As people lost contact with the more primal knowledge of the esoteric, priests began to be called upon more and more often to explain, appease, and otherwise mediate the esoteric. People who did not rest their pursuit of esoteric understanding on a state ideology became known as witches. A witch who could move her consciousness into the esoteric became known as an adept. Many adepts joined the priesthoods that were developing among the Aztec, the Maya, and the Inca on the South Continent, as well as among the people of Europe and the Mediterranean. Adepts who refused to join were persecuted or relegated to the margins of society.

Plastics had come into use in all societies. The ancient taboos against the domestication of life had evaporated, and artisans set about creating organisms that would serve as tools for all tasks. City-states were eager to trade for whatever specialized plastics that other city-states might have developed. The priests saw that trade was made safe, regulated, and tithed.

Priests continued their study of the language of the esoteric, and uncovered the secrets of the Arcana Esoterica. With this and their control of trade, priests were able to gain control of governments, wielding power that was authoritarian and undisputed. Societies were made communalistic. People were assigned rigid, complex roles according to a dogmatic social patterning that attempted to maximize harmony and the long-term survival of the society as a whole.

Many witches continued to resist the theocrats, and this tension resulted in a violent global upheaval known as the Great War and later as the First Witch War, or First World War (WWI). The world reeled as 10,000 years of peace, harmony, and status quo came abruptly to an end. Witches were exterminated in the millions. The adepts organized and brought their combined might to bear against the theocracies of the world. Within a year, most of the theocrats of the world had died of psychic attacks.

The armies of the theocrats continued, however, to sweep across the world, scouring it of witches. The witches avoided engagements, preferring retreat, going into hiding, and the occasional guerilla sortie. Practitioners of the African Seeded Way, once welcomed throughout the Mediterranean for their knowledge of plants were forced to immigrate east or return to Africa. Many witches crossed Central Asia and the sub-continent to become prominent citizens of what is modern day Qing. Others continued into Japan or to take up residence under the northern khans, bringing with them pirated secrets of the Arcana Esoterica. The very few witches who survived the pogroms of the South Continent fled north to carve out territory among the tribes of the North Continent.

Having killed all their own witches, the theocracies of Dorje Bala, Central Asia and the Mediterranean turned their eyes to the homeland of the Seeded Way. They gathered their armies together to launch a final crusade to purge Africa of the infidel. This collection of military might, the largest in history, landed at the Nile Delta. The Pharoah, with the plant saints of the Urruban Way in attendance called down the power of the sun, and there was no more Crusader army. The Aztec, Inca, and Maya called their navy back just as it was about to land on the coasts of Western Africa. Thus ended WWI.