The Cult of Ponderet had been mostly silent during the civil war that plagued the Kingdom many generations ago, and had remained out of sight and out of mind during the painful reintegration of the rebel territories. People hoped that they just decided they did not want to be involved, hoping the process would tear the Kingdom apart without their input. Maybe they had forgotten about their old ways, and returned to a life of anarchistic living in the jungles. Or maybe they had even been killed in the crossfire during the bloody battles of the war. Whatever the reason, it had been decades since anyone had truly feared the Cult. Younger men and women were even beginning to settle further along the coast, into their territory.

That was a grave mistake.

It started with a few smaller, nearly unnoticed disappearances around the Kingdom. If any alive at that time had been around during the Cult's origins, they would have recognized the situational similarities immediately. Unfortunately, very few saw it that way, and the small number that did were just seen as paranoid, possibly from the fun new plant brought over from the north. So people continued on with their daily lives.

Then, as it had been before, everything began crashing down at once.

Over the course of a week, reports began flooding in from the border settlements of the Kingdom, detailing terrible raids by Cultists and the mass burning of their villages. At the same time, people of importance began disappearing from the larger coastal cities of the Kingdom, culminating with the disappearance of the King's own daughter seemingly out of thin air. Within days the entire Kingdom was searching for their lost princess, praying desperately for her safe return.

Eventually, of course, she did return in one piece... but only one piece. A box appeared at the doorstep of the palace in Kuching, containing the severed head of the princess, her face contorted in terror, and the symbol of Ponderet branded on her cheeks.

For many Kings, this would have spurred them into a furious rage, a reaction of anger and hostility that would culminate in a vicious war. This, however, was not the case. Instead, this broke him mentally, physically, and emotionally, as the unparalleled pain flowed through him like an unstoppable river. He was never the same after that, wandering aimlessly around the palace, refusing to respond to any of his advisers asking for retaliation or any semblance of governance. It was thus surprising to no one when one morning the King rose, walked towards the shore, and swam out into the vast sea, never to be seen again, leaving his son Diande, a boy of just 17, as the new King of Suhendra.

Diande was not his father, and seemed to simmer with all the rage and hatred expected of the former King and then some. He would avenge his sister's death, and put an end to the Cult, the scourge of the Kingdom's existence since its founding, and end the Great War once and for all.

King Diande summoned fighters from across the known world, many from within the Kingdom and a number of fortune-seekers from outside it, with men flowing in from Ayamerah, Akthijah, Java, Aceh, Dvaravati, Sulawesi, and even from as far away as the Toetim, all joining the call for the destruction of the Cult of Ponderet. Equipped with all manner of weapons, from simple clubs and bows, to bronze-tipped spears, to long and thin bronze swords, to curved bronze short swords, and even poison-coated bone darts blown out of bamboo pipes, all brought together under the banner of King Diande. This would truly be the end of the Great War, one way or another.

This is the point, however, where historical record and recorded history begin to differ wildly. Oral tradition tells of the great battles of the end of this Great War, with the armies of the world marching against the armies of darkness. They say that hordes of tens of thousands of men seemed to flow without end out of the jungles, and that when they were struck down, Ponderet raised them from the dead to continue fighting until their limbs were so mangled that they could not fight back. They recount the brave deeds of King Diande and his men, liberating hundreds of prisoners, confronting forces many times their own size, but that thanks to their piety and the grace of the Gods, they won battle after battle.

Finally, the stories go, it came down to one final battle, and Ponderet herself appeared in gigantic Goddess form, spewing fire from her hands, poison from her mouth, and lightning from her breasts (I kid you not, this is what the traditions say). But just as she was about to lay waste to the armies of Doebi, King Diande was imbued with the strength of Suhendra himself, and threw his spear right into the open mouth of the Goddess, banishing her physical form from the mortal realm, and turning all her undead soldiers to dust. And thus, it is said, the Great War ended for good.

Of course, the Cult of Ponderet was not a unified state by any definition - archaeological evidence points to it being a group of loosely-connected tribal settlements that practiced ritual sacrifice, often with victims captured from raids on the Kingdom of Suhendra. These final "battles" of the Great War were little more than a massive host of soldiers coming in, burning these villages to the ground, putting men and boys to death en masse, pillaging their homes, forcing themselves upon their women, and systematically destroying an entire culture believing it to be the work of the Gods.

In many ways, however, the Cult would have the last laugh if their goal truly was to cause the downfall of the Kingdom of Suhendra. Because with the Great War over, and all of Doebi under the control of one King out of Kuching, the entire cultural identity of the Vüolt people was gone. They existed as a stand against this Cult, to bring about an order and civility on Doebi. Now with this goal complete, they would begin to wonder what exactly they stood for, now that their mortal enemies were vanquished. And with the Kingdom being heavily overextended already as it was, this would soon become tipping point, one that would plunge all of Doebi, and much of the known world, into 500 years of chaos, death, and destruction.

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