The Story of Esgard

1. Esgard

No one knows how long the land of Esgard has been inhabited. Its native inhabitants must have lived there for centuries, if not millennia, before the humans arrived. Little is known of this time; the Elves and Dwarves had no need for history, and so none was kept. It was only when Men came, bringing the concept of time along with all of their other poisons, that things began to be documented. The land was not yet divided into five kingdoms, or even two, but it was inhabited primarily by two races—the Elves and the Dwarves.


The Elves hailed from the great forest to the West, whose true name is now known only to them. They have always had a special bond with all of the living things of the forest. Even the youngest and most callow of the Elves can befriend the wild forest fauna, or cure the ills of small creatures, or induce the unhealthiest seeds to grow into strong, vivacious plants. Even these abilities pale in comparison to those of the Elven Mages, who can bring their comrades back from the brink of death, or channel the life-energy of the forest into a powerful blast. As a result of their strong ties to nature, the Elven culture is primarily spiritual, based around a strong sense of community with all living things, and with the life-force of the forest itself. The Mages are the spiritual leaders of the race, for it is they who are most attuned to this life-force. In the center of the forest lived the enigmatic Forest Giants, a mystery even to the Elves. They are immortal, and are consequently immeasurably wise. The Elves have often sought their counsel. During the Golden Age, the Elves also lived in the sprawling plains and tranquil groves that made up the central and eastern portions of Esgard. Although these hill-Elves were looked upon as outlandish by their forest cousins, they too coexisted peacefully with nature.


The mountains in the north and southeast of Esgard were the home of the Dwarves. They are masters of both stone- and metalwork, and are the most technologically advanced of the races. Even before the humans arrived, the Dwarves had already developed explosive cocktails and satchel charges, a combination which they used to blast out passageways and cavernous chambers inside of their mountains. Their labyrinthine underground network extends the entire length of the Gray Mountains in the north, and they refer to their mountain home collectively as Rhungard. The Dwarven culture is based on reverence (rather than full-blown worship, as the humans tend to believe) toward the spirits of their ancestors. They give great importance to personal honor, and place the good of the whole firmly over the good of the individual. Many of them were trained in the use of the battleaxe, which was used to hunt the dangerous creatures that dwelt within the mountains. The druids of Rhungard have the ability to create golems from the stone of the mountains, as well as tame the lesser forms of dragons that inhabit the foothills. The Dwarves in the southern mountains were a bit more primitive, and although they possessed explosive technology, their cavern homes were small and isolated.


The only blemish on the face of Esgard was the Bitter Wastes to the south. The Bitter Wastes—or Moroa, in the tongue of the Elves—are mainly swampland, although much of it is also composed of jagged, rocky wastelands or the rotten remains of what were once forests. Nothing can live there, and although its existence saddened the Elves, they realized that even they could not bring life to it, and left it alone.

2. The Exodus


While the continent of Esgard lay peaceful and undetected for ages in its little corner of the ocean, the rest of the world was at war. The much larger continent of Praeva, far across the sea to the northeast, was the home of both the Humans and the Goblins. The land was locked in an endless struggle, for these two races fought perpetually, not only each other but among themselves as well. The humans were broken into twelve separate kingdoms, the goblins into twenty separate tribes. Every so often an uneasy truce was formed between the humans and goblins, but even then the human kingdoms squabbled over land, and the goblin tribes fought each other to gain greater power.


The humans lived in the north and west of Praeva. The human culture has been molded to fit the constant state of violence, and values warlike attributes such as strength, courage, and honor above all else. The humans are strongly individualist, each striving to be greater than his peers. Those who distinguish themselves in battle are accorded the greatest respect, and receive the greatest portion of the spoils of war. The kingdoms are theoretically hereditary, but in practice they are usually ruled by whoever kills the previous king.


The Goblins (who live in the east and south of Praeva) are generally seen as being less advanced, both culturally and technologically, but they are even more well-versed in the arts of war. Their combat tactics, which they have honed nearly to perfection, would have brought the humans to their knees long ago were it not for the greater ranged weaponry and more powerful magic of the latter. The goblin culture centers around brute force and domination, and the goblins are infamous for the cruelty with which they treat both their underlings and their enemies. Like the humans, they are ruled by the strongest among them, and the goblins are even more prone to fighting among themselves to attain a higher position. Trained from birth to be fanatically devoted to the collective, goblins will throw themselves into battle without concern for their own lives. They have succeeded in taming the Draconae of the southern mountains at great cost to themselves, and their Beastmasters can often be seen leading these formidable beasts into battle.


