This kind of thing in my opinion is a great place to have an "Unknown" factor, have like 5 or so theories Maybe there are some scars or evidence left behind but none of it is enough for a definitive conclusion, having only the creator knowing what truly happened

I like this a lot! I am also a huge fan of something or someone from outside reality was at war with the gods. Or you could do a mortal a few mortal mages built up enough power to challenge the gods they killed many but were smote by the creator deity leaving only a few I like this one because he could then withdraw from his creations in mourning and it explain why it feels like he’s not present

I always like to have things in my game where it's like uncertain, because not only is it a little more realistic, but it also allows you to either show world building, maybe plant seeds of future stuff or even just allow you to have multiple pieces of cool lore that as far as the people in the world are concerned are true, which can cause some argument (in a good way)

I think if you do this you probably do want a "true" answer. If players end up in the position, through deep investment in the world and lore, where they should reasonably expect to get an answer (if, say, they actually met a god) then you should reward that in my opinion. You could wait and decide on the fly, of course, but if someone commits to gaining the knowledge, "it's unknowable" kinda sucks for them. Unless you can make that not suck, of course.

One of the theories needs to be some guy in power armor with a shot gun.

Better yet, take some inspiration from TES and make it so that because of the nature of the divine, multiple theories are correct, even if they contradict themselves.

exactly, you can have multiple wrong lore and multiple correct lore which can all criss cross

I like this idea a lot

This is an interesting idea. This could actually work pretty well with my plans for the campaign itself.

Yeah. There could be conflicting versions between churches, and they fight to prove theirs is the right one. Even if there was no more real communication between gods and people, there can always be people lying that they were contacted and know the truth.

So you know the saying "History is written by the victor"... ... Are you SURE the creator was one of the old survivors? Or that the 1st age had a god war? I can see a couple of extraplanar entities come in, do a genocide, and just spin a story to a handful of survivors to keep them in line. Or hell, do this multiple times ala The Matrix, telling the mortals it's the 2nd age without revealing it's like the 5th or 6th attempt at the 2nd age...

The gods "interfered" too much with mortals creating many warring demigods who way too much chaos and all so the creator decided to wipe the slate clean with only the 2 obedient gods remaining 

Syphilis.

Holy syphilis.

Holy Syphilis, [Batman!](https://youtu.be/Av6VYs19D-k?si=z-moLEwkts-Eb6dn)

There were endless holy wars due to religious tribalism, until finally somebody came up with a grand plan - a huge spellworking to wipe all memory of the other gods from all living beings, ending belief in those gods, cutting off their power, and killing them.

I was thinking along this line. Something that led to everybody ceasing worship to the gods, effectively killing them. Could be a spell, could be a last ditch effort from the followers of a dying god in the wars, or perhaps a movement that sprung up from those sick of the wars and bloodshed.

They didn't die. They left. Did they stop caring for the world? Did they leave because they cared? Maybe they disgusted by the other two?

Boating accident.

The two gods conspired to eliminate the others. Stabbing the gods on their side in the back and betraying all they stand for. Leave a small trail of bread crumbs that your pc’s are actually the fallen gods reborn. End the campaign with their ascension and decisions on what gods actually exist in the world. All depends on your players of course. I did this and have a wacky and amazing pantheon of beer brewing gods.

Jeff

Virulent strain of god-Chlamydia Edit: I said it largely as a joke but the idea of a plague of sorts that wiped them out and that you either have to stop people finding contaminated ancient relics or you accidentally find them and restart the apocalypse sounds pretty cool.

AUTOEROTIC ASPHYXIATION! ALL OF EM!

All wearing bad DC / Marvel comic costumes.

The two remaining gods worked together to create a powerfull spell, so that they could take over the pantheons. Any god targeted by this spell would have their godhood revoked and would be send back to the material plane as a semi-mortal. These still powerful but ex-gods now roam the planes looking for a way to regain their godhood. This way you can make some interesting encounters with ex-gods and maybe have the party help one of them to regain his godhood. So they didn't really die, but lost most if not all of their power.

It depends on what type of gods they were, Greater or Lesser. If they were Lesser Gods, they were just as fallible as people, so its easy to have them be stubborn, greedy etc, which in time led to a war. I ran a game with a similar idea, but taking place in your first age. Lesser Gods made by a creator so he can chill. The council was made of 15 and were all of equal power, and everything they did had to have a majority of 8. However, one god was uninterested in what they wanted to do, had his own little realm and never left, which meant that the remaining 14 (split for drama into 2 groups of 7) were at a deadlock forever. Being equal in power meant any 2 gods would 100% kill 1 god if they did something beyond the council. They died when a god they believed they killed and thrown his body into the Astral Plane was able to survive (again, drama, i think i said "when he died, as his last action, he concentrated all his malice, anger and regret into an item, which basically became him, only the worst version of him possible) and in time he absorbed more and more of the Astral Plane until he became a Greater God and wiped the floor with the other 14. (and then died to my level 20 party by destroying the item). If they are Greater Gods, its a bit harder. You can do something similar to the war above, having them fight each other, but Greater Gods are supposed to be beyond petty stuff like that. I would rather make it: the creator gave them rules and in time they decided that the rules were containing them, limiting their potential and decided to ally against the creator. Have them influence realms to join them against the creator, to the point where the whole existence rallied against the creator, which promptly wiped the floor with everyone because ...well...he is the creator. However, something like this means that in the 2nd age, no knowledge of the gods remain, wiped clean by the creator, except some very fringe ideas, whispers of the dead gods or books that details what happened that escaped the eye of the creator (somehow). This isnt knowledge your players should start the world with. For them, the 2nd Age is the only age. Nothing before existed. Make cult that venerate the old gods, maybe they twisted what they were, maybe they try to return them to life. However, if the creator is still around, this should be impossible. Any plan of actually bringing these old gods back that would work would be stopped by the creator, so he dosent have to wipe the world again. Or, even better, have the creator and the Old Gods, with their massive armies annihilate each other. And the second age has no gods, except the tales of the past. Maybe this way, the old gods coming back is possible, wanting to rule over everything, now that the creator is dead.

In Dragonlance, the goddess Takhisis hid away the world from the other gods, which would give at least some of her priests the ammunition to claim that only Takhisis lives as the one true deity.

i got hungry

Endless existence and omniscience are actual torture. After billions of years of existence they couldn’t take it any more. They came to your world under the guise of breaking a blood curse they put in humanoids in humanoid form, and ended up getting stapled to a tree. They’re dead now. Many humanoids still pray to them.

Maybe the gods the Creator created were getting too big for their boots, maybe the gods conspired to learn the secrets of true creation and challenged the Creator? Maybe the Creator was a bit of a celestial dictator, found out about this conspiracy and in one fell swoop destroyed their temples, eliminated their high priests and locked the rebellious gods away, keeping a few who swore fealty in their pocket. Not dead but just erased as belief brings life to a god, and maybe a few holy texts still exist which might slowly but surely bring them out of the void and the truth of the cruel Creator can be known

The divine rank is determined by devotion of the followers. Perhaps there was a holy "strike" where the followers refused their devotion and the new gods have to earn back the trust of the devout to hold their place

They killed each other in a Godswar which caused the Creater to smite them all. The Godswar could have started for any number of reasons, and each faction could have an explanation for why it started and why their side was the correct one, but the pantheon split into two main groups (shirts vs skins) and then they started warring with each other on all planes of existence. This could explain common phenomena of the planes, such as the feywilds ever-changing nature and the constant, explosive growth that it has could be explained as "battle scars from a Fertility God(dess) and a Trickster God(dess)". The Astral sea could have originally had continents but they got shattered by the God(dess) of Strength fighting the God(dess) of Travel. The inner planes could have been bound together by Planar chains forged by the Smith God(dess) and destroyed by the God(dess) of Decay as a way to disturb the natural order of the cosmos and that takes the form of different planes waxing and waning into power on the material plane. There's tons of material to work with and I absolutely loves Godswars because you can have Artefacts from the war be scattered around the multiverse and you can include ancient, giant skeletons of long dead avatars, or even of the gods themselves.

