ShoddyProduct
Well-known member
A SUMMARIZED SERIES OF EVENTS OF WORLD HISTORY
[A] - Ancient History[C] - The Year of the Calamity
[H] - Historical Development in the aftermath of the Calamity
[M] - Modern Day- ongoing
[A] Several millennia ago, in a time lost to history, a chain of events were set into motion which shaped the very fabric of existence, the aftershocks of which are still felt to this day. In ancient history, our world was inhabited by spectral beings of pure magic, called Spirits, and tended to by their worshippers, the Giants. Little is known of either, with only a few true Spirits still persisting to this day (and at a fraction of the power they once held), and the Giants are, for all intents and purposes, extinct. This extinction was brought about by the arrival of the Greatwyrms, the gods of history. Seeking to impose their power on the world, and to shape it to their liking, the Wyrms began a war against the Giants, and began to consume the Spirits in the form of their spells. This mythical war has left hardly a trace, though the source of wild magic, Firbolg, and Jotunn are all traced back to the events of this conflict.
During the war, most of the peoples we are aware of now (humans, elves, dwarves) emerged, and post war, they worshipped the Wyrms as if they were gods, and for all intents and purposes, they were. They were the ultimate arbiters of law, and they could bend the world to their whim through magical prowess that few have ever achieved since. The Wyrms were similar to any ruler throughout history. Some were benevolent, others less so. Over time, the less benevolent ones pushed mortality to their brink, where they rebelled. Little is known of this time, as much was destroyed, and many lives were lost. The gaps in our knowledge are still being filled, albeit slowly. This time is important, however, because, as according to the heroes of old, one of the Wyrms, a dragon of chaos who called themself Zenith, escaped the fighting, split into three separate versions of themself, before going into hibernation across the years, becoming just as forgotten as the rest of the Greatwyrms.
Things calmed for several centuries, with only the dealings of mortals passing. Kingdoms rose and fell, gods took shape and faded from memory, filling in the gaps in the magic and faith that the Wyrms left in their passing. Mortal beings carved their niche in the world, and thrived in it, making it their own. Unfortunately, the destruction of gods brought consequences. The weapon used to sunder the Wyrms was still present, albeit trapped, and had gone rogue, seeking only destruction. Additionally, sometimes even destruction does not stick. Zenith, Wyrm of Chaos, was attempting to return, leveraging their manipulation in a plan millennia in the making. Fate conspired to bring forces against them, however.
[C] The year of the Calamity brought the heroes of old together in Drestel, first as prisoners, some held in earnest, others unfairly. They protected the kingdom from the ambitions of a king being turned against his purpose, allying with then princess Alessiandre Yistrand and her own allies to overthrow her father, defeat the spymaster Casterson, and protect a relic, the Crown Eternal, that was said to grant everlasting life. They found a separate relic during their time working for the crown in the formerly ruined town of Remedy, a fragment of a weapon that could not be understood at the time.
Once Drestel was safe, the queen sent them north, now as allies rather than servants. Villages had been emptied, and people had gone missing, and the queen felt only they could handle it with the resources available. They ventured north to confront the infectious Northern Horde, who found their origins in alchemy and wild magic. They found the origin point in the long lost city of Three Spires, and through investigation and spellcraft, discerned what had happened there; the man who had sought immortality in Drestel, and in doing so endangered the city, had done the same here. A solution gone wrong mutated those who took it, giving birth to a hivemind, a devouring monstrosity. To reverse the infection, they would need to go even further into the cold.
With their allies going south to procure the standard ingredients, they proceeded north until they found a pair of frozen gates at the outskirts of a frozen city. Other adventures stood frozen around the gates, statues. Beyond those gates stood a Dead City, a place between the mortal life and the afterlives of the various gods, tended to by one of the oldest of all gods, Uldeboth, god of death and undeath. Their realm held the last ingredient, a shard of crystal that held a piece of the original infecteds soul. Through the trial in the Dead City, one of the heroes, who had been fated to take up the mantle after Uldeboth finally faded, began her journey to ascend to the title, and gained access to the shard (see NYX MIRAPEIROS, GATEKEEPER OF DEATH).
