History of the Land of Empires

All the tales agree that before all others, came the First.
Their race has long since died, and all attempts to translate their language
have failed. It is held in common belief that the language of magic was their
tongue, but the learned know that this is not true. All that is known of their
origins is that, during the later years of the Empire, they made their capital
at the center of the barren
lands surrounding what is now known as the Great Sign. Whoever they were, they
spread across the world, until they covered the entire globe, with the aid of
powerful magics. However, as great empires rise, so do they decline, and aye,
eventually fall. The decline started as soon as the last lands were colonized
and settled, and brought within the empire. With no enemies at the gates, and
with no more outward expansion or competition to fuel their energies, their
society stagnated. The great lords, before always wary of the Otherwordly
Powers, now began to look to the Otherworlds as a new place to conquer.
However, they knew that, though they had conquered the world with their magic,
the Powers were more adept at magic then they. In their quest to master magics
unknown to the Otherworldly Powers, they destroyed themselves.

It is said that their Emperor was possessed by a ghost, or
that the court of the Emperor had been infiltrated by vampires. For those were
the only two undead that had been known up to that point. Either way, the great
lords discovered and perfected the art of necromancy. Each raised up a vast
horde of skeletal  monsters, but before
they could march their Wighthosts across the planar bridges built at various
points in their empire, the faction of lords that had advocated this undead
army showed their true colours. These Lichlords, powerful sorcerers all, had
themselves turned into powerful undead creatures, alike to the wights they
controlled, but much more powerful. Their powers  over the undead were much greater than the
other lords could face. Those who did not turn themselves to the rituals found
themselves ripped apart at the hands of their own wighthosts. The lords turned
the all-powerful wighthosts against each other, ripping the land apart in the
most brutal civil war ever seen. The capital city was ringed with enemies. The
Emperor’s own Guards were the only force that could stand against the
Wighthosts. Only the great planar bridges constructed to provide safe passage
through the Far Realm survived unscathed, being impermeable to all harm. The
great cities these bridges were built in were laid to ruin, however, the people
massacred by their own undead lords. The battles between Lichlords were
furious, and unpredictable. As the undead hacked each-other, and spells
destroyed scores at a time, the lichlords leading each battle struggled for
domination over the others’ host. When a lichlord was destroyed, his foe
inherited the now leaderless host, and swelled his own wighthost.

Eventually, the one the tales called the Blind King gathered
enough strength to lay siege to the capital itself. He threw his hosts against
the magically warded walls, to no avail, until the Treasurer, unsuspected by
all, slit the throat of the Emperor and declared himself the Highlord of Arc.
At that moment, the Blind King, who had been battling silently with the
Emperor, spell versus counterspell, found his magic unopposed. The entire wall
encircling the city fell deep into the ground, creating a circular crevasse
deeper than can be imagined. Great black bridges of bone built themselves from
the wights who had been destroyed in the assaults, and the hosts crossed, and
battle began in earnest in the city itself. The Kingsguard fought valiantly,
but they could not defeat the myriad enemies. They drew back, until the Palace
itself was under siege, with the greatest planar bridge of them all at the
center. The self-proclaimed Highlord realized what he had done, he
himself crossed the planar bridge to find a way to end this conflict. It was
the King Beyond the Veil who answered him. The Fae Power sent all its forces
through all of the planar bridges, and did slay all of the wighthosts they
found. The greatest of the lichlords were slain. The wighthosts were decimated.
As for the Blind King, it is rumoured he fought the King Beyond the Veil in
single combat, blade versus spear, magic versus magic, as well as host versus
host, and forced the Fae King back across the planar bridge. It is rumoured
that he captured the bridge for long enough to create his own Otherworld, a
place of plague and undeath and disease from which to truly mount an invasion
of all the planes, and but the shock of the sudden creation of a whole new
plane wiped the city and the surrounding area off of the map, and left only the
dungeons and underdungeons gaping from the gash his magics had made. It’s also
said that that was the Fae King’s doing. Either way, now there is nothing left
inside the city itself but fine black sand, a sheer wasteland for miles and
miles .

The only halls and keeps left un-thrown by the Fae were those
that had already been abandoned before the war, and those in the far north of
the continents of the Rooted Continent and the Golden Continent, and those in the Ruined
 Continent to the south. In the lands of cold and ice, the Fae lost their
powers, while the wights felt not the bite of the ice no more than they felt
the bite of a sword. The few remaining lichlords and wightlords in the north
retreated to their holdfasts and castlekeeps, and lie dormant, for fear of
incurring the wrath of the Fey King again. In the south, however, they war to
this day, against each-other and the living, ever eager to attempt their world
conquest once more.

Thousands of years passed. In the Arcane Realm that mirrors
the Mundane which we call home, the races of the giants extended their dominion
over the Mundane. The many great races of the giants fought each other, with
great slave armies clashing. Their kingdoms rose and fell, until a great
rebellion of their slave armies defeated the giant loyalists and drove them
from the Mundane. The power of the giants was broken. What few giants remained
degenerated into the stupid beasts they are now. Most of their servants
remained in the Underdark, the safe refuge from whence they had led their
rebellion. Those giants remaining in the Arcane remember their times of glory.

The next empire to attempt to rise were the humans. From the
isles of Man Xi, they swarmed the entire world with sheer numbers and
stubbornness. They spread their seed across the world: the only places
untouched were the Ruined Continent, where the lichlords still held sway over
all but the islands to the north, and the formidable lands to the north and
east of the Golden Continent, where the land itself fought against the
invaders. The empire splintered; without the expertise of the First in magic,
it was near impossible to hold together such a large empire for any amount of
time, for reasons of sheer distance impeding communication, and travel. As each
empire came and went, each ruled over less land. Where the First Empire left no
people, but left their mark in stone across the world, the Third Empire was the
opposite: no ruins from that era survive, nor writings, but the people
remained, and soon forgot their empire.