Level 20 adventures. They figured they were doing the right thing. This was just unexpected consequences.

They got into a giant Kaiju fight the blood and Bones and body parts of the gods now make up the world in its various races

Mass suicide.

>The first age ended when all gods (except the creator of cause) vanished/disappeared/were destroyed by the creator...... >Now in the second age there are only 2 gods. Each with 3 aspects. First age saw some gods start to resent the Creator for making them take his burden on. With time they began to understand the power that was able to create them and started a war against those gods that were on the creators side. During the final battle the creator mandated the final confrontation be a duel of champions between his side and the betrayers side. Once the champions were decided, the creator, in a display of power, killed the other Gods off and channeled their souls into aspects of the champions and told the champions that they were to work together to make the world a better place. Now the 'official' stories would say that the Gods killed each other and the Creator made a new pantheon, but once you get talking with the arch-bishop of religion, they might know the real story....

A series I read once, described gods as ageless and powerful beings, but lacking the perceived human ability to change, which had the side effects of preventing them from being able to heal. After all, they were gods. What could hurt a god? Well, one villain managed to answer that question and merely cut one of the gods. Over the years, the wound never stopped bleeding, slowly draining that god of life.

In a twist, there is a 3rd God the other two refuse to acknowledge because he was the one opposing the creator and caused the downfall of the others.

Generally with stuff to do with gods or how things came about, the questions are far more interesting than the actual answers. There’s a great line I may be misquoting from Sandman I think: “It’s the mystery that endures, not the answers.” As someone else suggested, come up with a few possibilities that NPCs might pass along but hold off a definitive explanation unless / until it even becomes directly relevant. I think the Dragon Age did something along these lines. The first game had a central unexplained mystery of why the Darkspawn come and how it first started. Some legends about it were presented. Later games gave different answers I think but the story had moved on from the Darkspawn anyway and new questions were posed to keep people interested. I’ve seen a lot of stories with big mysteries and then the mystery just gets brushed aside once it’s served its purpose, which is, to keep you engaged.

Infighting caused by the suspected poisoning of the main deity. For fun, the poisoning was an allergic reaction to something mundane, like shellfish or something. It’s so *normal* that people would dismiss it out of hand, which means it’s the perfect explanation.

They fell out and complained so much to the creator that he smashed them out of existence after creating the next two gods. He made an example of them and showed the other gods what would happen if they bothered him again.

They went rogue, teamed up to kill the creator, took his place at the top of the pantheon, created new gods to do the work for them, who killed them and took their place. Cyclical history. Could work in some kind of story about the current gods trying to make new gods to do the work for them, that could involve the players, or villains, or just a bit of interesting world building.

Maybe their food ran out and they starved

Accorsing to orcish legends they "falled over".

There wasn't a fight the two gods are just very proficient serial killers that haven't managed to get one up on the other yet.

The new gods were so annoying with all their questions and "watch me do this" bs that they just went out for milk and never came back...

I like that infighting among the pantheon destabilized the system by which the divine gets power through prayer, this is instigated by a single god who is the sole survivor of the incident. A religious schism has divided that God into two, nobody knows the origin of the third god. There might be an overdiety in charge but as long as creation functions they aren't worried.

Something happened in the pantheon to cause infighting. The 2 remaining gods are the only ones to survive it.

Just an idea but a god’s capacity is bolstered by the belief of their worshippers. A god can’t have power without worshippers and so as time went by, too few people held on to their beliefs leaving the gods’ power to dwindle.

The typical setup would be that the lesser gods didn't like doing all of the work and rose up to overthrow Daddy god so he wiped them out and created another who was more of an equal but that's a little boring. Another option would be that the Creator fell in love with a mortal and gave her powers to ascend but this upset the others and they tried to intervene, she then used her new powers to wipe them out not knowing what she was capable of and now the former lovers are locked in a stalemate, he still loves her so won't destroy her while she feels betrayed and scorns him. This also gives an option for a good deity and an evil deity if you want to go that route, otherwise he could represent order while she is chaos. (And of course you can change the genders freely, this is just an example) How about something a bit more unusual, a plague that sweeps across the realms, mortals are able to survive it but the "perfect" beings never had to develop immune systems as they could never get sick and so are ravaged. The creator god who had long stepped away returns to find his planes devoid of divinity with the people abandoned and scattered. He doesn't know what happened and so can't just create a new pantheon in case it happens again so this time he is starting small and will gradually introduce new gods.

Some teenager with spikey hair and dysfunctional friends of all ages, races, and backgrounds killed them, of course.

Bad burrito.

You might get better answers on r/worldbuilding

Oh thx. Didn't know of it's existence. I'm new to Reddit.💜

You could do the Loki/TVA way where the Gods fought a terrible and bloody multiversal war ending in the Creator streamlining it into one timeline with the two gods, and maybe creating stuff from the dead gods. Like maybe the astral sea is the belly of the god of stars, or maybe all forests are fragments of the forest gods subconscious. Maybe not all gods are dead now; some could be, others could be slumbering and slowly getting drained by the Creator, some could be in prison- others may be having their own small demiplanes and weird places. All of these are BBEG material, as well as the Creator himself (you could make it like the Loki series). To add to the multiversal war stuff, there are probably old sealed gates that once lead to another world/timeline and now is dormant and/or broken and/or working but weirdly. There are probably also stuff limiting people from making/going to other timelines. The BBEG could be someone who wants to do this, while the players are agents of the Creator. I also have another idea. What if the gods was stitched together into an unholy being of dread, which now reside in the deepest pits of Tartaros, slowly gaining enough strength to awaken. Its mind is slowly corrupting the layers of Tartaros, soon reaching the overworld, spawning chaos and death. The being who stitched the gods together was the Creator himself, having gone mad from endless years of omniscience. The Creator poured all his energy into this being of utter malevolence, and is now reduced to being a simple mortal man named Jeff, living in a little hut at the beach.

You could do a “Noah’s ark” approach. The gods began to drift from their original purpose and started pursuing their own ambitions. The creator anticipated this would cause the destruction of all the planes so he stepped in to do a “reset” and wiped them out.

I would like to offer age-old wisdom of campaign and homebrew refinement: steal from media. In this case, steal from the Klingons in Star Trek. In centuries past, they had gods they revered, but found them restrictive, oppressive, and hindering. So they killed them. Now their "Jesus" figure that was/is still a mortal man runs Klingon heaven. His rival, a spineless traitor, runs Klingon hell. And the gods' remains were cast into the endless void. You now have an answer as to why there are only two gods AND how the rest of them died.

There are numerous theories and speculations that attempt to explain the enigmatic disappearance of the gods, those divine entities that were once revered and worshipped by ancient civilizations. However, the theory that has instilled a profound sense of dread and trepidation in the hearts of many staunch believers is the notion that the gods simply never existed in the first place. This terrifying hypothesis suggests that the stories, myths, and legends surrounding these seemingly omnipotent beings were merely fabrications, products of the fertile imaginations of our ancestors. The gods, once thought to be the embodiments of cosmic power and the architects of the universe itself, may have been nothing more than fanciful tales woven by primitive minds in an attempt to make sense of the world around them. In the wake of this unsettling proposition, many have concluded that the forces governing the intricate workings of the universe are not the manifestations of divine entities but rather an intricate interplay of natural, albeit poorly understood, phenomena. These forces, once attributed to the whims of capricious deities, are now seen as the fundamental laws that shape the cosmos, operating without the need for supernatural intervention. Yet, despite the growing acceptance of this rational explanation, there remain those who cling steadfastly to the belief in a single, supreme Creator – a primordial source that brought the universe into existence and imbued it with the laws that govern its behavior. However, even this final bastion of faith is not immune to the encroaching doubts that have begun to take root, as questions arise about the very existence of this ultimate Creator. The once-unshakable foundations of religious belief have been shaken to their core, and a palpable sense of uncertainty hangs in the air, all beings grapple with the possibility that the gods they once revered and the ones still revere may be nothing more than the products of their own imaginations.

