Parasite Gods

Gods are common in this setting while the gods after the apocalypse are weak pale reflections of true divinity there are gods that do exist strange and powerful beings from outside the Great Machine.

Parasite gods they are known as, some were banished from the patheons within the machine for slights or crimes alien to mortals. Others stranger still grew outside of the machine, feeding on the gods blood that dripped between the great gears.

The events of the Broken Worlds were started by one such god.

Her name was lost when the worlds shattered most just called her Isharia, translated from the primoridal tongue into: Mother in the Dark. She unlike others of her kin looked past the great gears and saw the machine for what it was a harvester of mortals. Eons she spent weeping for the mortals who lived and died to the capacious whims of true gods. She traveled the breadth of the machine until she found a spot where she could speak between the gears.

The mortals within their cage heard her voice and suffered. Those near suffered horrific deaths and those far were driven mad. Slowly the weeping god learned to only whisper to the mortals.

She taught them how to see the walls of their prison.

She taught them how to shape the bars.

She taught them how the gods feed and how the gods blood flows.

But most importantly she taught them how to use it.

A new form of magic, one based on the great machine.

The new mortals took her teaching and sought to recreate the machine. They succeeded all too well, creating not only a machine within it but creating a nascent god, unknowingly the creation was anathema to the Great Machine. At first it was small, barely noticeable as it grew, feeding on the gods blood and feeding on the Great Machine. Ages past before the gods saw the threat for what it was, when it had already grown large and absorbed a true god unwritting it entirely.

The Great Machine struggled under the burden of its unwanted pregnancy and the true gods were forced to act. They cast the nascent unformed machine out tearing a hole in the side of Creation. Gods blood poured out into the void.

The Mother in the Dark was outside, waiting, when it was cast out. The gods blood flowed and formed around the parasite god. It forced reality upon a being that exists outside of it. She was torn asunder into three.

The Crone, The Maiden and the Storm.

One of them cares for mortals much like she did before.

One of them hates reality and seeks to destroy everything

The last, the great storm is her body spasming and thrashing without a mind to guide it. Her body is why the north western portion of the map is unexplored. Only the few duvel'cai storm hunters dare travel near the great mother storm and they will never sell their secret routes and maps.

While there is no one in this setting who knows the truth of the Mother in the Dark she is the reason the territory is called the Storm Region. Named for the colossal grandmother storm beyond the great sand sea of the Duvel Cai.