What is The First Heresy?

At the center of Aer Arnad are the Salt marshes, where once the greatest cities of the Empire, or indeed, all the world once stood. Now nothing of them remains. No witness to this great calamity yet lives, and er the present day its events were long lost to memory, though a tale has arisen and here bears mentioning.

After the Dragonswar, nearly two thousand years ago, The Avariel Sorcerer Lord, Aedar Arnad IV, of that line of which the Empire takes its name, having conquered all the lands which were his wont, and driving out all the dragons to the Blasted Wastes, and assuming the mantle of ruler of the world, saw fit to declare himself a god.

The peoples of Aer Arnad, besotted overmuch with the victories of their winged and celestial Emperor, followed willingly, though they knew not it would be their doom, for the True Gods of the realms soon set forth many prophets and emissaries, seeking to dissuade Aedar, but he would not stay his lust for power and slew every cleric and priest who would speak against his ambition. And thus enraged, the gods of the realm challenged Aedar to battle which would determine the fate of the world, gathering all their might into a storm that hung darkly over the cities and summoned him forth.

The Emperor had long forsaken humility and so he responded in kind, and with him the host of his armies, all of them Elves and Men who pledged their lives to him and worshipped him. And after they gathered all of them into those lands, and over many days had called out to the skies, and looked up and beat their shields and mocked the gods for their cowardice in remaining aloft and out of reach. The gods struck forth from the heavens and smote them all as one, and the cities were rent, and their people were slain, and the whole of them cast underground, and then that pit was filled over with a great flood but of the salt sea so that none from it could gain any succor in thirst.

And the sea was tainted, and seeded with many dread plants so that growing they arrayed as tangle impassible, and their boughs were barren or poisoned, and the shade which fell from them was as ice on the skin, even in the summer months as Saultum set highest in the sky.

At it's height, the Empire of Aer Arnad encompassed all of Linothor and much of Sulgate, ere it's fall came thousands of years ago. But it's destruction was not total, for an heir of Aedar yet remained to propagate its empire, so that line continues to this day.