History

The current year is 1549 AGI. After Gawvanta Invasion - AGI - was selected because this marked an event that truly transformed life on the continent of Merowe.

## Human History Version

The known history of Merowe is widely disputed, as each race tries to let themselves come out as the hero and the victor. Most common folk know little about the truth of what happened, and instead believe in a version of history that is spread with folklore and propaganda for their own country. The sages have a better understanding of the true history, but politics prevent them from writing down history in a way that makes their nation come out in a bad way. What follows in this section is the history as it is known by human scholars at prestigious universities.

### Origins

In the days before history was written down, the Almighty created the Seraphim. When the Seraphim of life decided to see who could create the best form of life, the Almighty gifted them with the material plane, filled with stars and planets. The dozens of life Seraphim that were around first created plants, until one of them came up with the idea of creating something that was able to move itself. This spawned the life in the sea, which was quickly followed by a wide variety of animals on land. Eventually the life Seraph Lianéd decided to create life that was able to think like the Seraphim themselves; and thus the first dragons were born. Other Seraphim quickly followed. Milwel created the dwarves in the southern parts of Merowe; whom wanted them to be able to endure all the hazards of the world, both magical and natural. Nva’s ultimate creation was one that was finely attuned to the use of magic: the elves. They lived around in the northern parts of Merowe. Weerm approached his ultimate creation as one that was highly adaptable to any situation, and chose the lands north of Merowe as the place to do so. This resulted in the human race. Shortly thereafter, evil creatures were unleashed by malicious Seraphim. As they promised power, the evil creations slowly corrupted the Seraphim ultimate creations; and thus sin came into the world. This caused great grief to the Seraphim, who held council and decided to stop their creation race.

### The Dwarven Empire

Of all the Seraphim, Milwel felt the most connected to his creation. He taught the dwarves a how to make complex machines, and convinced other Seraphim to assist the dwarves. Combined with their lawful nature, the dwarves grew to be a prosperous nation. During this time the dwarves created a vast underground network of tunnels and had cities both above and below the ground, stretching from the far north of Merowe to the far south. As the dwarven population grew, they became more and more prideful. Eventually they started to wage war on the elves. This led to the elves being split in smaller communities, which later grew to be known as high elves, dark elves, and wood elves.

At the height of their pride, the dwarves believed that they were more powerful than the Seraphim. This angered the Seraphim who decided to stop supporting the dwarves. As their empire was entirely build on the assistance of the Seraphim, the dwarven nation quickly came to its downfall. Millions of dwarves perished, and they retreated to live exclusively underground.

### The Elven Empire

The other races, did not rely on the everyday assistance of the Seraphim to support their civilization. The high elves were quick to seize the opportunity that arose, and used their innate magic affinity to establish control of the main continent. As their cities started to grow, their understanding of magic did as well.

In the meantime the humans also started to migrate into the continent. By the time that the elven empire fell, humans were an integrated part of elven society. This also resulted in half elves being born. One of such half elves, Beltza, attained the highest position in the magician’s school. Beltza wished to increase the magic power of the nation even further. He proposed to physically enter the Aether. One hundred of the most skilled elven wizards, along with one hundred of the fiercest dwarven warriors and one hundred of the most cunning humans gathered and opened a doorway to the Aether. However, when they entered, the evil inside of them, particularly that of Beltza, twisted them into vile creatures known as the Gawvanta.

### Fall of Civilisation

The gawvanta invaded the elven empire from the most northern parts of Merowe. The horde moved quickly, laying waste to anything in their path. It took the elves nearly two centuries to find a way of defeating the gawvanta. During this time, elves had made pacts with demons, transforming them into tieflings, and humans had made pacts with dragons, from which the dragonborn came to be. Still not enough to defeat the gawvanta, the elves send out a special operations team to the heart of the horde. Once there, they set of a magical explosion of enormous size. This explosion crippled the gawvanta enough to force them underground, but also turned the northern parts of Merowe into a toxic wasteland; cutting of all communication with the northern continent.

When the gawvanta horde retreated, the continent was left without clear leaders. Most of the high elves were summoned to use their magic powers in the war, and those that survived found themselves in the area that is now known as RAJ. The dwarves survived the invasion by quarantining their underground cities, and the humans did not have great leaders within the continent. The other surface elves, nature elves and common elves, were scattered throughout the continent. The result was that Merowe fell into chaos, with the only civilisations on the main continent being small communities of barbarian tribes.

### Rise of the Human Kingdoms

After roughly six hundred years of constant warring between the barbarian tribes, a second gawvanta invasion occurred. Starting around the middle of the continent, the human barbarians were the first victims. As the gawvanta horde started to conquer territory, Venuralas – a Seraph of love – was send by the Almighty. Venuralas was able to unite the human tribes against the horde. Under his lead, they built great fortifications while researching military, magic, and food preserving technologies. When the horde attacked, the humans were ready for them. Using the common elves as ground troops, led by expert human fighters alongside powerful human wizards, they were able to hold back the gawvanta. The invasion was ended when Venuralas sacrificed himself, and the gawvanta were driven back underground once more.

After banding together to defeat the gawvanta, the new technologies allowed the humans to found large cities. These cities grew powerful enough to conquer the surrounding lands and grow into nations. The countries represented in the rest of this book describe the world 1540 years after the first gawvanta invasion (AGI).

## Invasion of Valesden

A third gawvanta invasion started in Valesden 1541 years after the first gawvanta invasion. Unable to act in time, Valesden lost its country to the gawvanta over the next seven years. In a final attempt for victory during the siege of the capital, the remaining Valesdian wizards combined their power to trigger a magical explosion that would only kill the gawvanta. However, something went wrong with the spell, and every living creature inside the city was mutated into a savage monster that survives by draining magical energy from other creatures.