Althaea
I'm best known as the administrator of the largest Dominions Discord server and the primary moderator for the official Dominions 5 forums. I also serve as an administrator on this wiki. I can be reached directly on Discord as @Althaea#3562 or at althaeadominions@gmail.com. You can also friend me on Steam with the code 106592060. All wiki admins have access to the inbox at moderators.illwiki@gmail.com.
Lore
Right now I'm using this page as a place for personal thoughts, theories and observations on the lore of the game. Some of them may remain here indefinitely due to being overly speculative, while others might be shifted out to the notes and lore sections of the appropriate article in the future.
The world of Dominions seems to possess a system of ages. In game mechanical terms, there is of course the Early Era, the Middle Era, and the Late Era (often abbreviated as EA/MA/LA and referred to as ages), and there are Thrones of Ascension which reference concepts such as the First Age and the Second Age. I think it's hard to say whether the First/Second etc. ages correlate to the Era system. In the beginning, or at "the Dawn of Time", there is a great deal of magic in the world, and with the passing of time, it fades. The causal mechanic for this is uncertain.
The basic concept has a great deal of background in both real-life mythology (with concepts such as the Golden Men of Greek mythology, or the precursor humans who are a thousand times as big and live a thousand times as long in Hindu-adjacent mythology) and also in the Earthdawn setting that Illwinter has taken a lot of inspiration from.
These ages, by the way, seem to be unrelated to the presence or lack thereof of a Pantokrator - it is likely a natural process, even if a Pantokrator or similar force could mitigate the effects.
There's at least two possibilities for what happens at the end of this process: perhaps there is only one set of ages, and magic simply vanishes from the world entirely. More likely is that magic begins to return, and that the system of ages is a cycle, of sorts. This is either causes or is caused by the Cataclysm. I'm inclined to believe that it causes the Cataclysm rather than vice versa, that the ebb and tide of magical forces, and the conjunction of the astral and material planes, is a natural one. The Horrors are not inherently part of the process, I believe, but simply opportunistic in the way that they take advantage of the Cataclysm.
Should a Pantokrator or some other force manage to take control of the Thrones of Ascension, they have the ability to prevent or end the Cataclysm. I'm not sure whether this marks a renewal of the cycle, or simply delays the end of it.
Should the Horrors manage to destroy the Thrones of Ascension, I suspect the plane will eventually collapse into an unformed Chaos - then, as magic surges, there is another Beginning of Time.