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Alliances and Empires

I'm planning out the history of the world and how the different nations came to be, so let me give a brief summary of what I have planned:

*I am going to skip a little bit of background info though

Humanity was freed from the oppressive gods of Earth known as the Aethar. Humanity was divided by their patron deities and cities and nations were locked in constant war. With the destruction of heaven, man is now in control of his own destiny. However with the destruction of heaven the spiritual "walls" around our realm have been weakened and now, "outter" gods can penetrate our world with their influence and voice, though they were not physical deities like the Aethar and are significantly less powerful. Many cities were quick to seek another god to serve while others protest against the idea of being slaves again. An Order began to form (name undecided) that wishes to remove religion from Earth.

For years this order destroys anything and everything with religious identity. While this is happening, the founding city-fortress of this Order, Ankath, begins developing their own religion. It was discovered that humans are direct descendants from the primordial race and are the only race/species to have immortal souls (even the gods do not have souls) and now with the destruction of heaven there is no afterlife. They start to form the Church of Man, worshipping their own former divinity and using a spell to "create" their own "heaven" which is essentially a place where souls can go and retain their consciousness as opposed to just sort of "bleeding" out into the world's mana, becoming formless and nameless.

The Order is finds this repulsive to revert back to religious worship, wishing instead to live by reason and logic. The Order splits off into its own entity and begins to form an empire of loyal cities who agree with their ideals, and the same is happening to the nations around the Church of Man city Ankath. The world is split into a massive civil war between the Order's provinces and the Church's. Many holds and cities caught in between their war flee to the northern reaches of the world. After time these refugees form their own provinces and kingdom while also taking over weaker nations. These kingdoms come together to form an alliance, wishing that they must unite to prevent the bloody war of the two mega nations while still wishing independence to rule as their own nations. They form their legions and propose a threat of war against the Order and Church's faction. While the Order and the Church have claimed many cities as their own, they are outnumbered by the alliance and have reluctantly agreed to a peace treaty.

The Church of Man was also on a campaign to erase any religion besides their own. The treaty allows the church of man to continue to exist but it has no military power anymore, and the Order is forced to cease their crusade, instead allowing individual kingdoms to decide their religious beliefs. The treaty believes in no central power or empire and encourages kingdoms to govern themselves in their own accordance while still being allies to each other and uniting in times of war (there are many other nations besides these that are waging their own wars and conquests)

The Order agrees to the terms to prevent war but declines to join the alliance, instead putting up walls on its borders and becoming an isolated country. A proposal was made to create a legion of demon hunters to fight against some of the new dark outter gods (not all are evil, as many the northern nations worship these outter deities) This legion would be known as the Watch. It does not believe in any one central god (though it was founded by worshipers of the god Kurisos, also called "the purifying flame"; there was a much smaller group of witch hunters called the Keepers of the Flame, who fought the forces of evil while worshiping Kurisos) but this new legion allows a certain specific pantheon to be worshiped that they deem "good" to prevent any one god having superiority. Most of the Church's warriors formed this Watch, as did many knights from the alliance. The Watch is allowed to have "bases" throughout the lands and kingdoms but are given no political power or authority, to keep a balance of powers between state and religion.




Things are not finalized yet (especially names) but this is what I have so far. Thoughts?
 
I think what you have so far is great. What is the motivation of the order? Why do they want to destroy religion?

Basically the Aethar were oppressive tyrannic gods who ruled over the heavens of earth (there are outter heavens, but are beyond the borders of our world) the gods fought each other for power and needed worship to sustain themselves. So they would make it impossible for people to live such as not giving them rain or even inflicting plagues on their own people so they would be forced to worship them. Prayers were not enough to satisfy their hunger and killing and violence gave them more "nourishment"

So now that the Aethar are gone, they want to remove any sort of religion from the world. But now the influence of the outter gods is present although they exist in their own realms/dimensions and do not have physical power such as the Aethar who existed within the boundaries of Earth. They want mankind to be the master of his own fate and honestly they have good reason for hating any kind of god.
 
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trentonian7

Troubadour
So because they once had oppressive rulers, they're launching a war against all other nations with rulers of a similar nature to their oppressors? It seems like an unrealistic motivation

Rome used to have kings- they realized pretty quickly that they hated kings and established a republic. That being said, while their kings were oppressive, they didn't wage war on their neighbors in order to overthrow other oppressive rulers. Ironically, with their emperors, they more or less went back to a form of monarchy, though the emperors were very careful to distinguish themselves from the early Roman kings. Your order might have a similar arc with a new God.
 

Boiled Water

Dreamer
I always like a world fueled by religious conflict. Are everyday people as zealous as the organizations that control their nations? Or do they just follow who's in charge?

You also said that it was discovered that mankind is the only race to have immortal souls. Are there races other than humanity inhabiting your world? Sorry I'm asking more questions. This is interesting.
 
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