Starting with a Cultist Family

A shattered family teeters on the brink of death; an ancient god, torn to pieces and forgotten, has nowhere left to retreat.

By fate's design, a prayer uttered in despair binds the two together.

They are scholars, bishops, and dukes. They establish secret cults, infiltrate nations, and manipulate wars.

They kindle the sparks of progress on a barren heath of ignorance, even if the unenlightened call them heretics.

They tear down the palaces of the old age and build factories of a new era atop the ruins.

They give bread to the hungry and direction to the lost.

Greedy mortals sink into the abyss and pray to the gods; a dying ancient god awakens in the depths of hell and descends upon reality.

As the great wheel of history breaks free of ignorance's shackles and the steam engine makes its first pump, who will prevail, gods or men, upon an altar forged from the flesh and blood of mortals and the supernatural?

"Step over my corpse and keep moving!"