The Churn

While movement of domains is natural and constant in most cases, every few thousand years the spiral tends to undergo a violent and terrible period of turbulence that can cause realms to rise/fall or even be created/destroyed. There is great debate as to the true causes of each churn but it is often the result of an extreme imbalance in the sources caused by the actions of one or more people/domains.

Significant energy is committed by many of the more organized domains to prevent churns from occurring. This is especially true of the Fae realms who tend to assign value to the continued rise and protection of their own domain often to the detriment of others. The Fae Court considers prevention of churns to be it's primary goal.

The Fel realms have been scapegoated for past churns. These domains traveling so very near to the abyss, are often consumed with survival and see churns as an opportunity to elevate their own domain or as a means to access more power. 

The Most Recent Churns

• The Tyranny Horror: 700-1000 years ago. A turf war in the fel domains spilled over to the rest of the spiral causing the destruction of at least 30 known domains and the fall of 3 fae domains to the fel. This churn is identified as the reason the Elves became the Synth. The horror was ended by the destruction and capture of the primary perpetrators. 
• The Corpo Creeping Conflict: 2100-3600 years ago. A group of elite and powerful companies joined forces to slowly assert dominance over the majority of the populated domains in the spiral. Called the slow death, it led to wars and uprisings that cascaded across the universe. Laws were enacted and enforced by both the court and the conspiracy to prevent businesses from becoming intertwined with power. This churn also led to the investment of many communities into colleges and universities. These community owned and operated centres that have become the generators of innovation and arcane discovery in the city states that they reside in. 
• War of The Hells and Heavens: 3000-4000 years ago. The various gods and demons of the spiral engaged in a war the likes of which has never been seen before or since. Billions of lives were extinguished. Doomed sparks were needed to feed the divine war-engines. The surviving divine beings agreed to limit intervention in non-divine affairs. This agreement called the Gift removed these powerful beings from most of the spiral. Where the angels and demons went is up to significant debate. There are some that think they went to the material realm, others think that they ascended to some unknown outer realm beyond the spiral. The peoples of the spiral, having been ravaged by the whims of the powerful, experienced a cultural shift away from organized religions to personal and private worship. The cultural disapproval of blind faith has persisted across many of the domains to this day. While some loosely organized groups of faithful exist in isolated areas, these groups have little power and impact beyond the few people that belong to them. Angels and demons have not been seen in the spiral since the signing of the compact. 
• The Ravaging: 10000 years ago. Often thought of as the first churn, very little is remembered or documented from this time. Almost all of civilization was destroyed in a system wide catastrophe. This time period also marked the point when the great sentient mountain Unas was shattered, spreading her children. the Tuph across the cosmic realm.