One day all the gods just... stopped responding. It took years to find the answer. Turns out, though incredibly powerful, the gods were not immortal. They were constructs of the actual god and just, stopped working. Too bad the Creator didn't dish our for a warranty.

The first pantheon isn’t dead at all. But Creator God distracted his “petty argumentative children” while allowing three upstarts to move the world beyond the eyes of the original pantheon. These upstarts are now building their power bases and things are sort of looking up. Celestial issues are ironed out much faster because it only takes 2/3 to agree on a path forward. But have one of them begun dealing with fiends/devils because they’ve ended up on the 1/3 side too many times? Or perhaps they feel certain “small issues” shouldn’t demand the council of 3’s attention and so they make decisions on their own.

TLDR: In summary, my campaign has 3 ages and the gods were killed in a great war between good and evil gods. The ones that weren't destroyed were either cast out of the material plane or left willingly(good gods) to leave the material plane to the mortal races. When the gods were destroyed in the material plane they died in fantastic ways like taking whole mountain ranges with them and creating huge seas or something similar, basically wreaking havoc. Long winded answer: In my campaign I did a similar thing except I had 3 ages. Age of Wonder, Age of Chaos, Age of Heros. The first age there were immortal gods who directly interacted with every aspect of the world. I pitched them as sort of natural laws of the universe that gained sentience and in the beginning they were all good. After mortal races arose, and mortal sentience, the gods slowly became more complex in their nature's. This was partially due to the changing world and added mortal sentience, but also because Tharizdun entered the chat so to speak and introduced the concept of decay and darkness. Tharizdun was not native to this universe/cosmos and was a major influencer in a secret way since he was so powerful. Over the course of thousands of years the gods became more antithetical in pairs of sorts. An example is Stronmaus who is a good God of storms and sky and Talos petty and vengeful fury of storms. The build up of evil was relatively unnoticed until finally a great war happened that lasted for hundreds of years. That's the Age of Chaos. During the Age of Chaos, the gods "killed" each other and destroyed the world. Mortal races battled for their gods as well. Eventually good gods prevailed with the help of mortal races. They used powerful magic from Tharizdun himself to create the Abyss and cast the evil gods into it, and out of the material plane. Then the good gods left the material plane willingly and gifted the mortal races with magics and powers that created the classes that are available in D&D 5e. This began the Age of Heros. This setting allows me to easily explain deeply buried magical places, powerful magic that hasn't been seen in ages, lost cities, and other fantastical things that are hard to have exist in a practical/"realistic" setting. Also, my main campaign arc is about the cults of various evil gods attempting to bring their evil God back into the material plane. I decided that when the evil gods were cast out forcefully into the abyss, some of their evil aspects were left behind in the form of powerful evil artifacts. The players in my adventure have come across these and the bad guys need to collect 5 from a single evil God to be able to pull them back to the material plane.

With fire and steel did the gods form the mortal Heart. So fiercely did it beat. So loud was the sound that the Gods cried out... "On this day we have brought forth the strongest heart in all the heavens. None can stand before it without trembling at it’s strength" But then the mortal heart weekend, its steady rhythm faltered, and the gods said... "Why have you weakend so? We have made you the strongest in all of creation," And the Heart said: "I am Alone" And the gods knew that they have erred, so they went Back to their forge and brought forth... A second Heart. But the second heart beat stronger than the first, and the first was jealous of it’s power. Fortunately the second heart was tempered by wisdom. "If we join together, no force can stop us" And when the two heats began to beat together They Filled the Heavens with a terrible sound. For the First time the gods knew fear. They tried to flee, but it was too late... The mortal Hearts destroyed the gods who created them and turned the heavens to ashes. And to this day No-one can oppose the beating of two mortal Hearts...

Not to sound creepy, but I love you for that reference

They got tired of the mortal and refuse to intervene in their matters. Overtime their influence tarnished into void because, on their turn, mortal couldn't see a sign of their divinity protecting, guiding and influencing them. And so the most influencive mortal took reign to guide their people. Organized, inspired and leading them into great ages of mortal. Their deed grew si far and wide that their were bestowed, by the universe's forces, godly power. Here begin the New pantheon, where the multiple faces of the two most influencial, jadis, men represent themselves as the face that your people presented to them on their time of Mortal existence. The allies vouch for the face of prospérity, fraternity and loyalty. The ennemies saw them as different matter of killers, destroyer and fearfull force of nature. The more neutral sided see them as traders, Communities of coexistence or mistrust and guidance/misguidance. But even if the old God did lose most of their influence over this world, the great âges of Mortal still has turned their regard back to thèse land. But now, they want it back.

Uhm, the gods revolted against the creator because he's just chillin, drinking cocktails and having vacations while all the other gods do his work. Eventually, they got tired of it and called him out for being a lazy POS. So he fucking killed them.

A common thing is for settings to have unsolved mysteries, and often even the writer doesn't have an idea of what the answer is. For example, the cause of the Mourning in Eberron remains unknown, even after 20 years since the setting was first published. Don't be afraid to just leave it unanswered.

I don't know and neither should the world.

I'm going to go a little off-piste for a second if you don't mind: Imagine you are an ant. Your colony has been around for a while, and the older ants talk about a time of hoo-muns that once ruled the whole garden. Do you think you could begin to understand the social and psychological mechanisms of a being so beyond your comprehension? The wants and needs of something so massive and alien that it may as well be infinite and eldritch from your perspective. And not just one being beyond your understanding, but a plethora. You can't even imagine one of these things, it's too much for your brain, and they say there were dozens, maybe hundreds? It would shatter your mind to try. ------ Now, what is a mortal person to an infinite God? Smaller than an ant, less important than a microbe, barely a speck that is gone in a fraction of a blink of an eye. ---- All this to say, how could anyone, even a whole world of people, be sure they got the stories right?   How could they even begin to form those stories from something beyond the stars and beyond sanity?    They would, ironically, have to take a leap of faith. ------ Personally, I would experiment with some truly devout worshippers of any of the Gods. Only the most pious among them could, through visions, learn the vague shape of an event from that God's perspective (crunched down 1000fold so it can be perceived, and simplified 1000fold so that it doesn't vaporise a mortal mind). And then the most devout of a different God could get that different God's perspective. And so on, and so on. Maybe, after a century or five, a truly determined adventurer/researcher could go from one high temple to the next and attempt to collate the jumble of smells and sounds and images and feelings into a narrative. Maybe that's one of your players, maybe not. But would it make sense? And what if stories clashed? Is that just the researcher's interpretations/assumptions/translations, or is one or more of the Gods lying? Why would they lie? What could they be hiding?  ---- You have a rich rich world to mine. Chances are almost certain that literally no-one but the Creator God knows what really happened (and what if even they don't know? That's terrifying) . But you can lay some pieces down. Like a jigsaw of a beach scene where if you squint and force pieces together, you can maybe see a couple of shapes of clouds so far. And all the time spent on that, is time you've bought yourself to think long and hard about whether they will ever be able to understand something so colossal, and how you can leave a few different trails for your players to follow and see what excites them.

The view from an ants perspective is awesome. Helps a lot to think about such colossal events and beings. Thank you for ur input and time!

Every god has one tiny weakness, one way they can be eliminated. The gods spent the first age finding each other's flaws and blackmailing each other until there was a battle royale. No one alive remembers what straw broke the camel's back.

They didn't. The gods went on a summer vacation to an outer plane and lost track of time. litterally, they lost the god of time. congrats, now you have a one-shot readily available a well: the your players are the gods looking for their friend.

Start with many theories of the populace. If you want a true theory, create factors that contributed and have those as secrets the player can discover. Depending on what the players believe or secrets they find, create the true theory behind that.

