Empire of Dusk

The Empire was once just two kingdoms: Mak-Karsai and Kal-Surnia, headed by King Narn and Queen Nadia respectively. These kingdoms would regularly come to blows, but something changed once the monarchs were presented with a far more fearsome threat from beyond their borders. Somehow, someway, they felt a deep and desirous connection right away as this new threat seemed to push them into one another almost magnetically.

They fell in love, and with that love, they became a bane to the other great powers of the ancient world. Each held effectively one half of a set of three extraordinarily powerful artifacts, supposedly spontaneously manifested at the creation of Terros. The Eyes of Dawn and Dusk, and the Heart of Obscura. Originally these were the revered artifacts of the Goddess Aradia, meant to go untouched and unquestioned, but now they could see how they could be used to bring the world under their control.

In the study of how the Heart of Obscura, the tool that Queen Nadia, Lady of Dusk, held was their first target. In summation of its power, it was connected to the Void and to Terros in a strange way. Those who would become a slave to its power would be consumed by the raw energy held within. They would be bound forever to the Heart and the more who used the Heart, the greater the magnification of power. Those who mastered the Heart’s power would become champions for all time and be allowed to live forever within the Heart once their time had come to pass over the mantle. In the same vein, while it was connected to Terros, the wielder would gain the power of an immortal soul and constantly be reborn again and again any time their body was destroyed.

With this power in hand, a mass sacrifice was performed, many souls were lost, weak and incapable of resisting, but it fed the energy needed to allow it to become implanted into a great and noble warrior known as Avernus the Pale. With the implantation of the Heart, he became nothing more than The General, a tool to be used, his mind seemingly destroyed. While he was indeed a great man, compassionate and kind, and a beacon of hope to the people of Kal-Surnia, this was not why he was chosen to mantle the artifact. Instead, it was because he was the consort to Queen Nadia and was about to discover the hidden love affair between his beloved wife and King Narn, Lord of the Peaks. Avernus was a loving soul, and was Nadia’s protector and confidant since their childhoods, and he was betrayed by his own wife in order to continue her plans with her new love.

Next came the study of the Eyes, of which they were in possession of Mak-Karsai, one in the hands of the Tearful Avatar, who was rendered blind by the prolific usage of the Eye of Dawn, where she had spent a lifetime gazing into creation and documenting its beauty for all to hear within the sermons of her followers. She had a constant flow of tears streaming down her face as her eyes swirled with colorful magic, witnessing untold beauty in all things she could never feel or smell or truly experience. Because of her extensive usage of the eye, it had allowed for the tool to become exceedingly powerful, but there was no way to retrieve it without angering the clergy, it was their tool for witnessing Aradia’s perfect creation.

The other Eye was held by the Mournful Gazer, an apocalyptic cult leader who also resided in Mak-Karsai and would spew endless horrid tales of darkness, of The Void, and of a terrible injustices yet to come down on all of terrestrial kind. She did not cry endlessly, but instead she seemed as though she was slumbering, and would simply continuously mutter to her interpreters who would in turn perform great sermons of fear and terror to the people. Her usage as well had turned the artifact into a powerful weapon, with both they would be an unparalleled source of knowledge and an irreplaceable connection to the powers of the Void, but in a controlled state. However, these cultists were also overly protective of their religious artifact, and unlike Nadia, Narn had never thought to forcibly control the religious artifacts of his own kingdom.

It took years, but eventually control was wrestled from both groups, mostly by turning them against one another and forcing their factions to fight. Eventually leading up to both of their leaders being mysteriously abducted and used as sacrifices to implant the eyes into powerful warded necklaces. The only problem was now that anyone who would be made to wear these necklaces were going to suffer tremendously at the sheer power within. The monarchs wouldn’t dare use them themselves, but instead tricked Narn’s unassuming wife into donning one, the eye of Dusk which allowed him to become the true ruler of Mak-Karsai and relegating his wife, Xestia, to an unbearable existence under the strain of the eye’s massive power. Her new name was that of Gazer.

With this done, there were no more pesky obstacles for the rulers and they were able to merge their kingdoms into one, but there was a problem, they still had one eye left and an unruly noble class and peasantry clamoring for answers as to why this union was happening? Where was their mighty king and queen that had seemed to vanish over these years? What was going on?