Shard in hand, they ventured south. On return to Drestel, while awaiting correspondence from their allies further south, they found the city trapped in a storm of magical origin. After some more investigation, it seemed to have been warping time itself around the city. In order to leave, and not have the Horde remain an issue, they worked to discover the cause. Beneath the city, in the Thieves’ Den, they found the culprit, an old politician and disgraced religious figure, Elwin Glixidor (see THORN AND THE HANDS OF FATE). He had come into possession of the other half of the artifact found in Remedy, and was utilizing it to control the city’s warforged population as well as trap the city, supposedly to prevent apocalypse. The heroes managed to strike him down, however, and take possession of the second artifact.
Past Drestel in the mining/vacation city of Eunvale, just at [KINGDOM]’s southern border, they witnessed the performance of the World Bard, Audren, which foretold disaster in the city (see THANDO AND AUDREN ZORYION, WORLD BARDS). They rushed deep into the mines at the center of the mountain to find, once more, Casterson, seeking his immortality. He had killed one of their companions, and stolen the alchemical solution meant to fix the Horde. Once approached, however, he fled, just as the Horde arrived from the deep tunnels. In the ensuing fight, they managed to complete the brew, and cure the mind of the Horde, a tiefling/changeling named Riz, who died once the wild magic sustaining them vanished with the infection. They then set out from the mines, curing who they could.
In their time after the disaster in Eunvale, they encountered a tiefling by the name of Lay’thallan. Curiously, she knew one of the heroes, the mercenary previously in the employ of Casterson who had been going by the name of Imp, who she correctly identified as Avril. She requested his, and by extension, the rest of the heroes, help in resolving a developing issue on the Isle of Four Kings, a small to medium sized island off the west coast, nearly parallel to Drestel. They returned their, to seek passage with the lover of the queen, the notorious pirate captain Ellie Vanati, whom they had met previously to get in contact with the Crow initially.
They left from Drestel and arrived at the Isle weeks later, setting down at the southernmost point of the island. One of the Crow’s team had informed them that they were walking into a dangerous situation, with the bestial races falling under some kind of thrall across the island as of late. Armed with that knowledge, and knowing the purported home of Lay’thallan and Avril was further north, they set off.
It was in their first village on the Isle, Faelbrook, home of the infamous monster hunting guild, that they discovered the crux of the issue on the Isle; an ancient entity, one from beyond our planes, beyond our entire reality, was reemerging above the Isle once more. Once, thousands of years prior, it had attempted to consume our reality, only being stopped by the Hunter, which had seen its own reality taken by the creature (see THE HUNTER AND THE BEAST). The Beast’s cultists, doomsayers and beast folk who had fallen under its thrall, had begun to probe the fabric of existence, searching for a weak point for it to break through and return. On their exit from Faelbrook, the heroes encountered the last of the hunters, followers of the Hunter, that had been cast through time at the last encounter with the beast. Having seen this course of events once before, they enlisted the help of the heroes to stop the cultists around the island and prevent the Beast from being summoned once more.
The heroes split from the Hunters to track down the Beast’s cultist cells across the Isle, encountering beasts unlike anything they had seen prior while reuniting with allies they’d lost contact with. Eventually, they began their travels north, taking a moment to investigate a lead they’d found for a people in the Wandering Woods. It was there they discovered Leif’s, one of the heroes', original home from before she’d been separated from her family, and the origin of lizardfolk in Rhellum (see LEIF, NATURIA, AND THE NATURE OF SPIRITS). From there, with a spiritual awakening and powerful tools acquired from Leif’s people, they went west, to Heaven’s Peak/Hell’s Valley.
It was here that they witnessed the true effects of the Beast’s influence. They had seen people possessed, but here, once they began to investigate, they found that the Aasimar of the Peak and the Tieflings of the Valley had once been a singular people, but the original emergence of the Beast had corrupted the Aasimar, unbeknownst by them, and caused them to subjugate their sister civilization. The Aasimar had even gone so far as to attempt to wipe reference of half breeds, such as Avril, from history.
On the day before their ascent of the mountain, Thorn was approached by a subsect of his faith, the Hands Cabal, violent zealots who would see disaster avoided at any cost. They offered to help liberate the Peak, and to march north to stop the Beast. Thorn accepted their assistance.