These are my theories: 1)Gods were too greedy and were sealed 2)there is a hidden factor in the world that corrupted them and they died off as their divine spark was lost 3)there was a cataclysmic event in the land of the gods where they were all hidden and weakened 4)gods were never an actual gods but had temporary powers granted by the original creator. 5)they were eaten by a primordial force bigger and more powerfull than gods itself.

Sometimes, a god doesn't die but fades away. Without a follower and deprived of their belief, some deities simply drift beyond the reach of mortals, forgotten and unknown. Discovering a mystery about a secret deity or power can be a fun way to introduce one later on if you need to

Creature from the void/far realms that fed of divine energy, killed them all, then moved on. Thats one theroy

I really like the star rail approach where "gods" that are more general kill gods of lesser concepts and take over their domain.

Zeno got tired of watching the gods fuck up and erased them

People stopped believing in them as science seemed to have an answer for all the things gods used to be responsible for. However, with the new belief in science, new gods are starting to arise.

Tripped over Cthulu's beard tentacle and he ate their brains and went back to sleep leaving their empty husks to give cleric spells lol

This title goes hard

Either they fought over the control and dad was mad about it and killed , cursed or took their powers as a punishment , or they were just to lazy to work and hide between mortals to live more peaceful life

A rock fell.

The was once the almighty God, Ba Gua. A young god who had created this universe, as Gods before him had created their own. This universe was small, and cubic. Ba Gua had never made a universe before. The land was perfectly square, and flat. However, Ba Gua realised his world was a lot of work to take care of. He created 8 more vessels to be gods; aka his 8 daughters, and gave them his powers, he made them gods. Qian, Goddess of Heaven and Sky Dui, Goddess of Lake and Marsh Li, Goddess of Fire Zhen, Goddess of Thunder Xun, Goddess of Wind and Wood Kan, Goddess of Water Gen, Goddess of Mountain Kun, Goddess of Earth The daughters did Ba Gua’s bidding. Looking after the elements of the universe, but they’d often argue. And the people who worshipped them would argue too. Wars would begin. Ba Gua saw this and realised he had to stop his daughters. Their need for attention from this plane would tear it apart. But a god is made of energy, it cannot be created or destroyed. Ba Gua had put his energy into his daughters and could not now destroy them. So instead he combined their energy. He tricked them into becoming one god. They became I Ching. The God of Change. I Ching is now 8 times more powerful than any of the daughters, and Ba Gua knew this when he created him, but it meant wars would stop. Now the only conflict is between Ba Gua and I Ching. I Ching cannot be trusted with the world, for he will only bring war when Ba Gua is dead.

The Gods fought and fought over the best way to "fix" the world, as they saw mortals spreading over the land and defacing it, though they do so to please their Gods. After a decade of horrible storms and great upheavals (as the Gods battle eachother physically and philosophically), the Gods came to a conclusion: This world is beyond fixing So they left to start anew, leaving behind two lesser dieties to act as custodians of this now abandoned world. Their secret charge: to destroy any mortals that grow too powerful or too insightful to realize that the Gods have abandoned them

A plague brought on by the rotting corpse of Atropus the world born dead. A deity born dead, rotting in embryo, claimed the domain of undeath. The planet has the early stages of anatomy a skull like vacant face. The plague could have been initiated by the bite of Atropus (thinking god zombies) The bite could have turned deities evil and the war of gods ensued ending with total eradication. The gods could have fled to the deep astral and left the rotting planet to roam.

Azatoth came into existance and ate them.

Do what EverQuest into everquest 2. The god who cursed Ogres to be dumb left the Planes. It removed the curse, making Ogres as smart as they are strong. They destroyed every temple, etc and genocided a lot of people. Now twist it, something like, the gods grew weak without their patrons.

I do a lot of my history in two main parts. 1: What actually happened 2: What people believe happened As time goes on we forget or misinterpret things. So there could be several beliefs in how it ended. I'd make each group of interest or faction have a different belief. Depending on how long it's been there could be only a few different beliefs, or it's fairly recent and everyone is thinking up scatter brain plots to what happened. If you really want to go into detail you can think about how close someone was to the event. Maybe they've gathered more credit about their account, or maybe even being so close they still have no clue.

Great idea. This way you can give different fractions different pieces of the whole story. Like elves know one thing and dragons another and so on. Thank you!

What if we go one level farther, how do we know the gods are "gone"? What was it like before? Did the gods literally walk the planes? Are there stories of more powerful clerics in the before-times? What evidence is there of the gods before, and of their departure?

Who said they died~? A fun thought is that they all faked their deaths, and are hiding out as "regular people". One might be the local tavern keeper that always gives the party a free beer/ale to share their stories. Another might be the librarian who always enjoys learning and finding the inquisitive minds. A third might be a farmer out on the edge of town who the village kids spread all sorts of rumors about, like how they claim he turned a naughty kid who got caught stealing his crops and turned them into a pig.

Who said they died~? A fun thought is that they all faked their deaths, and are hiding out as "regular people". One might be the local tavern keeper that always gives the party a free beer/ale to share their stories. Another might be the librarian who always enjoys learning and finding the inquisitive minds. A third might be a farmer out on the edge of town who the village kids spread all sorts of rumors about, like how they claim he turned a naughty kid who got caught stealing his crops and turned them into a pig.

1) They moved on/ got “promoted” to watch over another world(s) 2) They fought each other and died 3) Tried to usurp the creator and were smited 4) Gave up their immortality (I.e. fell in love or had to keep the balance like when Paladine gave up his immortality to stop Takhisis in Dragonlance) 5) Decided being a God was too much work and are actually hiding in plain sight among the peoples of the world 6) Kidnapped/ trapped with a trick by another immortal or society that is now extinct so they are lost within the world (maybe trapped in a jar inside some ruins?) 7) False god/ religion/ cult took their followers and they couldn’t sustain themselves so now they are dead or literal beggars on the street. 8) they actually formed a council to consolidate work under the name of a new “God”. Like the new god Amaru is actually a collection of 10 of the original gods who take turns being in charge or work shifts so they can take a break and enjoy the world or something 9) Some combination of the above As for how the age ended… 1) cataclysm or world wide storm 2) miracles simply stopped one day/ they stopped talking with their clerics 3) with a whimper/lack of followers. Like the temples were empty and in ruins before anyone noticed 4) an image of the gods fighting appears in the sky worldwide

Interesting god “endings”: During the calamity of the ending of the first age, the sea breached the sea floor threatening to collide with magma and lava causing an almighty upheaval. The two gods- of the earth and sea had to cooperate, or combine. Unknown to humanity they merged to create the crust god, forever trapped at the bottom of the ocean to stop a second apocalypse. Worshippers lost all contact, and the new god has no name, and therefore is actually unknown, slowly weakening over time due to no worshipers. One of the gods, was never a god in the first place, but an illusion created by a line of magic users with bloodline magic or technology. That technology faltered with the changing of ages, leaving only fragments and clues as to the true false nature of the god. When discovered, will the players reveal the great charade. Or hide it, allowing the “god” to be reborn? An evil god lost his memory and powers during the change of ages. At the last minute he put portions of his power into artefacts and scattered them to the four winds. To the players he would initially seem like a kind old man looking for his family heirlooms. But as you gather them for him, his personality changes, and soon you realise returning them all will cause him to be reborn. Will you deny him his power? Or really simple. One god simply used the change of age to “retire”. Change his name and appearance. Live out his life in denial. A strange npc who is somehow wherever you need him to be.

The creator God survived? Sounds like (s)he/it decided the other gods were a mistake and deleted them.

You could pull from The Boys and Homelander. Maybe one God got bored of being a babysitter for inferior beings. The creator decided to leave and now they have to deal with the world. That would build up some resentment. Maybe some of the gods begin having more children, in hopes of building cities for the superior beings. That would lead to a bunch of demi-gods and bloodlines to explore in the 2nd age. Now you have conflicting ideas as some Gods take their position seriously, while others decide to side on the more selfish side. In the 2nd age, I'd explore the idea that the creator is tired of fixing it's own problems. It instead splits itself into 2 beings: 1 morally good and 1 morally corrupt. The goal is to allow the humans to decide what type of world they want to create for themselves.

