Editing Circle of Eight (section)

==Origins==
The whole thing started with the Citadel of Eight, which was a group of eight characters participating in the newly-formed setting.  The idea was that they had accumulated enough wealth, power, and other resources to start setting themselves up in a nice place where they could spend time between adventures pondering whatever it was that they pondered between bouts of being murderhobos.  The original members were:
*[[Mordenkainen]] (wizard)
*[[Bigby]] (wizard)
*[[Tenser]] (wizard)
*[[Robilar]] (fighter)
*[[Riggby]] (cleric)
*[[Yrag]] (Rigby's "assistant", possibly a cleric as well)
*[[Serten]] (some guy)
*[[Otis]] (a "woodsman", prototype of the ranger as we know it and love it)

They staked out a claim in a set of mountains full of evil shit and after a few years they had built the Obsidian Citadel, a gigantic eight-sided fortress built with the help of stone giants, dorfs, and other sundry types.

The group basically set themselves up as a kind of United Nations group.  See, they felt that just as too much evil in the world was a bad thing, so was too much good.  Which wasn't necessarily a bad thought in and of itself.  I mean, you've known those players who play Lawful Stupid; can you imagine a world where those dipshits actually won and took over?  Exactly.  That was the plan, anyway: just keep any of the idiot extremists of both good and evil from getting an upper hand, so all the happy murderhobos of the world could do their thing.  What actually happened is that each of the above members just did whatever the fuck they wanted anyway, and didn't really give much of a damn about anything.  They figured if something big happened, they'd just deal with it in due course.

What they didn't expect was the Battle of Emridy Meadows.  While they were sipping bourbon and sniffing about the lack of appreciation for their values, there was this cult who thought they were worshipping some run-of-the-mill evil deity, the kind that apparently would fulfill all their wishes (though why they didn't just learn to be wizards and summon efreet for that purpose tends to make one's eyes roll; seriously, once you get three wishes PER DAY, at virtually no cost, you've basically won at life).  In truth, the Cult of the Elder Elemental Eye was really worshipping [[Tharizdun]].

And Tharizdun was not your typical evil god.  Oh, no.  This is a god that helped form the cosmos, then went off his meds, went promptly insane, and decided reality was a mistake that needed to be corrected with total annihilation.  In the dawn of time itself, every god, good and evil, who gave a shit about keeping reality as it was basically turned the entire considerable might of the multiverse against Tharizdun.  They won (barely), and sealed the BBEG up in a prison that would keep him locked away forever.  The prison got cracked, though; exactly what happened to cause this varies with which story is being told, but the point is, Tharizdun was able to grant spells.  He had to be a lying bastard about his intentions (only the truly mentally ill would actively seek the dissolution of all reality with nothing set to replace it), but he managed to find enough idiots gullible enough to give him worship in exchange for being CoDzillas.

The Cult finally got enough power, decided to start trying to take over the world.  The Citadel of Eight?  Those assholes were nowhere to be seen.  To them, this was a political thing, and there's not much of a loot margin in open warfare (as opposed to robbing dragons and other things of their treasures), so they didn't see a need to get involved.

Except little ol' Serten, whom nobody really thought much of.  He apparently realized that this Cult was bad news and went to go help fight it.  The Cult was, eventually, defeated, but Serten died.  This caused epic levels of drama back at the <s>frat house</s> Obsidian Citadel.  Tenser, who was bro-tier Lawful Good, realized he had slacked off while someone was fighting no-shit evil, and blamed Mordenkainen; he left for his own castle kind of close to the City of Greyhawk.  Terik and Yrag also apparently got fed up and ragequit, never to be heard from again.  Even Bigby, Mordenkainen's own apprentice, left.  Robilar and Otis left, deciding that the whole thing was a stupid idea anyway, and tromped off in search of adventure.

All Mordenkainen did was shrug it off and put up a "For Rent" sign outside the Citadel, then went back to convincing himself he was smarter and wiser than everyone and everything in the world.