Before
👑 The Erulan Empire
Cairn's dominant power, and the reason for everything that followed. Its arcanists spent centuries drawing on the Aether for their spells and rituals — a source they did not understand and could not see the far side of.
🌌 What was on the other side
Beings that live in the Aether, banished from the material world long ago and wanting it back. Every ritual thinned the wall. The Erulans were, without knowing it, doing the digging.
The Grim Dawn itself
It started from the inside
The most powerful Aetherials possessed high-ranking officials of the Empire and used them to weaken it from within. By the time anyone understood what was happening, the people giving the orders were not people.
Then it stopped pretending
The Aetherials descended on Cairn, possessing countless humans and butchering the rest. That day is what the game is named after.
And it did not stop at killing
They raised the fallen as mutated undead — mindless foot soldiers for their own invasion. The Erulan Empire was destroyed in the event, and humanity was driven to the edge of extinction.
The two sides that are not on your side
👁️ The Aetherials
They want human bodies as a resource. Possession is not incidental to them — it is the point. The possessed are called the Taken, and the game is careful to keep reminding you that they used to be someone.
🌑 The Chthonians
Horrors from the Void, and the older nightmare: before the Grim Dawn they appeared on Cairn only when a ritual went wrong or a sorcerer called them. They want humanity destroyed — specifically, destroyed before the Aetherials can use it.
⚔️ And you are in the middle
Cairn is ground zero for a war between two powers that both predate you and neither of which is fighting over you. One wants your body; the other wants to make sure nobody gets it. That is the setting in one sentence.
Where the factions fit
- Devil's Crossing is a converted prison, and it is your first base because a prison is what survives when everything else does not.
- The Black Legion is the only imperial regiment that escaped the fallen capital, which makes it the last piece of the Erulan Empire still standing.
- The Rovers descend from the Arkovian Empire — an older civilisation than Erulan, and one that was destroyed by a curse of its own.
- Kymon's Chosen and the Order of Death's Vigil are two answers to the same question — whether the dead are a weapon or an abomination — and the game makes you pick one.
Still to verify
Cross-checked on 10 September 2026 against the Official Grim Dawn Wiki's Cairn, Aetherials and Chthonians pages and Crate's own factions page, which agree on the Erulan Empire's use of the Aether, on the possession of its officials, on the Grim Dawn event and the raising of the dead, and on what each of the two powers wants. Story beyond the opening premise is left out on purpose: this page is meant to be readable before you play. What is still unverified is the only thing reading cannot settle — nobody here has played it.