The Tale of Esmerelda

When the world was yet young, and all the gods walked
the earth amongst their creation Loki, the dwarven god of war and chaos, grew
lustful and jealous of the other gods. In his lust for power and love of war,
Loki turned to Esmerelda, the most beautiful woman ever moulded by the gods and
Empress of the elves. Sneaking into Esmerlda’s chambers one night, Loki gave up
a portion of his magic into her, filling the elven queen with an insatiable
lust. Loki weaved a trap around Esmerelda that would entrap all her lovers at
their moment of greatest vulnerability and highest pleasure. Then, loki left
the elven queen in her chambers.

Waking up, Esmerelda was overtaken with an insatiable
lust. Esmerelda called her husband, Emperor of the elves, back from campaign
but he was not able to satisfy her. She turned to the suitors of the Elven
kingdoms and promised great riches and pleasures to those who could satisfy her, but none were able, and with each partner that
Esmerelda bedded, at their moment of climax they were consumed by magic and
imprisoned in the abyss, neither on the earth nor in the heavens nor indeed
anywhere bound to reality.

Consumed by unsatisfied lust, the Empress of the Elves
challenged the world to come to her aid, but there was no man or woman born of
this earth that could quench her lust, and so Esmerelda turned herself to the
heavens. She travelled to the deepest glade of the sacred
forests, where she met Corellon Larethian, god of the elves and preserver of
life. There, in a midsummer night Esmerelda seduced Carellon Larethian and on
the soft grasses of the God’s sacred grove they bedded, filling the forest
with the sound of the birds. But when Carellon was most vulnerable, the magic
imbued in Esemerlda’s kiss struck, and the god-protector of the elves, the
preserver of life, was imprisoned in the Abyss.

Still unsatisfied, Esmerelda
turned to Ehlonna, Godess of the forests, and Ehlonna took Esmerelda in her
breast. The Queen of the Elves and the Goddess of the Forests joined in perfect
harmony, and at the climax of her perfection Ehlonna, as Carellon Larethian,
was entrapped by the magic in Esmerelda’s touch, and imprisoned in the Abyss.

Driven mad with desire, Esmerelda
sought out each of the gods of the world one by one, each time seducing them
with her unrivalled beauty and unparalleled charm. And with each encounter
another of the gods of the world was imprisoned in the abyss, and Esmerelda
remained insatiate. Soon, each of the gods had been seduced by Esmerelda and
consigned to imprisonment of the Abyss - all but one, Huskar, the god of war.

Esmerelda sought Huskar in his
warlike encampment, among his host swordsmen and cavalry, and as the Queen of
the Elves marched through encampment her beauty radiated outwards like a
beacon, drawing the battalions behind her. But Esmerelda stepped on aloof, for
if all the gods of the heavens had failed to satisfy her, what hope could
mortal men have? When the Queen of the Elves entered the war-gods tent, she
found him sitting cross-legged on the skin of a goat, his eyes burning with desire

The queen of the elves lay her
head in the war-gods lap, tracing her hands across his arms and chest, but he was
unmoved. For he alone of all the gods had no interest in womans’ flesh,
preferring instead the kiss of the sword and embrace of plate armour. Her beauty failing
her the Empress grew desperate, and promised to Huskar the God
of War all he should desire in return for her satisfaction, and the God of War
demanded only one thing: her empire. And Esmerelda the Queen of Elves
prostrated herself for the God of War, and he won the Elven empire by this
deed; for Huskar had no desire for Esmerelda and was able to fulfil his promise of her satisfaction without reaching his own.

As the final god able to walk the bounds of the earth
and with the Elven hosts behind him, Hextor besieged all the cities of man, and
all of the dwarves, and all of the orcs, and all of each race with which his
brothers and sisters had seen fit to populate the world, and as master of this
earth Huskar reigned in terrific tyranny, showering chaos, destruction and war
across the land.

Cured of her magically induced lust Esmerelda, Queen
of the Elves, saw lucidly all she had done and felt a deep shame, for not only
had she betrayed her king and her people, but she had betrayed the gods
themselves and, by seducing them, had brought about their imprisonment in the
Abyss. Distraught with humiliated abashment, Esmeralda turned herself to
celibate exile as a nomadic hermit, to walk ashamedly around the edge of the
earth.

But her belly grew, and grew, and Esmerelda could
feel life budding inside her, and so she travelled into the abyss to beg for
forgiveness, to beg to be released from her shame and guilt, and to beg for the
aid of the gods whom she had betrayed, for if they would not aid her, perhaps
they might aid the life growing inside her, a life that must have been partly
of their own.

She found the imprisoned gods in the abyss, and to
each she pleaded. Each of the gods agreed to her pleas at length, but each was
also imprisoned, and they could not break the spells to once again walk the
earth. And then Corellon Larethian, the god of the elves who was the first to
be trapped by Esmeralda's kiss bowed to her.

One by one, the imprisoned gods bowed to the Queen of
the Elves, granting her a portion of their power. By relinquishing their magic
the gods would forfeit their supreme hold over the world. No longer would they guide
and mould the earth, no longer would they walk upon it. The world would fall to
the custody of men, elves, dwarves, orcs, and all the sentient races while the
gods, freed from their imprisonment by this act, would be forced to return to
the heavens to observe, only able to influence the world subtly.

The magic of the gods flowed through the Queen of the
Elves and into the children growing inside her, welling inside them to burst
out and spread magic across the world. The birth of sorcery.

Nine years later, Esmerelda, Queen of the elves,
gave birth to four children  - Eriladaer, the Elf;  Arcdraec, the
Dwarf; Piersym, the human, and; Wilmin, the Gnome. Four brothers, the son of
the Queen of Elves and a Pantheon of gods. Four brothers, each bearing the gift
of the gods - sorcery, magic, arcana. Four brothers, the first of each race to
wield the arcane magics of the gods. The queen of the elves hid her children
from the God of War, and for their first twenty years they grew up alone,
Eriladaer in the forest of Elves; Arcdraec in the caves of Dwarves; Piersym in
the steppes of Men; Wilmin in the hands of Gnomes.

On the day of their coming of age Esmerelda, Queen of
the elves, brought her children together and told them the circumstances of
their birth, the secret of their powers, and promise of their honour and duty:
to kill Huskar, the god of war. The four brothers set off on their quest, each
wielding in one hand the powers of gods and in the other the powers of men and
elves, or dwarves and gnomes.

And on the day of the final battle the four brothers
came down upon Huskar and cut off his head, but in the chaos of the battle the
body of the God of War snuck away. The four brothers took the war god’s head
and locked it away, hiding it at the furthest corner of the earth, where it
would never be found by the body. Four brothers, four guardians, the four
brothers dedicated themselves to ensuring the Head and the Body would never
reunite, for should they meet, Huskar would rise and once again reign his
tyranny and destruction upon the world.