The Time of Troubles: The Year Ao Cast Down the Gods

In 1358 DR the gods of Faerûn walked the earth as mortals. Sages call it the Time of Troubles, and it also goes by the Arrival, the Avatar Crisis, the Godswar, the Time of the Avatars, the Fall of the Gods, and the Intervention of Ao. The core story comes from the Avatar series, which was published as three adventures, three novels, and a comic run, all titled Shadowdale, Tantras, and Waterdeep. Later sourcebooks and novels kept adding to it. Some of those additions explain the original story, and a few of them quietly contradict it.

The Theft and the Verdict

The trigger was a theft. Bane and Myrkul stole the Tablets of Fate from Ao, the Overgod, and hid them in Faerûn. They wrongly believed some of Ao's power came from the Tablets. Ao summoned every deity and asked the guilty to hand them back. Nobody came forward.

Ao's answer reached far past the two thieves. In the early evening of Kythorn 15 he cast every god down from the heavens and took their divine power, with one exception: Helm, who was ordered to guard the Celestial Stairways leading back to the divine realms. The decree covered pantheons far from Faerûn too, including the Kara-Turan and Maztican gods.

The theft was only part of his reason. In the Ao article he puts it plainly: "I created gods to serve the Balance, not to twist it to your own ends." The gods had been treating the world as their own amusement and neglecting their faithful. The stolen Tablets were simply the last straw.

When Magic Broke

The decree had three immediate effects:

The Calendar of Dead Gods

The wiki's timeline runs as follows:

The two lists in the wiki disagree on Bhaal's death. The history list gives Eleint 26 and the deaths list gives Eleint 16. Neither is marked as a correction. If your table cares about dates, choose one and tell the players.

Bhaal had seen his death coming. In the years before it he filled Faerûn with his children, the Bhaalspawn, as part of a plan to resurrect himself. The Winding Water absorbed what was left of his essence and turned jet-black and foul-smelling from Boareskyr Bridge to Trollclaw Ford. Myrkul took similar precautions. He poured the remnants of his essence into the Crown of Horns and teleported it away. He also left behind the Spirit-eater curse, which was the half-destroyed soul of one of his Chosen.

The Wider Godswar

Other gods died that year as well:

Several other gods appeared without dying. Gond washed up on Lantan in the form of a gnome. Lolth gave Yvonnel Baenre the power to destroy House Oblodra. Sseth fought Ubtao in Chult and fell asleep, and Set took over his worship.

Ao Grinds the Tablets

Midnight, Cyric, Kelemvor, and the cleric Adon recovered the Tablets of Fate. Ao then ground them into powder. By his reckoning the gods had already shown they did not care about their real duties. The lesson cost a great deal: the laws of Realmspace began to unravel, and the Era of Upheaval started.

That outcome fits awkwardly with another part of the lore. In the Ao article, Khelben explains to Kyriani that the Tablets record the gods' places in the balance of nature. A separate creation account in the same article says Ao made the Tablets after the Tearfall to keep Abeir and Toril apart. Under that account, destroying them weakened the barrier between the twin worlds, and land began trading places between them in small, almost unnoticeable pieces. The first version is about bookkeeping. The second turns Ao's punishment into a slow cosmic hazard.

Who Came Out Divine

Ao also lifted the barrier keeping the Mulhorandi god-kings from their divine selves on the Outer Planes. The incarnations left Mulhorand, and Horustep III became its first truly mortal pharaoh. From this point the gods needed mortal worship to survive. Ao intended that rule to make them guardians of the Balance rather than kings.

What Later Books Changed

Few of the deaths stayed final. Cyric and Bane's half-fiend son Iyachtu Xvim divided Bane's portfolio between them until 1372 DR, when Bane came back and destroyed Xvim. Adventurers freed Waukeen in 1371 DR. Ao's own rules had flaws. No two gods in a pantheon could share a portfolio, and clashes ended with a god fading, two gods merging, or a portfolio changing. Those rules encouraged the gods to battle each other. In 1482 DR, during the Second Sundering, Ao threw them out, rewrote the Tablets of Fate, and set up more flexible rules. Mortal memory of him faded as well. Written records of Ao were gone by 1372 DR, and the last cults of Ao had disappeared by 1479 DR.

Using the Time of Troubles at the Table

  1. The Legacy of Helm. The wild and dead magic zones the crisis left behind are ready-made dungeon hazards. In the North, the Church of Helm lost worshippers and faced persecution because of the damage done there. A Helmite NPC from the North can carry that resentment around with them.
  2. The black river. Bhaal's poison runs through the Winding Water between Boareskyr Bridge and Trollclaw Ford. Use it as a cursed travel stretch, or as a lure that draws Bhaalspawn and anyone chasing his resurrection. For a darker version, send the party after the Crown of Horns.
  3. A false church of Ao. The cult in Zazesspur in Tethyr had ministers who could cast divine spells. Their power turned out to come from Cyric. The players can uncover this and decide what to do with a congregation that has been worshipping a lie.

Sources