Background

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**Background**

Things were not always as they are now. Once there spread across the land, like a single song, the power of the Elves, and their story echoed in the mountains and the woods where they built their cities of arcane splendour. The glory of the Elves seeped into the very land of Hahsandra itself, and the seas that bounded them.

Then came the Age of Chaos. And the Elves, to the last one, fled South, putting between the North Island and themselves a barrier of not only the oceans but also the great Spell of Voids, a spell of forgetting, a deliberate purging of the past, an expunging of all memory and recollection of the North Island.

With the passing of the Elves, all manner of creatures came to walk on - and fly above - the lands of the North Island, and from the inevitable conflicts came variations in form and society. Slowly, with a deliberation that would have impressed a Lizardman, there emerged a gradual domination by Humanity. And so The Age of Man brought an end to The Age of Chaos. Mankind was a peculiar, indeed, surprising victor, for the average Man was and is far weaker than the majority of his contemporaries with whom he shared the land, from the diminutive Orcs to the mighty Trolls and Ogres. Man could approach but hardly hope to surpass the craftsmanship of the Dwarves, the depth of the intellect of the Centaurs, or the ferocity of the Maratasens. And yet, year-by-year, the Kingdom of Man grew in both power and strength.

Yet with a very real talent for organisation and diplomacy, mankind came to rule and multiply. None could match the economic integration, nor indeed breeding rate, of mankind's society. In their battles they brought with them a clear understanding of the power of mass as well as the arcane. If the Trolls fielded three hundred warriors on the Plains of Torgan, the Kingdom would dispatch three thousand soldiers to deal with them. When five hundred Orc nomads penetrated to Lake Lasitar, one thousand mounted knights and their attendant squires were sent to push them back to the Woods of Chaos. And in addition to sheer strength of numbers, mankind's forces were always supported by numerous priests and wizards, faith and magic combined in single cause.

Unique to mankind was the very concept of the evolution of society and its structure. Lizardman government was genetic in nature, unchanged since the dawn of the egg, and much the same is true of the Centaur's Herd Law, and the Maratasen's Pride structure. In contrast, Humanity would go through frequent spasms of change. The creation of the Royal Kingdom, for example, was quickly followed by the rise to power of the cities through the Council of Mayors in Stormhaven. And in this mutability, this ability to adapt to changes of environment and circumstance, lay perhaps Humanity's greatest advantage.

The reign of King William began another of these waves of change. The Royal Kingdom had once stretched across the entire North Island, based upon strong support from the cities and the rural nobility both. The Nomads had been pushed to the North while the Trolls were decisively defeated in the East, and the Lizardmen, ever cautious, were making no moves in the West. The integration in the East of Dwarves and many of the larger Ariel populations into the Kingdom came about with relative ease as Humans, Ariel and Dwarves focused on common goals, not only combating the constant threat from Trolls and Orcs but also creating and maintaining an economic trade network. Relations thus forged by necessity and further cemented by the attitudes of religious acceptance preached by the Saints of the Church Universal, alliances were forged.

In the West, however, there was a different story to be told. The rise of the Gemidiahist religion served to cement relations between the rural Barons, and thus promoted stability rather than change. Yet tensions were mounting, and clashes between the House of Barons and the Council of Mayors were becoming a growing threat to the very existence of the Nobility and inherited power.

Then first contact was made with the Elves.

Ancient half-buried Elven ruins were commonplace on the Island. But whilst there were frequent rumours of Elven sightings, on the whole Elves were simply regarded as another extinct race, like Goblins and Krakens. Explorers had always held that there was another great island, mirror to the North Island, on the other side of the world beyond the great Barrier of the Spell of Voids, and indeed, philosophers argued that it must be so, else the balance and symmetry of the world could not be maintained. But until the arrival of the Elves, no one was able to pass the Barrier to confirm or deny these theories.

The arrival of small groups of Elves on the island, then, caused rather a stir.

The Elves remained aloof, with only the Dark Elves - somewhere between a servant and slave caste - making any kind of an attempt to communicate with the North Islanders. For ten years and ten days, they were content merely to study their old lands, those few who had overcome the mental fog of the Barrier sufficiently to recall their past recording the changes wrought in the land with tears in their eyes and sorrow in their heart for what it had become. Then came the death of King William. The Royal Kingdom was meant to pass to his talented and well-groomed son, Hentron, but in somewhat mysterious circumstances he first fell suddenly ill and was then lost in a storm off Hellsgate on the way to his coronation. The Kingdom then divided; the twin claims of the princes Alvera and Solara tearing the already strained factions and royal families apart, and the land knew civil war and chaos once again. And it was then that the Elves struck.

With mighty fleets, including their afeared Sky Fleet, they landed near Pearlstone and drove quickly up the central channel past Vagen to fall upon Stormhaven. Meanwhile, in the west a second Elven force inexorably advanced, no force able to stand against them. Enslaving whole populations they unleashed the Great Spell of Chains, which drained the souls of all slaves, binding them to their service.

In the East a third, smaller force landed with the intention of forging passage from the coastal city of Tor'Quat through the Golden Mountains. But here, disaster struck the Elves. Even as their fleet approached the long bay reaches to the city, a giant sea serpent arose, striking down the lead ships and devouring the Admiral in charge together with the Elven illusionists, who were obfuscating the invasion's advance with swirling black fogs. The Tor'Quatian Orcs were surprisingly alert that morning. And whilst little is known of the slaughter on the shoreline that day that only a single Elf remained to tell the tale speaks all that need be said.

From Stormhaven, the Elves pushed northwest to take Dalzon, their intention to divide the Island's twin Human Empires, already split by Civil War. Forces also sailed up the River of Dreams to the city of Riverside, which quickly fell through foul treachery. But in the west and north, Northlake and Dumas succeeded in turning back the Elven onslaught. And with the determination of the central peoples to resist came realisation for the Elven Empire that taking was sometimes much easier than keeping. Elven lords, granted Imperial land along the seas to project the power of the Empire, encountered widespread hostility. The true North Island Campaign had just begun.

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