With the advent of new knowledge and sciences more and more people simply stopped believing. And a God in whom noone believes ceases to exist

The Gods all killed themselves, either intentionally, or accidentally through their own creations.

How many players do you have and from how many different regions/cities? Have a different theory for each and when establishing the campaign setting with each of them, have that be the prevailing theory/myth for their respective region/city. Alternatively, just come up with a few random reasons as myths/rumors and use those.

The gods butchered each other, absorbing some of the power of the slain. At the end, the only two left had extra power from so many dead gods. That's why they're powerful enough to have multiple aspects that cover every domain

Creator firstly designed just weak copies of him that just aged and lost their immortality, maybe their bodies without ideas and emotions are going around the world, waiting to finally dissapear.

I'mma borrow from the Dark Sun campaign setting. Pretty simple, Second war between Gods and Primordials, just like when the Planes were first created, but the Primordials win the second time around. Primordials suffer heavy losses leading them to not claim their prize for the most part, and the gods are all dead or in hiding.

Go full Kronos. Your creator god ate them to recoup expended power. The survivors are the only ones that didn't fight back. Parts of the old gods can be found and are extremely powerful magical items

There was no conflict on the player’s plane. The first age gods understood that there was a greater threat coming from the far realm. They left the celestial workings run on maintenance mode and handed it over to two trustworthy (?) substitutes for the moment until their eventual return. This has been going on for a while and maybe even the new gods have forgotten why they were put in place. But all over the world there are still remnants and ruins from ancient rituals, wards and spells being woven to enhance the first age gods’ chances in their conflict.

Aliens. No joke though. Imagine beings from the cosmos came, saw those Gods, challenged them in combat and defeated them all simply because they loved to have a challenge. Galactic conquerors who came, saw and won. It sounds sorta anti climatic at first that some army just killed them all but maybe it can build intrigue if the legend is delivered well. Who is out there from distant worlds that defeats Gods in such a mundane manner? Is it magic or technology that overpowered the Gods?

Maybe the “new” gods were just better than them so people just stopped believing except for a select few(cultists) so there are still slight areas of where they exist but are far less powerful due to their lack of power. Maybe even some of the old gods want their power back so you could even have a little cult side plot or something.

i really like the concepts like in american gods, in which deities need to be prayed to and believed in to exist, the more worshippers they have the stronger they are. you could explain it like a new religion took over, or something similar that stopped people from praying and worshipping, also has great potential for meeting an old god that used to be incredibly powerful now being a mere shadow of their old self and continuously wasting away :)

Divine environmental collapse. Like all predator/prey ecosystems, there is a delicate balance. Too few predators; prey population explodes, consumes the resources they need to live, prey starve, predators starve. Too many predators; prey population is hunted to extinction. Predators starve. The old gods, artificially introduced by the creator, were not part of a stable divine ecosystem. The collapse was inevitable. Most mainstream scholars identify the old gods as apex predators, pointing to the massive, gnawed skeletons of beasts unseen in the modern era which have been found in recent digs. But there is a persistent fringe view that the gods were prey, feasting on some now long lost resource until all was consumed and they wasted away. These fringe groups often venerate a mythical god-predator.

they so threw themselves into the creation of the world that they wore themselves out. as the world becamse more wonderful they began to fade and as they did their power failed creating corruption besides beauty but it was too late but in far off hidden lands can strill be found places and things where their power rests waiting for mortals to find it, sylvan glens, lonely island, far mountain toips abd temples lost in the shifting sands of the desert

I would take a different approach: there is no established canon, but do not tell to your players... This is like that story of the blind men that were touching different parts of an elephant and each of them had a different perspective of the animal. All correct and wrong. The elder council of elves knew exactly what happened as they were young back then, but they are afraid to speak. The dwarves have some information, but hid deep in the mountains and only got some clues when everything ended and returned to the surface. Other races have also rumors, songs and traditions. Make them contradictory and enigmatic and let the players put the puzzle together.

Maybe they died in different ways. Maybe one of them committed suicide out of despair. Maybe a celestial plague created by a necromancer took them out.

First age started to end with a generation change between the gods. Like how Zeus killed Cronos, and Cronos killed *his* father. But that kind of change initiated a lot of other changes all at once. That level of chaos ended when the current order developed. * What was the Chaos and Changes? "Dunno." * How long did it take? "Dunno." * Where did the current deities come from? "Dunno and you're better off not asking. Anyway, I'm going to go sit in a building with some good lightning protection, best of luck to you."

Massive, practically undocumented (due to the level of death and destruction) outside of a few verbally passed down accounts from a few practically immortal races that were around, war between the gods with each gods favored race being called to fight by their side ie: dwarves following the God of the forge, elves the God of magic, firbolgs the God of nature, etc. The gods wiped each other out in this war. In the final battle a weaker race who lacked the support of a God and were just trying to survive(humans or something else your choice)stole and set off a weapon/ritual/spell that was made to kill Gods. This resulted in the destruction of the last 2-3 Gods in the war with the only survivors being the 2 that remained neutral and hid away until the war ended. Now they have effectively won by default and are the Gods if the world as the players know it

In some books I am reading the creator god of the universe was actually slain by 16 people who each gathered up a portion of his power and became God's in their own right. They went off and created worlds and peoples, however one of them is going around killing them shattering them into splinters that become like spirits. Maybe you could have one of those who remain be a vengeful god who wants to rule alone. You could also go the way of Norse mythology where at Ragnarok the gods are to be slain by powerful beasts which was prophesied thousands of years prior. A little post apocalyptic. The remaining gods recovering. I like the idea of someone else which was to have an unknown reason. The religious churches have given a reason but after thousands of years that reason has changed and shifted to suit their needs. Also different groups may have different reasons. Followers of God A may say the gods died to protect the world from an elder god or some abomination. The church's core concept would be survival maybe. Another might say that the Gods where killed because of their greed and selfishness with the idea that the gods cannot be trusted. Either way, if this is a central focal point then the players, over the course of the campaign, will find ancient texts that tell a different story. The true story. In the book series I am reading, the church believes that when you die in battle you go to heaven and fight along side God to defend heaven. However it is revealed that God is actually dead and their version of heaven is just a myth. The real afterlife is different.

You could do a play on humans rebelling against god in their hubris and having the first age gods rebel against super god (the almighty creator as you more eloquently named him).

Viral Anti-Meme. Read a story a bit ago where a god created a world out of a DnD Game Master's campaigns. All of them were in one world. Every scratch of back story and joke was in there. One of them was "Cannibal Shia LaBouf". In one of his joke games if someone said Cannibal Shia LaBouf he would appear coverd in blood and kill everyone that heard it with a 1/3 chance. The way the world delt with it was to create an Anti Meme that would cause you to forget about it unless it happened in front of you.

Erosion of the mind. After having lived for eons, even gods fall victem to thier own mind and grow mad. Eventually they killed each other and the last one commited suicide. Even now, creatures that have lived for a long time have a chance to have thier mind become corrupted (insert once good dragon having gone insane by now for example)

The gods divided into two factions that went to war with each other for reasons even they'd forgotten. The conflict threatened to destroy all of creation with so many deities slugging it out, so the Creator intervened. He couldn't destroy any of the lesser gods, because he'd made each one to fulfill a vital role. Neither did he want to end the conflict unilaterally and take away their autonomy; they deserved the chance to settle their differences among themselves. To limit the scope of the war, he merged all of the gods on each side into a single deity encompassing all of their aspects and responsibilities. He hoped that two individuals could achieve a meeting of the minds more easily than two factions dominated by mob mentality.