The next empire to rise was the Elves of the Jade Isles, who
claimed descent from the intermingling of Fey and Humans. They first conquered
the steppes, and enslaved the Orc steppe peoples who lived there. With these
slave armies, they conquered all of the Golden Continent, and most of the Rooted Continent,
enslaving all that they faced, before a vicious uprising of human slaves, in
allegiance with the unconquered humans, and their new allies, the Dwaerr from
under the mountains, threw down the oppressor. The elves of the Root retreated over
the World’s , to the great jungles that
lay beyond, or lay scattered in the remote forests and mountain vales. The
elves of the Golden Continent faced a more organized rebellion, and were forced
back to their homelands. Their conquest was short-lived, not long enough on Arc
to leave any remains, and not much longer on the Golden continent, and the
rebels tore down what buildings were built.

It is only after the fall of the Elvish Empire that written
records have been translated, and we know more of the fall, at least, if not so
much the rise, of the Tiefling Empire. The Kings of Tiflinium allied with the
great Sorcerer Houses of the Gnomes, and this allegiance of local cities soon
dominated the swampy lower reaches of the Bredelta River. However, the Kings
became inbred, and lost the goodwill of the people. The Gnomes made secret
alliances with a faction within the generals of the army, and deposed the King
at the time, King Turbanum. The Royal Family, along with several of their
greatest supporters, were exiled. In their place, the military ruled. Every 2
years, in winter, all the officers would elect 4 of their number to rule until the next election. Now, each legion was permanently assigned officers, and those
legions were permanently tied together in armies, permanently assigned generals.
Each general knew that his officers would vote as directed, but no general
could win purely with his own men. So they formed alliances, and politicked. It
soon became clear that the easiest way to win over the hearts of the other
officers was to fight with them. So the armies of Tiflinium conquered
incessantly, as generals fought to prove their own worth to their peers. The
armies and legions did not stop fighting until they had conquered everything
west of the Great Divide.

The generals were divided as to whether they should chance
the crossing to conquer the east. They knew all that awaited them there were
barbarian goblin tribes. The northern crossings were far too dangerous to
attempt, and even if they had crossed from the northlands, they would have found
themselves lost in the depths of the Lassus Forest, or starving in the Red Wastes . The only
passes open to them were Dwarvengate, and the Lovers’ Pass. The Dwaerr of
Dwarvengate had already thrown down one great empire, however, and the
Tieflings had not come up favourably in the few conflicts they’d already had
with the Dwaerr. Even though the Innius Desert was not quite desertified yet
(it would not be until after the conquest that the Innius would dry and the
Bredelta burst its banks), the Lovers’ Pass still had a reputation for danger
and perilous crossings. On the other hand, all the nation had known for over a
hundred years was conquest. In the end, the argument came to blows, and then
war. In the confusion of civil war, a young soldier, a deserter by the name of Artorius
somehow came to lead a sizable force of soldiers from many units. Artorius’
Lions, as they called themselves, became the more popular 3rd option
to the two factions of generals fighting the civil war. As the wars dragged on,
his armies were swelled by deserters tired of fighting their countrymen, and
seeking a true end to the war. The core of his force were the veterans, drawn
to him from both sides of the conflict, and well-blooded, but many volunteers
formed a light auxiliary force that the others lacked. His call to end the
fighting between brothers resounded especially amongst the farming folk, whose
villages were burned and fields despoiled for forage in the battles between
brothers. As the war dragged on to its 5th year, entire units
defected to Artorius and his lions. In the 7th year, entire Legions
joined his banners. In the 8th year, his troops crowned him Emperor.
In the 10th year, the last of the generals came to him on bended
knees.

He wasted no time in doing what was unthinkable to the
generals: he sent envoys to the Dwaerre asking for their allegiance and aid in
conquering the East. In his reign as Artorius I, he spent only 3 years in the
capital. The rest he spent conquering and fighting. He single-handedly
conquered half of a continent, and founded a new capital on the eastern shore,
Artoria. He chose as his successor a promising young man, and from then on the
history of the empire was one of stagnation and decadence, with short bursts of
renewed energy that led nowhere. Invasions launched against the isles of the
Atheinsfolk were for naught, and the few foolhardy ventures past the World’s
 End Mountains disappeared without a trace, trailed by the wild elves, and
swallowed by the jungle.

Eventually, the slaves of the West side of the Empire
revolted, all at once. They took control of the armouries, and drove out the
Tieflings. They struck their own deals with the Dwarves, and the armies
stationed in the East could not pass through Dwarvengate. The Emperor at the
time, a fat sexually depraved wretch named Tirius, in anger ordered an army to
fight its way through Dwarvengate, but after a 6-month siege, the commander of
the army, by now no more than a tenth of its original size, withdrew against
orders, and for that lost his position, and would have lost his head had he not
fled for his life into the wilderness. Tirius ordered a second army to brave
Lovers’ Pass, but they did not even reach the pass. The spot of their demise is
now known as the Battledune, the debris and bones carried along with the sand
in the travelling dune. The goblins had ambushed them, and now they had their
taste of battle, fell in great hordes upon the remains of the Empire. The
Empire was barely able to defeat them, but finally, peace came. The lands west
of the Great Divide were now themselves divided into many squabbling kingdoms
and principalities of humans and elves. In the east, the Empire shrank into itself,
preyed on by raiders from the desert and of the Poccnr to the north.

Eventually, the various kingdoms stabilized to where they
are today, and a few distinct cultures grew.