Black Empire (AoC Universe)

The Black Empire refers to Middle-Earth under the thrall of the insidious Princes of Hell.

Lore
After the Fall of the The Pantheon, the rebellious archangel Sargamon turned to the worlds that his former masters had created in order to bring chaos to them. He knew that the process of destroying Middle-Earth would take a while, thus he decided to corrupt the planet from within, to weaken its natural defences. The Seeds of Discord crafted by his hand crash-landed into Middle-Earth, each sinful Seed going in a different direction, and out of them rose the parasitic eldritch horrors. As soon as they emerged from their shells, the demons began their plans for world domination. This gave birth to the Black Empire (the period in which it was active referred to as "Hell on Earth").

Each of the seven princes had a share of the Empire and its inhabitants, using the native populations as slave labour. The borders of each section of the Empire changed year on year, as though they shared a common evil, each prince worked to increase his own fortunes at the expense of the others, resulting in violent struggles that destabilised the planet. The seat of power for each demon prince was the capital city of their empire, usually named after themselves (e.g. the city of Belphatar being the capital of Belphegor's empire). The Citadel (stronghold) of each demon prince was located within the empire, and each citadel was topped by a menacing construct known as the Spire of Darkness, which was gradually filled overtime with black energy. If it reached maximum capacity, the Spire would overcharge, becoming a near-unstoppable instrument of magical destruction.

The capitcal cities of the Black Empires were also the sites of demon worship. The princes were powerful in their own right, but enjoyed having their egos stroked by subordinates, and thus comissioned great temples to be built in their names. The temples always had unnecessarily-long titles, such as the Sacred Temple of the Most Revered Sovereign Overlord and Autocrat of all the Midlings being the name of Lucithel's temple. According to Azathoth, who later used pieces of the temples to construct demonic shrines, people could summon the spirits of the demon princes via worship and prayers.

The Black Empire was destroyed, along with the evil powers of the demon princes, when the Aesir intervened in mortal affairs for the first time, raising the Carnal Forces against their hellish oppressors. With the demons gone, the natural magics of Middle-Earth were allowed to flourish, restoring the beauty of the land.