The heroes ventured to the top of the Peak, where the fragments they had previously gathered formed into a weapon, a pair of daggers that could combine into a bow of immense power. The Hunter’s Bow, which Avril, the next Hunter, used to drive out the Beast’s influence over the Aasimar people, giving them a chance for reconciliation.
They began further north, and the sky split open, a singular eye watching them. The Beast was beginning to emerge. They took a detour east, to Cahse, in an attempt to discern the full plans of the cultists and link back up with the Hunters, which led to one of them getting kidnapped and another temporarily dying. The cultists had predicted their moves, and countered to give themselves time. Unfortunately, it was not enough, as they found a new body for their perished member and rescued the other, before finally marching north. In an altar at the northernmost point of the Isle of Four Kings, Avril used the Bow to drive the Beast back, and it has not returned since, presumed dead.
There was little time for celebration, however. The cult had been furthered by Casterson, who was meddling once more. It was uncertain why he was attempting to summon the Beast, but they now knew where he resided; as a councillor in Komada. They left the Isle to cross the ocean westward, and arrived a month later, expedited by the assistance of Captain Vanati once more.
Their initial meeting with Casterson in his administrative role in Komada was tense, but the man seemed distracted by something, and was otherwise cordial with them. The heroes were allowed to conduct their business in Komada unbothered, but with the knowledge that they were being watched. In their attempts to subvert this highly influential politician, they came across a protector of the people, who needed their help. Bandits had begun to strike out at caravans, located in the ruins of a temple to a Wyrm, from the Dragon Cult days, millennia ago.
They ventured out to the ruins, and soon discovered that the bandits were closer to bodyguards. They encountered powerful undead deep in the tombs, and further still, encountered familiar faces they had never expected to see again, as well as a sarcophagus. From elsewhere in the tomb, buried with whoever was entombed here, was a shard of a precious stone, of unknown origin. Through magic suggestion, they were tempted to place the stone in the sarcophagus, thus completing the first leg of Zenith’s plan as one of their three aspects was reawakened.
The wyrm did not reveal themself as such, and instead left the heroes be for now, intent on enacting the rest of their plan. Through some of the writings left in the ruins, they did find a hint to the weapon that originally destroyed the Greatwyrms, and that caused so much destruction and the creation of the Wastes to the west of Komada. They made plans to venture out, setting the plans with a trio of druids and an archaeologist native to the area, and set out in search of a device meant to control the Onyx Summit.
The Wastes were entirely inhospitable at this time, and nearly uncrossable. After several days of travel in the desert, all the while being attacked by unnatural creatures only seen here, the heroes stumbled upon a cave, with the only resident being a woman named Safiyah. Somehow, inexplicably, she knew each of their names, and across their night of respite there in her dwelling, she drew each of them deeper, one by one, to show them visions of the present and the future. The following morning, the adventurers woke in the cave, though it had changed location in the desert, and Safiyah was gone.
Just beyond the cave was one of few villages to survive in the Wastes, largely populated by tieflings not from Hell’s Valley. It was here they discovered the means by which to control the Summit, a fragment of unidentified crystal known as a Command Shard. Now, their goal was to obtain one. They were soon driven out of the village by the Summit itself, a massive statue made of pitch black stone, the feet and hands covered in a layer of ash. The villagers attempted to drive it back with a Shard they possessed, while the heroes, but not their companions, were extracted by Casterson.
They were transported elsewhere, to an area bordering the desert that had been isolated for centuries. It was Zenith’s capital, ruined by the Summit millennia ago. It was here they recovered a Shard, through careful searching and a wish granted by a genie to travel back in time to the moment the city was destroyed. Quickly, the heroes returned to the village in the Wastes to reunite with their allies and return to Komada, as news reached Casterson that Zenith was making moves from the shadows.
Another shard of the old god had been recovered by Casterson’s people, years ago, and he had been guarding it ever since, in hopes that it would hold the answers to the Summit, which had destroyed his home. Zenith needed it back, to become whole, and sent agents to retrieve it. The heroes mounted a defense in the Tower of the World Bard, and successfully prevented the Wyrm from retrieving a piece of itself.