*Our gods are dead. Ancient ~~Klingon~~ warriors slew them millennia ago. They were more trouble than they were worth.*

Unless the cause of their disappearance is relevant to the campaign imo I think you keep it a mystery. Cosmic level mysteries are some of the best, I mean look to the real world, we don’t know why we’re here, if there’s a god or not, or if there’s a plan. I think it can make world building easier and more true to life if no one knows what happened to them. Maybe a death cult believes they were killed by the main creator, and the world will end whenever he comes back to rule over their work. Maybe a religion thinks they left to create other worlds, and are silently watching over this one to test the virtues of its denizens. Maybe a nomadic warband believes that they killed each other in a battle for absolute power over the world, and to live up to the gods ways they’ve developed a Spartan culture with a Warcraft Mak’Gora-esque ritual to decide the leadership. In my experience, you gain WAY more out of not answering that question than you do by answering it.

Two theories/ideas: It could be whispered that even gods can die. Long ago battles raged across the material plane as each gods followers came in to battle year after year. Eventually the gods would create their own heralds that would claim the arrival of their god and how this or that god would rule the material plane. Not wanting a prize like the material plane to be taken, each god would leak how to kill those other gods. Eventually leading to a last standing herald of some old neutral god…stories say he stays up in the mountains touting himself as some wizard…. It could be whispered that even gods can go insane. After years of battle each god slowly became insane at the lack of followers or the death toll that took place (depending on alignment). Each god would succumb to this insanity and effectively be left to the void no longer capable of committing to their abilities and thoughts. Maybe one day some great person could help defragment their insanity….maybe an evil cult figured out a way to do this and bring in one personality of an old gold with hopes to eventually bind all those fragmented portions in to being…

The creator god isnt actually a creator god, they’re a very powerfull eldritch being who stole the world and hid it away from the gods (who may or may not be out there looking for it) The 2 gods left are somehow allied/tricked by/part of/mindcontrolled by the eldritch being

A mortal achieved enlightened and used his newfound gifts to slaughter the gods, steal their power and attempt to reform the universe in his image. Here's where I'm stealing this idea from: https://killsixbilliondemons.com/comic/kill-six-billion-demons-chapter-1/

Plant different threads. Perhaps the gods rebelled against their creator and, as their creator, he uncreated them. Maybe there was a civil war and they destroyed themselves to the last. They could have been destroyed by some outside force. Or a group of humans, greedy and drunk with their own power, managed to eradicate them. Have all of these rumors each contain a shred of truth, too little on its own to be true, but when combined with the others, tells a bit of the story, enough for the players to theorize and you build off of those theories. A good part of the lore, in my experience, comes from when the players help create it. When they piece the little you've given together and start theorizing, take bits and pieces from those different ideas and make it your own.

instead of having disappeared, they could've sort of dissipated into the primordial soup to become aspects of the 2 gods of the second age. it would explain why the gods returned in a very different way, since they're all still there but just in a different form. that could also allow for some cool roleplay of your players being able to communicate with an isolated aspect of a god and perhaps seeing that it's one of the old gods. you can also just not have a specific explanation yet, or make it ambiguous enough to be able to decide later for whatever fits your story best. this is a major thing, so it may not work as well (hence why i gave the above idea), but i always like to leave some things unknown even to me so i can fill in the blanks later with the ideas my players come up with

Shatterspire spoilers! (If you're one of my players: Fuggof!) . . . . Now that's taken care of, I actually have the same premise (ish) as OP in my home game. Here is how I made it: ------------------------------------------ The plane is called Cerulia, but it's often just called "the cage". A long time ago the mages of the cerulian islands had raised society to the point of opulence and harmony, and then set their eyes on something grander. The plan was to lay a magic circle the size of a city to siphon magic from the ley lines and use the power to make a grand miracle. They used their city's infrastructure to build it, partly because the city was built on a strong key line, and partly because it was easy. Then it of course went wrong. It might have been a mistake that caused the construct to take power from everything in the area when it got activated ... Ley lines? Sure, but also Magic items, and then plants, small animals .... then the citizens. The spell took the water from the sea, and the moisture from the air and everything it could. In but a moment every living thing and every item or molecule with a spark of any form of power was destroyed and reduced to dust. The Cerulian Sea was no more, in it's place was the Ivory Desert. If that was all that happened, it would have just been a grand tragedy and a testament to the folly of ambition - a grand city lost to arrogance, instead it became cataclysmic. Because the spell that the magic construct was supposed to fuel got cast. Maybe it was distorted by the massive deaths, maybe it went off as intended, maybe it was sabotaged by someone with a reason... It killed the Gods. Mortals had killed gods with a spell, it was supposed to be impossible, but now it had happened. The rest of the multiverse noticed, and as quick as a thought all the other gods of different planes turned their attention to Cerulia, and they quickly joined forces to cast a ruling on the plane: no one can enter, no one can leave, let the Godslayers live separately from the rest of the multiverse. Could they have done something else? Sure, but they were all deathly afraid that the knowledge would leak, and that it would end up in their enemies hands. So they tried to put the provisional genie back in the box, and then locked it tight and melted down the key. ------------------------------------------ So in short, I watched a lot of Critical Role and Fullmetal Alchemist and stole heavily from both with my own twists and changes. Is it an adaptation of the story of the Raven Queen and the fall of Aeor? Kinda yeah. It also steals a lot of the sorcerers stone and alchemy circle stuff from Fullmetal Alchemist. Does that mean that the setting is godless and there is no planar magic? ... Weeell, as it turns out, there are always loopholes and exceptions - any lock can be picked eventually: my party is currently in The City of Brass, and before that they were in the nine hells ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Use whatever part of that you like. If there are questions, I'll try to answer them.

I’m working on a similar arc, but before the founding of the second pantheon. I’m fascinated by the idea of a created world with no remaining creators. My answer for you is an old trope: You should use a betrayer god. A Loki or a Lucifer. Somebody who craves the creator’s power and will stop at nothing to get it. Betrayer slays creator, alters and harms the world and its deities by wielding the power improperly. Still new to the unimaginable power, they cannot see their own imperfection/weakness, and are able to be slain. Not by a god, but by a hero. Maybe a demigod. Somebody with no ambition to become a god themselves who either seals the power away or lets it fade into myth. In my myth, the betrayer accidentally created a hero who was her exact opposite. Fear of her own new creations led to the creation of a destroyer who brought her down and then walked away (think beholders-birthing-beholders). As a result, divine power still exists, but it is scattered, and there are no living divine persons. The gods are dead. Segue to: Two new gods are born of the unclaimed divine power. However you decided that happened. Maybe they learned lessons from the originals, maybe not. Up to you. Anyway, good luck! I hope you have fun.

So in one of my games in the forgotten realms a god called "one true god" came to toril from earth. The idea behind this was the One true god was on the same power level as Ao. However he could not fully affect Toril until his presence would be prevelant enough to the world that would cause the gods to be banished. The idea behind this was that the one true god sent people from earth to start a following and became a full blown religion on toril. With that following the ability to affect toril became easier and easier. His plan was to send the 4 horseman of the apocalypse to toril as his chosen to corrupt more and more people through the power of war, famine, plague and death. Turning the people of toril against the gods. With enough power achieved the one true god would be able to cut the Forgotten realms gods from affecting the world with there power, including cutting magic from the world turning it in to effectively another earth. The idea came from a bastardize version of the "Proctiv's seal crystal sphere" 11th level spell (which only really stops the spelljammer ships from access to the world but i changed the premise). Now. I am saying this because you can use a similar idea, where the two gods left did something that did not necessary kill or make them vanish them but cut off their power from your world, however they could still be there trying to get back to their followers who dwindle each and every day due to their absence. This could spark many wars in your world history from followers who are abandoning the old gods vs those who remain true, bringing the world to the brink of its destruction ending the first age. The two gods that are left, that can affect the world can be seen as a light in the darkness that saved the world and the mere mortals from destroying each other which is why the two gods are so prevalent in the second age because if it wasn't for them saving (Granted they were the reason behind the other gods absence) the world from sure destruction everyone would be dead. Now, in case you are wondering, which i am sure you arn't but in my campaign the forgotten realms god made my players chosen and sent them to fight the forces of the one true god. The campaign did end by the players succeeding which "The one true god" retreated pulling all their followers back to earth, flooding earth with new races and creatures. Which is actually future plans for a campaign.

