to preserve the planet from destruction that was wrought in the Valley of Sighs. Trampled terrain, sundered Earth, clouds of disease and malaise that roll across the countryside. Geysers of foul muck and mud and blood. Storms that come into being rage and fizzle out sometimes last for years and sometimes only moments. Some of them gather and fling magic, corrupt auras, and manifest spirits that still haunt the location and rip apart the surroundings with a magical rending that blasts bare down to rock and strips flesh from bones or changes flesh on the bone or the bones within. This tenuous balance remains in place, waiting for a solution or for the Godspeak Accord to be cast aside and global armageddon to begin.
Inhibited Scientific Progress: In some cases those responsible or foreseen by the gods as having a pivotal part have been killed. They are nameless and their lives would have come to mean something had they been allowed to flourish. There is the problem with the Orrish followers of the Church of Darkness in regards to progress. Progress of science would undermine their ultimate crusade from within. So they themselves cannot have progress. But progress within the greater realms can be leveraged by them, controlled by their clergy and those few they allow to understand such things. In reality, it is the gods of light who have controlled or smashed progress to control its pace. Balthazar is the only exception and he is within a constant struggle to advance the ideas of technology in progress and the reliance that within such an order, a solution to the orish problem can be found. The forces of nature are without an actual side. An ebb and flow is natural, and they see things on a longer time scale and tend to side with the view of awakened Helca itself. In that eventually the Orrish problem will be resolved and they will leave Helca and it will be allowed to develop without such a vile intent and torturous influence.