Near this time, the Path Cabal would arrive in Komada, apparently preparing for war. In their visions, they had seen a great disaster on the horizon, perpetuated by the city of Komada. They intended to wipe the city from the map, to prevent this future from coming to pass, and had augmented their soldiers with machines, in mirror image of one of the heroes, Thorn, who was part of the sister organisation to the Cabal. Having been manipulated by Zenith, they prepared for battle, occupying the heroes and the city while the Wyrm prepared to become whole.
The battle at Komada is the Calamity. The forces of Arcanis, Komada, and their allies marched against the Path Cabal, augmented by horrible aberrations and undead of their own, risen by Zenith. The Summit was drawn by the chaos, appearing in a flash, and just as it arrived, Zenith’s plan had come to completion. Betrayers in the Komadan ranks took the shard from Casterson in the chaos, while Zenith themself retrieved the final from the halo-crown adorning the Summit’s head.
The Wyrm reawakened, intent to take control of the Summit, and rule the world. Thankfully, the heroes had a Wyrm of their own in Halithar, the former god of divination, and appreciator of the arts. Halithar and Zenith clashed, with assistance from the heroes and the Summit, until Zenith was driven back to the Wyrmwood, a realm held within the moon, only accessible during a total solar eclipse.
It took twenty years for the portal to open once more. Little is said of what happened there, in that mysterious realm. What we know is that the heroes returned victorious, and that the Wyrmwood, and the Wyrms themselves, are finally gone, their terrible influence wiped from the world.
[H] Following the saving of the world, the heroes went their separate ways. Thando took up the position of World Bard alongside Audren, where they currently sit to this day, predicting the future through the remaining blessings of Halithar. Nyx retreated to the Domain of the Dead, where she holds court over those too restless to pass on quite yet, and keeping the Doors of Death sealed firmly shut. Avril returned to the Isle, as both the reunitor of the people of Heaven’s Peak and Hell’s Valley, and as the Hunter. Leif traveled the world, a chosen of the Spirit Naturia, designated to protect this world from extraplanar forces. Thorn went on to attempt to establish a new version of the Cabal, a vain attempt to succeed where others had failed, and an ultimately doomed attempt at that. He was struck down by the horrified Hands of Fate, who had witnessed his slow descent into madness, and they themselves soon disbanded.
Drestel, which had undergone a one-day revolution at the hands of the Crow and the Heroes, found itself in an odd position. Alessiandre was radically different from her father, and through her wide base of support across class lines, began to ease restrictions currently thought permanent throughout the city.
Having been at the Calamity, and witnessing the destruction firsthand, and knowing how fortunate the world was to have a group ready to stand and fight for its survival, knew that this could not happen again. She turned to Involerra, the alma mater of Nyx and Thando, and made a request; train the next generations, so that we may never have to scramble to our own defense like this again.
The school obliged, and with alumni such as the two it already had, new students and instructors were not hard to find. The first few decades were rough, but quickly, and with the input of the heroes remaining, Involerra came into its own, producing adventurers to protect the innocent and nip evil in the bud.
This naturally attracted the families of would-be adventurers, which expanded the city. As the population grew, wealth grew. This allowed the crown, and eventually the councillors, to offer more to innovators, inventors, and adventurers. It quickly formed a positive feedback loop, and Drestel and Arcanis saw massive leaps in technological development, behind the genius of Calessi Fandaine and her Fandaine Automatics.
[M] This brings us to today. Drestel has expanded outwards, beyond its third ring, into a thriving metropolis. Travel has been made leisurely as the research by Fandaine Automatics led to the automobile, powered through enchantments placed within the engines to drive them. Information is shared easily across the entire country, through the work of the Enchantment-Artificery Cooperation, which led to the crystal networks that mobile devices and computers work off of.
The Gold District of Drestel was renovated and renamed to the First Ring, changed from private housing for the elite to public land and parks, with the nobility living throughout. The Silver District, renamed to the Second Ring, remained mostly the same, though more housing opened up. It is the economical powerhouse of Drestel, housing the docks, the stores, most of the taverns and other recreational activities, as well as the vaunted Involerra Academy. The Buffer was fully renovated and invested into, the houses repaired and no longer neglected. The Third Ring is the most densely populated area, with apartments, homes, and hotels littering the landscape. The main draw is the Third Wall, which while never repaired, has been turned into a living art piece by Third Ringers, always growing and expanding. The people beyond the rings live in suburbs, outside of the city but just as much a part of it as anyone else.