They had a plan in place for this, and Nadia and Narn quickly fled to Veroma and to the Sanctuary fo the World, there they kidnapped the daughter of the master monk of the temple after falsely declaring sanctuary in the hallowed halls, and forced her to bear the burden of the Eye of Dawn. With it, they felt they finally had the power to put their plan into motion. Summoning The General, Gazer, and now Tearful; Narn and Nadia seemed to be under some delusion as their enemies closed in around them. They spoke out words that were not their own, but someone greater than them, and before their heads could roll, the powers of the eyes and the heart activated and brought everything under control.

They had used their first activation of the artifacts to save themselves, and enforce a magically powered bending of reality so that they had always been together, their Kingdoms were but one, and they were the start of a mighty Empire that would rule the world one day. Not only that, they used the artifacts again, suddenly ‘realizing’ their purposes. Narn gave the drow the ability to understand magic, but not to manipulate it, instead to meld and shape it within technology to create vast powerful might that could rival any talent. Nadia created her own race of peoples, and changed herself to suit their perfection, she called them the Capitol Elves for they would descend from the Capitol of the new empire. They would be ferocious casters and would have the capabilities to inherently use and shape it.

Nadia became the Empress of Dusk, while Narn became the Son of Magic, Avernus as The General would be the enforcer of their divinely appointed will. Gazer and Tearful once Xestia and Karla, would be the prophetesses that would form the backbone of the new religion. The Servants Faith, where the elves were the caretakers of the world, and the humans were children who needed to be subjugated and placed under their control.

So started the Empire, and their conquest was brutal, first off they overtook all their rivals in the Central Obscuran Range, and bludgeoned their long standing rivals in the Dwarven Kingdoms-forcing them off their borders. Then they shot out eastward, having already claimed Veroma, they beat down the likes of Cok-Vadan, Braka Sorkai, and Sida Storla. They reached deep into any elven tertiories and kingdoms they could get their hand son as they ravaged ever more eastward and took on Mel-Sukor and Ques Novich. In a short decade they had taken over most of the northern mainland.

It was only at this point did they really begin to see trouble, trying to go west locked them in combat with the Dwarves, now solidified in their rule, going south they could overwhelm many of the human settlements, but if they stretched too far, the savages in the orcs of the kingdoms of the wood elves would harry and harass them endlessly. If they went east of the Mainland they would run into the High Elves, and that was a fight nobody won. The empire was big, but it was unwieldy and prone to many shortages due to the limitations of their climate.

The only choice was east of the mainland, but there in lied the issue, it was commanded by the Three Kings Alliance. To the North was King Morvala of the Amoran Territories, he held Amora, Alegora, Morvana, and Fortum. All fairly well militarized and commanding massive armies and navies of obscurans and drow. If they went into the Center, they would face the might of Avamor, and its many mountain fortresses, their slave labor was massive and they could drag out a war for decades. Then there was the South, there were humans in a cluster of islands but those wold be a chore to administer to, and their neighbor was the Southern King, Xanvani. He commanded a powerful cluster of islands known simply as Nagari as well as a number of smaller territories that littered the southern expanse of the globe. To fight him would be wading into a powerful Navy beyond compare.

No matter which way they faced out, they saw strong and firm resistance on all sides that they could not break through, unless they used the powers of the artifacts even further. Their magical technologies and military had grown extensively over this time, so they amassed as much as they could bear to part with and threw what they had at the north all at once. Fortum fell first and easiest, then they broke the Kingdom’s back at Amora, ensuring they would not have to fight a centralized resistance in Morvana and Alegora. By the time the other kings even knew their brother was in danger, he was defeated, they hit back, and hard, nearly toppling the imperial forces outright in a mighty naval battle. But the Empire had the technological advantage over these elder kings, and when they could not win this mighty push, the Empire pushed back and used the full brunt of their champions to smash the combined wrath of the Three Kings and subjugate them and their people.

With this, it had been hundreds of years of hard work, but they managed to finally forge their empire in its fullest state, and would attempt to capture new frontiers, but as they had surmised, it would be plagued with attacks and harassment as they attempted to expand any further. However, at its core, it would stand, powerful and a beacon to progress that would shield the world against the dark threat of an invasion of the highest caliber. Though she would never speak of it to anyone outside her confidants, Nadia was fully aware that eventually Vermithrax would come to claim Terros and declare that it was always rightfully his, but Nadia, now fully under Aradia’s influence and control, would break his back just as she had already done to the Three Kings who defied Aradia.

The empire would be the tool for the Goddess to remain in control of her precious garden, and the beast Vermithrax would never again be allowed to tread on her soils. Everything they had done up to this point was well within the Goddess’ plans for the world, but she could have never guessed that Vermithrax as well had ideas and was plotting ways to take back his kingdom from her from the inside.