A hundred and fifty years ago, a large band of humans from two of the westernmost kingdoms sought to escape from the war with the goblins and the oppression of their kings. Many of their number were members of the navy of Elyros, and with the help of these insiders the band was able to capture more than half of the Elyrian war fleet. Nearly five thousand strong, they set out across the sea with the hope of settling into a more peaceful existence.


And so it was that they came to Esgard...

3. The Infestation


When the humans arrived on the Western shore of Esgard, the hill-Elves were uncertain how to react, and simply avoided them at first. It did not take long, however, for the humans to realize that the land was inhabitedthat in fact, virtually all of it was inhabited. Their number was large, and would naturally get larger as they settled in and had children. The humans knew that they would need more than just a small strip of land by the sea, and so they began to take more in the only way they knew how—by conquest.


The hill-Elves, scattered and utterly unprepared, stood no chance. Most of what is now Gorath had fallen to the humans within two months, and even when the Elves began to band together and use their hunting bows and spears as weapons, they were still slaughtered before the might and military experience of the invaders. The humans kept moving westward, little by little, joined on a few occasions by more settlers from across the sea. They drove the Elves before them until they finally reached a barrier that they could not pass—the Elven forest. The humans made several attempts to invade the forest, but within their own element the Elves defeated them easily. The humans developed a deep loathing for the place, and following their long tradition of oversimplification, named it Elfwood.


During this time, an internal conflict broke out among the human mages. A small band of powerful wizards known as the Grey Men had begun to practice the dark art of necromancy. They believed that they could raise an army of the dead to enter the Elven forest and destroy their enemies once and for all. The other humans almost unanimously considered this an abomination. The Grey Men's compound was stormed, the few weak zombies they had raised were put to the torch, and the necromancers themselves were chased south by an army that howled for their blood. At last, the Grey Men fled into the Bitter Wastes, where they succumbed to the poisonous vapors and sucking mires of the swamps. Their pursuers, confident that they had seen the last of the necromancers, returned to the business of conquering the world.

4. The Five Kingdoms


At the same time, more humans arrived from Praeva, and the invaders began to turn their hungry gaze toward the homes of the dwarves. The southern mountains fell quickly, and the dwarves who were not killed in the onslaught were pushed south into the Bitter Wastes, where they were lost forever. The northern Dwarves proved to be much stronger. They adapted quickly to the situation in which they found themselves, turning axes, explosives, and golems into weapons of war. During this period, they also developed the mortar cannon, their most potent weapon yet. The humans found Rhungard to be as impenetrable as Elfwood.


As more humans crossed the seas, the goblins, too, caught the scent of conquest. They sent their own fleet to Esgard, and were well prepared to fight their way inward—unlike the original humans, they had come here for no other reason than to wage war. They secured the eastern shores, and although the humans put up strong resistance, the goblins had taken half of the humans new empire within a decade of their arrival, renaming their new land Gorath. The two races have become locked in a stalemate similar to the age-old one on Praeva, each side unable to gain any of the other's ground.


Meanwhile, inside the Bitter Wastes, the Grey Men had awoken from the slumber of death. The Wastes held darker secrets than anyone could have guessed, for just as the Elven forest contained a powerful life-force, the Bitter Wastes contained an equally powerful force of death. The essence of the Wastes had chosen the necromancers to be its champions, and they found that they were as attuned to it as the Elven mages were to the essence of the forest. Soon, they were able to raise all of the dead resting at the bottom of the mire to form an army that nearly rivaled that of any of the other kingdoms. When the fleeing southern dwarves were lost to the swamps, the necromancers at first attempted to raise them as zombies, but found that the typical undead lack of coordination made their throwing arms, and therefore their explosives, useless. Instead, with the help of the death-essence, they were able to bind the spirits of the deceased dwarves, adding the specters to their already formidable horde of skeletal minions. Always led by one of the necromancers, the undead make constant forays into the lands of the living in order to increase their numbers, awaiting the day when they will be strong enough to overrun all of Esgard.


The Elves, although they still retain their hold over the forest, have sunken into despair. The life-force weakens as the wars continue, as countless soldiers march to their death. Most of the land that was once theirs is now in the hands of the strangers from across the water. The Bitter Wastes are slowly but inexorably expanding. Gorath has been transformed from the green fields of its past to a land of deserts and sparse, broken steppes. Even the peace that they once maintained with the dwarves has become uneasy, for the Dwarves blame the Elves for not stopping the invasion in the beginning, and the Elves blame the Dwarves for not coming to their aid.


The conquerors from Praeva brought with them their state of endless war, and now it consumes all of Esgard. The fighting is so bloody that it seems that something must give eventually, that one race must finally prevail. But which it will be, no one can say...