In the beginning in ancient history beyond known records there were gods and mortals. Gods needed worship for power.
Tielekku was the goddess of absolute aura and bottled that stuff and created magic.
Several gods were like “What is we just be dicks and draw power from strong emotion like misery pain and death?" So they tried it and it worked really well and Tielekku declared these gods dicks and yeeted them to the spirit realm. These people became the banished pantheon.
So, Tielekku, taught magic to Ermeeth and Hequat, her pupil gods.
Ermeeth, being the based nice guy that he is, taught his followers magic.
A bunch of gods felt this was a very bad move because if mortals can host cast spells for miraculous powers then why would they need gods? Hequat had particularly strong opinions in the matter because Hequat it’s allergic to fun. She beat Ermeeth witless in a titanic battle and Ermeeth used magic to flee with his disciples across the bottom of the atlantic to east coast North America.
As Hequat went on to flex and have annoying opinions on her blog, Ermeeth’s people formed a magical utopia of peace and leaning called Oranbega.
Hequat learns about Oranbega and pops a rage boner so hard that she creates a new island called Mu. The Coralax were already living there with their goddess Merulina. They didn’t like their land being annexed so they tried to fight Hequat with Merulina summoning a massive Leviathan to crush this whole new subdevelopment before the whole neighborhood gentrifies.
Hequat just got fucking angrier and beat the leviathan to death with an island, turning it into coral under what is now sharkhead island. The coralax never stopped being salty about this.
Hequat then took a bunch of exiles from when she failed to create a rebellion in Oranbega and founded Mu on the island she sprang into being earlier before the whole Coralax BS. She taught her followers for generations the art if war and How Oranbegans are godless heathens who must die.
Oranbegans didn’t know how to war so when Mu finally attacked it was a roflstomp. The Oranbegans figure out war as they fo along, they are still losing ground, they finally try summoning a demon. The demon gives them a bunch of magic thorn blades, this helps. They cut more and more deals with demons, so they get more in on this demon stuff and the tide of the war turns around, they invade Mu and begin to butcher the population.
Some Mu denizens escape and they are like "eh let'em."
And Lilitu and her demon army who is on contract with them is like
"Nope, you gotta murder every last drop of the Mu bloodline."
And the Oranbegans were like "Nah this is fine we won the war."
That's when Lilitu drew her trap card and was like "I was hoping you'd
say that, you see according to this contract that means we get to
torment the ever living daylights out of you until you die."
Arkarist is kinda salty he wasn't around to negociate out of this bit
but the Oranbegan leaders were like "Oh yeah, you can't kill us if we
kill ourselves first."
And Lilitu was like "Wait wut?" And every Oranbegan was shredded
and turned into an undead spirit entity by some massive ritual they had
up their sleeve.
Now the whole civilization had been sunken to ward off bombardment and they were all ghosts now that don't need food or anything so they are all pleased with this being all like "Yeah sure having a body was fine but we can now get in twice as much research and nerdy magic practice now!"
The demons rolled their eyes, "This doesn't end the contract we're
going to be annoying roommates until you kill every last drop of Mu
blood."
They mostly stay in their city and watch world events with detached interest, and steer civilizations with the end goal if keeping them offa their lawn.
Mu without some one to point their rage on upon dwindles.
At some point the Oranbegans decide they need a battery and snooker the Romans into trapping Mot, the ancient Semitic god of death that nobody liked. This way the Oranbegans to tap the trapped Mot to power their shit and nobody is going to miss the asshole god and there's going to be no downsides to this ever.
This worked marvellously and they render Oranbega invisible and impenetrable to outside forces.
Meanwhile all this shit had become lost to legend as thousands of years pass.
Paragon City is built in the heart of Oranbega but nobody notices because the magic and it’s underground.