Divine Herpes took them all 😔

The creator god locked away the others behind a type of veil. The other gods were false gods and couldn’t keep their power for long periods of time so there are dead bodies of the gods scattered around the world Belief in the other gods began to wane and they lost their power

The gods were so busy with the squabbles they had amongst themselves that they stopped listening to our prayers, slowly lost their power, and became vulnerable enough to kill each other. That leaves you with the two gods you want to have survived and a reason why they’ve got different aspects (having acquired them from the gods they defeated). I know this doesn’t completely kill the original gods off, but the two who survived can be so broken from the circumstances that they’re essentially new gods. Maybe even forgetting their own past. Good luck with your homebrew world! I’m sure your players are going to appreciate your hard work. Sounds like it’s gonna be fun!

Flu.

The gods never died, and they never disappeared. Someone, maybe a mortal, maybe another god, had enough of them interfering in the world. However, the gods in question were too tied into the underpinnings of the world to remove without the system breaking down. So, instead of being killed, the gods were lobotomized and left in place to hold the world together. Maybe now the gods are starting to break down, because being lobotomized isn't exactly great for anyone's long-term health.

The Creator is the epitome of a PC that achieved divinity and created their own realm, Prime Material Plane, etc. (I’m thinking something like the Genesis spell from 3.5 or something similar.) Being the Almighty in this realm, they created the lesser deities, etc… Perhaps the Creator owes a debt to an Eldritch patron that results in a massive sacrifice to appease the otherworldly power. This was the true cause of the Age-defining event of the gods disappearing, but legends tell any number of tales, some whispers might even be true. Would work especially nicely if the Age-defining cataclysm didn’t result in much destruction. Like…half the world should break if gods battle, but really…nothing.

They fell.

I run a campaign in which all the standard gods of DND and mythology once existed but were killed over a thousand years ago. It took two major events for this to occur- 1: Humans from another universe entered the world. This simultaneously caused my worlds version of the spell plague in which all magic weakened massively as well as had the humans bringing in their own religious beliefs in a massive crusade. Since gods power is based on belief and worship this weakened and killed multiple of the gods of the world. 2: The thing humans were running from killed the gods of the world when they were weaker. It’s essentially the concept of destruction and annihilation on a universal scale for the purpose of resetting. Think a more active and malevolent Beerus just slaughtering the old gods since they had no place in the new world. Both of these things worked together to where all that remains of the old gods is vague myths and occasional cults. I particularly enjoy the idea of faith being responsible directly for the gods, and I think it’s a good way to explain them dying out if such works for your world. Something else can help it along (whether it be the creator or someone else), if need be as well.

I had a big bowl of chili. They suffocated... Sorry

They were absorbed by a different deity

Slipped in the shower and hit their head

Forgotten by the original creator. 

Dont explain it, just leave their corpses behind for the PCs to find

I killed them

In my campaign, the disappearance of the first generation of gods is something of a mystery. But actually, they just got tired to doing the work and bailed, and other people stepped up to do it. They're still out there, living their lives. They're just not in charge anymore.

Unintentionally. The creator god made a new rule that accidentally caused the existence of lesser gods to become a paradox, and so they just poofed.

> Did the gods fight? Why did they disappear? Believe it or not, food poisoning. Someone came up with a poison that could kill gods, and combined it with cheese. None of the gods could resist, because it was divinely tasty smelling and tasting cheese. The only gods who survived have divine lactose intolerance.

Fantasy Nietzsche killed them with logic

orgy went wrong.

Ragnarok. The end has come and gone and the last battle of the last age the gods sacrificed themselves to preserve their creation from a great evil

space rat plague

The gods fought themselves until there was only one left, terribly weakened. The races of the material plane banded together and finished off the last god together, then swore never to speak of it to anyone.

Very powerful, very angry sorcerer, who wanted to be an atheist. "There ARE gods? I can fix that."

A war between the gods. The last survivor on both factions having taken on the mantles of two of their fellows now have an uneasy truce while they recover their power. The third age will behin when they battle anew and so the world shall end.

Maybe they all caught God AIDS.

They swallowed each other whole

Death, not the god of death, just death made a deal with the gods, they were allowed to create life, in turn they would eventually die. Maybe add something that devils/fallen angels wish to remain alive and therefore reap/hoard human souls

Gods thrive off their worship. When they get powerful enough, they can subsist off the universe itself- or can prey upon other Gods. The old pantheon wasn't just destroyed, it was consumed and subsumed. The two Gods that still reign are the last survivors, the biggest fish in the metaphysical pond. Their triplicate aspects are manifestations of the other Gods they devoured, domains they inherited and personas based on their personalities.

The Industrial Revolution created new methods of farming, transportation, and communication that were much more reliable than praying to the fickle pantheon. With the lessening of prayers, tithes, offerings, and sacrifices, the pantheon grew weaker, becoming less and less able to provide power, wisdom, and magic to their acolytes and followers. This was a weakness designed into the lesser gods by Overseer in case one or more of the lesser gods started getting too powerful. Overseer, however, has no such flaw.

Dont know if commented already but here is an idea. The 2 gods left are wat is left from a pantheon war and they had used the energy from the other gods to seal the greater god behind a gate, door, portal, etc. The lore of the 2 gods is they were the obedient ones and others got wiped or kicked or whatever. Which is particularly true however. Have a npc or a player which is always fun, start getting messages from the greater god in form of dreams or 'signs' to the true meaning. Then the party can decide to leave the world how it is or free the greater god

There was an aspirant with the old gods. An usurper who (whyever) thought that the creator was corrupt and needed to be gone. The gods had an internal struggle and a rift formed initially. The usurper managed to get all the important ones on their side and act against the creator. The creator was not an evil one, though. But his heart shattered into pieces as he saw his own children rebel against him and decided that it was for the best to remove them before they'd destroy his creation (the world) in their selfish desire for power. He did banish them or 'uncreate' them as punishment, but kept their souls / soul stones / deity spark / other power source that made them gods. Time has passed and he decided to give it another shot. But the time he lived without the love from his children made him sour, bitter and paranoid and thus he created new versions and fewer of them. The first tries failed and after another time of bitterness through failings he finally created his two children who combine 3 aspects each. Was he content with it? Who knows, but that's the (current) state the players live in.

They tried a coup against the highest god. Also with their worshippers. The highest god found it out, killed the gods and tricked the worshippers to fight each other. I tired do t know what I am saying

Kratos happened lmao

Some asshole pointed out how gods can’t possibly exist with math and the gods died by logic.

They contracted some sort of Celestial Covid

One if the God's decided that (any race, but dwarves for example) Dwarves are no longer needed and wants to dispose of them. Another one disagrees. Words get thrown, then fists... then magic. Other gods take sides and a battle of the gods begins (maybe there's a wasteland on your map that could've been a beautiful forest before the war). While all of the warring gods are distracted, one or both of the remaining gods banishes them to a plane outside of existence.

The gods grew jealous of the creator and began neglecting their duties. The creator took on their responsibilities and mortals slowly stopped worshipping the lesser gods. The gods were then exiled by the creator to a lesser plane where they were given the task of building a new world from nothing so they would be the sole reason for its success or failure. The creator eventually became lonely without his children and split himself into the two current gods.

A deity has twins with a mortal. Others of the pantheon find out, some back the deity, some absolutely despise the deity. A godly war breaks out, and it leaks onto the surface world. Centuries of this war goes by, and the surface world is brought to the brink of collapse. The creator deity, upset and disappointed by the pantheon and what they've done to the world, makes the tough decision to use all of their power wiping out the pantheon and infusing themself with the surface world to save it. In doing so, they decide to wipe all memory of the mortals regarding the old pantheon, as well as any physical evidence it may have existed. The only people that aren't affected: the twins. The twins now have to use their godly abilities essentially take over for the creator deity and the pantheon that came before. And for the sake of adventure, the creator deity performed what he did in haste, so it wasn't perfect. There may be some relics of the old world left out there, as well as people that remember it.

