There was never a more decadent or powerful city in all of Partum than Gothortus the ancient capital of the Third Imperium. As the government began to falter and society began to unravel tensions started to rise among the nobility who were anxious to secure their own fortunes against whatever uncertainty lay ahead. Some of the most powerful of these nobles found a leader of sorts in Callidus Magna, the Supreme Patriarch of the Holy Imperium Church. The origins of the civil war that erupted can be traced by historians to the whispering influence of this conniving and diabolical man, a grand schemer in priestly guise of the highest order.

Callidus Magna quickly brought the ruling houses of Gothortus under his sway through the power and influence of the Church and used his clever machinations to bring them to the point of taking matters into their own hands. The Imperator, a narcissistic buffoon named Inertis, was caught utterly unaware and off guard as he left the Grand Cathedral of Gothortus following the annual service in celebration of St. Gregory. Not only did the Supreme Patriarch stab Inertis repeatedly with his own ceremonial dagger, but the leaders of the ruling houses joined in and drew blood themselves from the flailing Imperator. His wife and children were hacked into pieces by commoners loyal to the nobles, and then the violence spilled out across The Pontiff’s Square directly in front of the Grand Cathedral.

This was the first act of what became the eternal civil war that rages even today in the ruins of Gothortus. Thousands of minor nobles who had been in town for the holiday celebration and had been labelled as loyal to the fallen Imperator were slaughtered in the streets and villas of the great city. Soldiers turned on each other depending on which of the lords they now claimed as their sovereigns and the famously impregnable capital of the Third Imperium fell from the inside out. Bodies were stacked in The Pontiff’s Square and Callidus Magna, surrounded by his devoted cadre of priests, clerics, and fallen paladins cackled in delight as he claimed dominion over the empire as God’s chosen replacement to a weak and ineffectual earthly governor.

The sheer horror of what was allowed to occur in what has been termed “St. Gregory’s Massacre” is perhaps unrivaled by any event in the many histories of Partum. There have been many curious seekers of knowledge that have made the pilgrimage to the deadly dangerous city of Gothortus to see for themselves where this tragic event played out. Those that returned from these journeys reported a supernaturally unsettling energy in the city and especially in The Pontiff’s Square. Nowhere else, even in the lands of the Diosian Lodge, can such negative energy be encountered. If ever there was a place where earth and hell met it is here where the darkest evil of men and demons fester in unceasing celebration of humanity’s vanity and decay.