[General Lore]

Since the story is going to have a lot of events, religions, cultures and diversity I thought I'd jot down a few things that might be mentioned in future chapters. If nothing else I hope some people would like to read it to add a little flavor or context for future chapters.

The Great War

The Great War was a war whose seeds were sown 250 years ago, ending at its crescendo after 50 years of conflict. The war was started by the Orcs who, with their racial trait being able to communicate with beta races, conscripted the beta races to fight for them against the humans. The start of the war was chaotic and bloody as most wars are, but with the Orcs barbarism and gorilla warfare tactics it was notably brutal and merciless. Hamlets and villages were torn apart and swallowed up by the Orcs Grey army, named such because of the continents grey and dreary atmosphere due to overpopulation and pollution. Whole families were put to the sword or were simply eaten as rations grew thinner, it was common knowledge at the time that the Orcs didn't take prisoners regardless of a persons standings, peasants and nobles alike were shown no mercy, bargaining and diplomacy were foreign concepts to Orcs.

Things were going in the Orcs favor, having built up an army in secret and by pouncing the humans in a time of previously prolonged peace time, the humans were caught off guard and were on the ropes throughout the entire war, playing reactionary to the Orcs every move, until they called on their oldest and dearest ally the Dwarves, who despite lacking combat effectiveness were master tinkerers and craftsmen and could build devices to both protect against and enable them to siege. Having such a small territory there's no wonder that not a single Dwarven city has ever fallen to a siege, their mounted weaponry dissuading any would be attacker since The Dawn Of The Primals.

The Dwarves offered the humans their technology at the cost of some more territory, with the humans dire situation at hand there was no time to be conservative, the humans conceded 20% of East Anglia to the Dwarves in exchange for their ballistas and catapults. With their new found firepower they steadily repelled wave after wave of Orc invaders until all Human borders were as safe as they were in peace times. Not happy with just achieving safety for his people, King Darius II ordered his armies to march on Orc land and to bring the fight to the invaders. Showing all of the mercy and civility the Orcs had offered them, the humans returned the favor in kind ten-fold. The Orcs walls fell in no time at all, the human invaders wasted no time in sacking the cities with Dwarven technology, making sure to kill every man woman and child in a genocide event unheard of throughout all human history.

The war ended when the Humans lay their last siege of the war against the infamous Orc capital of Urg-Ot, every Orc that remained inside the entire country fought their last stand here, the toll for this battle is estimated to have been 550,000 Orcs dead to the Human invaders 88,000 dead. Despite all that, the wars total count is estimated to be 3,250,000 Orcs dead to the Humans 2,800,000 dead. The battle dubbed as "The Battle of Urg-Ot" is considered to be the humans crowning military achievement.

The Dawn Of The Primals

Not much is known about this event, Elven archaeologists and historians claim that the event where at some time between 250,000 - 500,000 years ago, some Darkin and Anu couples managed to copulate and from that copulation were born the other primal races, through hundreds of thousands of years of natural selection and evolution, the primal races have differed so much from their ancestors that they can be classified as different species. No one can yet tell which race came first or how it happened, but what the Elves can be sure of is that the Anu and Darkin predated all other primal races and indeed gave birth to them, through years of genetic modification and perhaps even selective breeding.

The Anu and Darkin once ruled a half split of the worlds land without any conflict between each other, this changed throughout the centuries in a lot of undocumented ways to what it is now, an almost even split for all races except for humans, who seem to own 1/3 of the continent and dwarves, who seem to own a very small portion of land, and whose only neighbor are the humans.