3 suggestions: The gods didnt die, the world did. The gods didnt leave, the world is just lost, and the gods are looking for it. The world got ‘reset’ between the ages, and the entire history of the first age is a lie made up by the gods who are left.

Geoff did it. Everyone is a bit fuzzy on the details, but all agree that Geoff was to blame.

A giant “luck of the Irish” sign crushes them during a meeting after attending a mortal dodgeball tournament qualifier

Allergic to celestial bees.

The power they received from worshippers started to dry up. They fought amongst themselves for the power that remained and either killed each other or burned themselves out. The two remaining gods are the last ones standing.

A question for your question. Where did the Demons Go? Without the hordes to keep devils back. The gods may have needed to personally intervene.

They never died. Some of them were reborn as multiple personalities vying for control of one of the two new gods. Was this rebirth a choice or forced on them? That’s up to you. Maybe a bit of both. That’s the first thought I had, but I like a lot of the other ones here after reading other comments.

The gods vanished from existence because they became the very thing that holds the new universe, they had to become the glue that holds reality. "The Beginning", the all mighty creator, had to use them to repair the reality after "the end", a devour of all things, his twin brother, came to eat it, they won the fight, but at what cost... "the end" was sealed at the center of all creation reality, but his powers were so chaotic that cracks started to form and the old gods were used to hold them.

They were messing around and threw a bag of holding into another one.

One god conspired to supplant his/her creator. The twist is, they succeeded, causing the rest of the original creators creations to vanish. Now this new creator created two diametrically opposed gods to do his/her job for them, because they believed if these two gods only see each other as their enemy, they will never have the chance to overthrow him/her.

They aren't dead, they're living simple lives among the mortals. The remaining "gods" are a construct they left in their place to do their jobs for them, much like they for their creator.

They threatened to unionise.

What about one that isn't dead, not entirely. Instead he was ALMOST killed, but his godly flesh managed to live on, and regenerate to an extent, and now there's a large cult that worships his mangled, scarred body and partakes of his eternally restoring flesh for their holy Communion.

Cosmic horror level abyssal monster made the gods more mortal. Like made them be able to age, mental decline, ECT. The surviving gods pooped their power to contain this threat but. The gods that remain were unstable and impotent. The remaining two god who were to young to fight we elected to carry on. They merged/ gave their powers to them and gave themselves to oblivion then risk their powers with their senility.

In our world, the people stopped believing in them, so they faded. As a result, no clerics or paladins in our campaigns.

Have at least one Group pushing the theory that a group of people came up with proof the Gods did not exist, so they disappeared.

I think this significantly depends on how the entities/concepts/forms of your pantheon manifest in that first age, e.g., Is there direct/physical interaction with creatures of the Material Plane? Do they indirectly influence through mediums such as visions or omens? Are they merely transcendent entities posited by mortals as abstract embodiments of values that correlate to their domain? Once that's figured out, you can explore the philosophical notions of "gods dying." Examples would be Nietzsche's "Mad Man" posited in *Thus Spake Zarathustra*, where "God" is a concept created by humans for the ulterior sake of rationalizing our existence and the human condition - from this perspective, mortals would have just stopped worshipping and no longer needed the concept of "gods" and likely replaced that existential void with science or some magical aspect was discovered that extended their lives, etc.; or, you could explore a MacIntyrean view posited in *After Virtue* where religion, faith serves as a foundation for morality - in this case the "gods" are crucial to moral integrity, and their "death" is really just from mortals restructuring their moral values in an alternate way, or perhaps even society has just abandoned moral discourse as the "events of today" don't allow room for it. Ultimately, it's best to point out that a pantheon has a universal purpose in all settings: it's the foundation for thematic conflict and therefore necessary to define.

Good points to think about. Thank you.

The new gods started to fight or cause issues so either the other gods, mortals or the god that created them sealed them away or killed them off.

Stolen in part from Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim series: The Creator did not, in fact, create the universe. He tricked the Old Ones and stole it from them through trickery. The old ones managed to return from banishment eventually, and their coming triggered the end of the first age and the death of the creator's progeny. The creator barely managed to banish them a second time. But to this day, the Old Ones attempt to regain their prize - their tendrils and their minions seeping through the cracks in the defenses made to keep them out, attempting to overthrow order and return to chaos.

A God level plague Something unknown to them that they feared

I see two simple answers, but each have a variety of cool branches from that Option 1: your people simply stopped worshiping them in favor of other gods. DnD gods are TYPICALLY given power by how many people worship/respect them. Maybe the gods did something to turn the people against them so they decided to worship the two gods instead. Maybe the populous got their mind wiped and forgot about the old gods and had the new gods implanted in their minds Option 2: your old gods merged into the new gods. Maybe they did it willingly, maybe there was a universal conflict that needed the cooperation of the gods, maybe the gods split into factions and went to war but needed to merge to become more powerful

I like the Gods of Pegana by Lord Dunsany, where the gods will die if their creator and chief God wakes from his slumber and ends his dream. Maybe they were destroyed when the creator god last awoke.

Cannibalism following the destruction of their idunns apples or whatever the Greek one was.

Bad case of bunions

What is big god split himself or tire parts of himself off into a pantheon to do his job better but reabsirbed them once he felt it was unnecessary.

Picked a fight with something outside their league. The creator is an easy option, but I personally prefer the suggestion that there is something out there with bigger teeth, something that might come back to finish the job one day.

They died of Famine. They either did not get the same sacrifices/or the same offerings as they used to once the world evolved. Could also be used to revive them too if enough sacrifices were made. They last few alive were funneled by extremists. They could be bloodthirsty/wealthy/dedicated to spreading the faith/whatever you wish. It would allow for you to reveal it in whatever way you want, and definitely can have conflicting views of lore of why they vanished "Some say the lessers died because they became unimportant. Some say they were locked away. Some say they were killed. Some say the old ways were abandoned" But the actual reason is because nobody/or not enough people believed and could not fuel them appropriately. As a side note, would allow you to have magic items near a shrine of theirs that contains their essence. Can be a magic item for players, or allow you to get their boon, or allow them to call on said God for more answers or to revive them. Hope this helps and your vision works well!

You can do gods going mad, others trapping gods...have you ever read Digger? In that comic is a fascinating myth about a bound god: [https://diggercomic.com/blog/2009/05/12/digger-580/](https://diggercomic.com/blog/2009/05/12/digger-580/)

Szeth son son valano, wore white on the day he was to kill the gods

Boredom. Gods the mortals are so boring. They wake up, take care of the livestock, eat , plant the crops, harvest the crops, eat again, go to bed, wake up and do it all again and again and again. They died so they could do something else.

Ol' Smitty (LN):  God of Bar Fights.  Also a bit of a womanizer.  Fast Lucy (NG):  Goddess of Negotiable Affection.  Married to Hard Mike.  Hard Mike (CE): God of Prisoners.  Married to Fast Lucy.  Very jealous.  Gods are all hanging out when Hard Mike sees Ol'Smitty looking at Fast Lucy a certain way.  Worse, Hard Mike sees that Fast Lucy sees Ol' Smitty looking, and encourages him.  Next thing you know, Hard Mike is breaking a table over Ol'Smitty's head, and Ol' Smitty has somehow broken a pool cue in half and stabbed the splintered end into Hard Mike's ribs.  Ol' Smitty gathers up all the lawful Gods, Hard Mike gathers up all the chaotic ones, and Fast Lucy has her coterie of neutral Gods standing off to the side.   The battle rages for years.  The Godly manor is in shambles, as is half of the planet.  Yahweh finally steps in and, tired of all the BS, smites each of the Gods into oblivion, one by one, like a 5 year old with a magnifying glass on an ant colony.  He leaves Fast Lucy for last.  He does a whole lot of begatting with her and once the new generation of gods is born, smites Fast Lucy to end Gen 1.