From Introduction:
Long ago, two gods looked down upon the world and beheld a tragedy they could not leave unpunished. Selmiral the Morningstar and his brother Temniphos of the Unblinking Eye they were — the Lord of Two Crystals, God of the Six-Pointed Star and the One Who Dwells in Depths of Cyan — and though they knew the meaning of heavenly power, this once they were helpless in the jaws of fate.
Below them, on the vasty plains of Akkarth, east of the baleful Black Peaks and north of the flowing Golden Grasses, they watched as the Dawn King fell before the sword of mighty Mortegaunt. Already maimed by his enemy’s monstrous hordes, with his Dawn Soldiers slain all around him, the king was no match for even a middling servant of evil. But Mortegaunt himself strode forward and sent his prize to the House of Death — and crowned himself the Monster King — while the gods looked on in despair.
Yet even Mortegaunt, for all his ambition, remained but a mortal man, and when he died, the gods took their price for his hubris and his offences. As the funeral procession led the Monster King into his tomb at the centre of his great necropolis, Selmiral and Temnniphos gathered up all of the greedy monsters who served as his minions and sealed them up inside as well, to dwell there with their former master forever. Not content to let their jail consist of walls built by mortal hands — even monstrous ones — the pair placed a mountain over the necropolis, forbidding its inhabitants from knowing the light of the sun or having the sky to escape by.