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The Lesser Brother
There is a deity whose name is rarely spoken. A monster who evokes both fear and hatred. His actions have damned innumerable lives and altered the very world itself. While his truest name is unknowable, his name among mortals was Dominus Tenebrous, the Lord of Darkness. The younger brother of Dominus Omnitus, it is he who set off the Second War in the Heavens, and he was also shattered during Godfall.
Yet perhaps he originally wasn't so evil. The Benelim in particular insist Tenebrous used to be as benevolent as any other deity of the Celestial Host. Darkness after all, is only the absence of light. There is something to be said how he was dutifully at his brothers side for eons, and did his part in the First War of the Heavens. The first seeds of evil were perhaps planted between the two wars.
The Celestial Host wished to repair and restore the Mortal Realms in the wake of the daemon's trespasses. It is unknown how much of the world at present was around before the Gods and how much was their creation. What is known is the two Brother-Gods disagreed over what to do more and more. Legend says for example that Omnitus wanted the world to be in the embrace of light and Tenebrous believed it should be in the embrace of darkness. They compromised by creating night and day.
What proved to be too much for Tenebrous was the debate over a mysterious race that was recently liberated from daemonic slavery; humans. They were barely sentient at the time, centuries of oppression had taken their toll. Tenebrous saw such souls and weak-willed and flawed, easy to corrupt and ignorant of the world. Humans believe the deity was merely projecting his own insecurities onto them. Omnitus disagreed with Tenebrous, believing humanity had great potential, if they could just be nurtured. Terra broke the tie and sided with Omnitus.
Angered Tenebrous broke away. He wandered the Mortal Realms for years. Sometimes adding his own touches to the world behind his brother's back. It is said he created volcanos for example. What happened next is greatly disputed. Some say a lone daemon came to him and lured him to a portal to the Underworld. Other accounts claim he found the portal on his own. Strangest of all, one version says it wasn't a daemon but a little spider. The Benelim insist it's the latter and that the spider was an early manifestation of Morgash, the monster from the Void, millennia before the first appearances of her spawn. No one knows for sure, and not even Morgash recalls this either way.
Daemonic Corruption
What is known is Tenebrous entered the Underworld and found daemons waiting for him. What happened next is largely unknown, for the only witness of these events was Tenebrous himself and speculation from the other Gods. He claims the daemons revealed many truths to him. That the Mortal Realms had always belonged to the daemons. That humanity was never meant to be anything more than slaves and validating all of Tenebrous' insecurities. The other Gods believe he was captured and corrupted by the daemons, although there was no evidence of such brutality.
What is known is Tenebrous returned to his brother and demanded a meeting. Once the host had been gathered, Tenebrous repeated the claims of the daemons and accused Omnitus of being a liar. He warned his brother to leave the Mortal Realm or suffer the consequences. Omnitus stood his ground and Tenebrous left, taking half the deities with him, including his wife Tempestia. Shortly after war broke out. The Second War in the Heavens was a brutal affair. Tenebrous led from the front, his power greatly enhanced with daemonic sorcery. He slaughtered countless angyls, humans and anyone that dared stand in his way.
Under his relentless onslaught, the forces of Omnitus retreated back into the heavens, the daemons on their tail. Tenebrous would perform his most infamous deeds. At the insistence of the daemons, he rerouted the Soul River, the immense construct that ferried all souls to the afterlife, down into the Underworld. This was perhaps the daemons true goal, not that Tenebrous cared. The final battle on the banks of the Soul River would be the most intense in the history of the Godshards universe. The war god Marius gifted Tenebrous a dark sword. With this new found weapon, he slaughtered thousands of angyls, teaching them fear. Michael, greatest of the arch-angyls took to the field alongside three others and believed they could take him down.
Alas, Tenebrous was beyond their power. He slaughtered one and heavily wounded the others. He demanded, since he best Michael in combat, that the angyls submitted to him, as was angylic custom. Michael refused, defiant and claimed the custom did not apply to non-angyls. Yet before Tenebrous could finish him off, something gave him and the others pause. While the fighting raged, The Only Son, the child of Omnitus and Terra and Tenebrous' nephew, disappeared into the currents of the Soul River, having uplifted the construct half way back to it's original position.
Tenebrous laughed at this, drunk on power and malice. He realized too late that he pushed his brother too far, for Omnitus lashed out against him, his white glowing eyes turning red. The resulting duel was intense, perhaps the greatest fight the world had ever seen. The two Brother-Gods gravely wounded each other, Omnitus knocked Tenebrous' sword, the newly dubbed Angylbane, out of his hands the sword breaking the barrier between the Mortal Realm and the heavens. The two Gods tumbled, still eager to kill each other, even as the hit the earth and exploded into countless Shards, what would go on to become Godfall. While technically not dead, for all intents and purposes, both Omnitus and Tenebrous were gone.
A Legacy of Darkness and Shards?
For his part in forking the Soul River, and the mass death he caused, Tenebrous has become a figure of death and evil. The Mortal Realms curse his name and all his works. Yet there are those that doubt the veracity of the story, claiming that the dark deeds of Tenebrous were made up or highly exaggerated. No one knows for sure where these rumors come from, some say it was daemons, some say it's just human stupidity.
An interesting thing to note however is both Brother-Gods were shattered that day. Eight centuries later, the first of these Shards would come down to earth and enter a man named Adam. It is commonly believed that almost all Godshards have a Shard of Omnitus, not Tenebrous. The reason being that Godshards inherently use their powers for good, and since Omnitus was a God of goodness, logically they were his Shards. Omnitus was definitely the more powerful of the two and thus there would be more Shards of him than his brother.
The only known Teneb-Shard was Abel. Abel himself claims it so, and while no one knows for sure why he says this, given his deeds of infamy and darkness, he certainly seemed to act in the spirit of Tenebrous. However, one crucial detail often missed is Godshards themselves technically don't know for sure. They have theories as stated above, but it is not factual. A Godshard's Soulsight is not advanced enough to deduce any differences and both deities had white glowing eyes.
Only the Gods, angyls and daemons could say for sure. And they typically keep to themselves or simply refuse to comment on it. This Lore Library has shown that many Godshards were indeed corrupt and loathsome. Who could say how many more Teneb-Shards are out there or how many Godshards of history were actually Teneb-Shards all along...
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