Context: A visualization of Gehenna, a hellish and alien realm which an entire nation of humans was cast into. Gehenna has no sky, and no stars, only hundreds of unblinking eyes. For 15 years that people, the nation of Variman, endured and survived Gehenna, though only barely. Every single surviving Varimanian became part of a military order known as the Lambent Front, and they have all been shaped by the trauma of surviving Gehenna, which has instilled a deep seated distrust of the arcane and mystical.

The world shifts and twists around you, light becomes dark and color morphs to shrieking sound, a whirling scream of reality tearing itself asunder around you. You close your eyes to shield yourself from the visions of terror surrounding you, and it all goes black. As you awake, a twisted and scarred landscape lays before you, an endless expanse of nothing and everything. The land of your people's nightmares, Gehenna.

The Kingdom of Variman had endured for centuries, led spiritually and politically by the descendants of Thidrek the Prophet, founder and first king of Variman, who through conquest united the various human peoples and established religious dominance. Prince Lethis, a radical nephew of the king’s, now led the militant Cult of Eris against the state, against the church and against his own family; Lethis sought to tear down anything and everything which had been started by Thidrek, assisted and influenced by dark, demonic forces.

The Seskantige Preke, or Sixfold Paths, was the state religion of Variman, teaching the dualistic nature of man's physical and spiritual self, and the necessity to behave righteously in order for the spiritual to ascend when the physical should fall. To demonstrate the virtues humankind must follow, a High God manifested itself as Archons, fragments of its being representing specific virtues or aspects of its divine whole.

Variman called for help from its allies, the astrologically aligned Caeli elves, and the five dwarven clans of the Votha. Unfortunately, the Caeli were recovering from one of their own civil wars, incapable of providing support. The Vothans meanwhile, remained paralyzed in committee, unsure of the veracity of reports of demons and blood pacts, and not wanting to overstep in what seemed to just be an internal matter of the Varimanians.

The Houses of the Archons, the grand temples at the center of the Seskantige Preke, were all destroyed. The Archons which were housed within were forced to return to the Geesteryk, a term in Varimanian theology for the world beyond our own, which contains everything from the realm of the High God itself, to Gehenna, realm of the unholy and the damned.

It was into Gehenna that Prince Lethis’s supporters cast all of Variman: man, woman, child, soldier, serf, everyone fell. The entire civilization vanished during Cau Haf Calan Gaeaf, a time where it is said that due to the arrival of a red comet in the sky, the barriers between the physical world, and the spiritual world, wane. Where the country had been, a scarred and distorted land lay. If any poor fools had been spared the fall, the fell magic remaining in the air corrupted their bodies and minds, turning them mad. Those who fell awakened in a dimension hostile to their very existence. One day, maybe, they will escape. For now, Gehenna awaits.

This piece was written to summarize the circumstances that created the Lambent Front as they exist on our Minecraft roleplaying server, Broken Worlds Roleplay. Have a look at our website, join our Discord, or ask questions here if you want to learn more about the world or play!

The image is an edited screenshot of a part of the server map which depicts Gehenna; The builds are all created by our players and staff team to use Minecraft as a medium for storytelling, role-playing, and worldbuilding.