The Age of Life

  Atem's undertaking to bind the elemental spheres by an underworld had the unintended consequence of giving life to a new elemental species called the Rot. This gestalt fungi consciousness on the elemental sphere of wood, a virulent plague capable of infecting all living organisms via spores and possessing them to some degree. Ultimately, the Rot killed its hosts and converted them into undead servants slowly evolving into the Rot's true form.

  The norn of the elemental wood sphere, Medeina, used the Rot to her advantage. Like her sisters, she sought to find a way to destroy her sphere and ultimately Aeon itself - thereby killing Atem. As the former-protector of her sphere she could unlock the qi reservoirs deep within the core and so she gorged the Rot upon its energy until the well ran dry. The Rot was unstoppable by then, but Medeina's elemental servants the Råo turned on their creator as their numbers were consumed by the fungi. In the final days of their world when they stood on the brink of total annihilation they resorted to extreme measures - they burnt themselves alive. The fire was cultivated around the world, a campaign of scorched destruction, leaving only their last stand's refuge untouched by the flames.

  Finally, the Rot had been purged from all but the last remaining survivors, nine råo slowly being consumed by the fungal plague and far from the untouched paradise of their refuge, which would once again spread out to cover the world with life again - but this was not to be, at least not on their world. As the nine prepared to sacrifice themselves to the fires, fate intervened with the purge of the shrivatsa, shattering the elemental sphere in a collision with reality of Wyrd.

  The nine found themselves in a barren frozen landscape, far to the north of Wyrd. An unnatural climate for these tree-folk, they satisfied themselves in knowing that they would freeze to death in that place, the Rot would never escape either. Meanwhile the last refuge of the råo gave the gift of nature to Wyrd. Plants and trees spreading around the world over the centuries and millennia that followed. With life came sentience, beyond the elemental species of each world - animals evolved under the influence of Wyrd's qi - awakening to sapience around the world. But the Rot was not completely gone, some of it's spores survived the great destruction of their world, finding hosts to continue the fungal entity's existence. Given time, even Wyrd would fall to the Rot.