Baron Zoria, looking for power dials up spiritually some Oranbegan spirits and asks for power. The Oranbegans decide he’s a gullible enough dipshit to work with and give him and his followers spirit thorns which give then fabulous magic power but also open then wide open to possession. Zoria users his magic yo troll Aleister Crowely and open a speakeasy during the prohibition.
He eventually starts kidnapping a bunch of kids (probably Mu descendants) and sets up a rirual sacrifice that the Dream Doctor foils with a gang of occult nerds he found and recruited: The Midnighters.
Zoria retreats to Oranbega where he can’t be reached and engages in a low key shafow war with the midnighters because an amcient mage of fabulous power can’t let a bunch of plucky youthful upstarts just foil him so easily, it just won’t do. The Midnighters get their shit together and start getting more impressive and stuff. Originally they were just a book club with a bunch of nerds who liked to study occult lore, but now they actually got some costumed members fighting crime and stuff.
Meanwhile: Rikti happen. They start building underground tunnels. They accidentally tunnel right through some Orenbega stuff. This breaks the magical wards hiding Oranbega. The Oranbegans start swarming out like a kicked open nest if red ants. This really put the Rikti on the back foot and have the Heroes if Earth a chance to stick it to the Rikti. The Midnighters got assassinated and bombed to near oblivion during this war because Magic was Super Effective against the Rikti and that made them prioritize going after mage groups.
Official lore straight up says Rikti might have won if they didn’t cheese off the circle.
Oh shit the damage the Rikti tunneling is much worse then thought. The Oranbegans realize Mot is waking up.
They drop everything they she doing and divert all resources too panicking and trying to bind Mot back up. Their activity on the surface SPIKES as all hands get on deck and pull every trick in the nook to amass power for use against Mot (and maybe murder a few Mu descendants.) Circle of Thorns goes from that weird cult that Zoria had that stopped being cool when they tried ot kidnap children to suddenly a pile of robed weirdos kidnapping people in the night to get more bodies and demons and stuff.
Meanwhile NOBODY outside if the Oranbegans realize how cooked they are, they just see the Circle if Thorns getting awful active post Rikti.
Meanwhile followers of that banished pantheon stumble on Mot. This is fortuitous Mot isn’t stuck in the spirit realm, he’s just bound and weakened by the circle, so he can act in places the Banished Pantheon Can not. If he gets loose and empowered maybe the can get him to free the rest of them from Tielekku’s banishment.
BP, more specifically their Trickster Lughebu, contact Mot like “We see you are in a bind there, want us to teach you how to draw power from pain death and misery. Then you can free us when you get out!”
And Mot was like, “Fuck yeah! I’m all about death! it’s my portfolio and everything! I’ll help you out!”
Mot really was just playing along and didn't have any loyalty to these other asshat gods, he wanted to get free.
The other asshat gods, to be fair, didn't trust Mot all that much either, they just wanted to get free.
So the BP work at trying to bust the circle bindings.
Astoria turns into Silent Hill as the area directly over Mot falls to his influence , a bunch of people die. Paragon City suspects sometime is wrong.
Circle of Thorns panic increases.
Some stuck up jerk who is a shipping magnate in Talos island decides his massive profits aren’t enough and cuts a deal with a demon for even more money and power. The demon gives him a pile if cursed relics and tells him to flood the streets with them He obviously read too many Greek legends and names himself Odysseus and forms the Warriors street gang to peddle his wares. Hellions start using their wares and pushing them, this causes the Hellions to go from absolute riffraff bottom of the barrel to a serious threat, though as far as a Metahuman is concerned they are still bottom of the barrel.
Midnight Squad, deeply short on members decides to just give membership to just about any hero who strikes their fancy to build back numbers.
Circle of Thorns notice the sudden influx if cursed shit and add it to the increasing growing pile if things to panic over.
Meanwhile the growing conflict around paragon feed Mot enough death and Misery to burst free, causing Dark Astoria to busy like an infected pimple.
Also Incarnate shit is going on but that’s another can of worms.