Dark Art

Once, the world was simple.

But after one fateful night of uncontrollable passion, the Besire (elven) King, Aeson, fell for a powerful human sorcereress. Her name is lost to history, but the seed he planted within her womb signaled the end of the long peace of a world ruled by the functionally immortal Besire.

The King's taboo interracial coupling suddenly popularized hundreds, then thousands, of similar couplings. Their rapidly quickening fetuses (with pregnancies taking around the same time as human pregnancies), the first of the "dark-elves," carried the blood of human and elf, as do their descendants. Generally dark-eyed and dark-haired (from which they derived their moniker), unlike their platinum blonde-haired, tanned-skinned mothers, dark-elves were teased by their peers for their slightly pointy "man-ears" and pale, porcelain skin, but prized for their ability to channel the powers from the Source of All Magic, which, for all their technological and alchemical prowess, had long eluded the Besire. Having dark-elf children suddenly became vogue for bored Besire, who often lived with unwilling partners otherwise uninterested in bearing the burden of a decades-long pregnancy with Besire men. Initially disgusted by the pairings, even the most conservative of the Besire nobility recognized the value of their innate proficiency in magic, and dark-elves became bred by the Besire to become powerful indentured sorcerers and sorceresses. Unlike Besire women, who would only ovulate and become fertile in 5-10 year cycles, dark-elf women inherited human women's monthly heat cycles, but had just as much of the nigh-immortal stamina and constitution of the Besire. Unlike human women, dark-elf women could physically recover from childbirth after a few hours of bed rest, could resume normal sexual activity after only one day, and recover their pre-pregnancy physiques after only one or two weeks.

In only a few hundred years, fertile and fecund themselves, the half-blood, magically inclined brethren of the tanned, blonde-haired and blue-eyed Besire multiplied and eclipsed the populations of their Besire cousins in only two generations.

Initially, the Besire welcomed the booming population of the dark-elves and hailed their half-blood cousins as yet another triumph of Besire alchemical and scientific dominance. But their was a dark side to their traits - the dark-elves were treated like test subjects and cattle, bred for magical ability and physical perfection, then subjected to endless training by the most legendary human magicians. Owning the most powerful dark-elf "pet" was seen as a status symbol - Besire parties were incomplete without flexing one's resources vis-a-vis a dark-elf magical lightshow. Underground, Besire masters would unleash their dark-elf "pets" upon each other in shows of magical battle. To create the most perfect, most powerful sorcerers and sorceresses, countless dark-elf women were subjected to **** impregnations and derogatorily referred to as "breeders." Dark-elf men deemed genetically unworthy were **** into slavery; similar dark-elf women were **** into sex slavery.

It did not take long for the dark-elves to rise up against their Besire overlords. The first of the rebels was, Serhi Druchi, an escaped dark-elf **** with no particularly strong magical abilities, but a keen affinity to basic portal magic. He created an underground network to help enslaved dark-elves escape from Besire territory to free human-majority cities, where they could live relatively normal lives among humans they resembled so closely. While the Besire tolerated Druchi's activities, what they could not tolerate were his writings, his idea that such a powerful, resilient, and magically attuned species such as his could be oppressed. Druchi used his proficiency in portal magic to evade capture and spread his teachings, causing mass riots in multiple cities, until a turncoat dark-elf **** assassinated with a cruel poison that the Besire's alchemists had tailor-made for him, turning him into a withered, diseased shell of a man over the course of months before he finally expired.

Rather than die down, the protests found a renewed energy, with the Dark Elves adopting a new moniker, a portmanteu of the name of their slain leader and their Besire ancestors: "Druchire." Fed up with their unruly slaves, the Besire decided to focus their efforts on their dark-elf magical eugenics program, and exterminate, rather than enslave the non-Source attuned dark-elves. But the haughty Besire quickly learned that their indentured sorcerers and sorceresses were more sympathetic to their fellow dark-elves than their own masters. When the Besire's grand armies descended upon the Druchire rebels, thousands of sorcerers and sorceresses, working in conjunction, wrecked lethal havoc upon the Besire's armies from behind. The forces of the younger races, humanity, dwarves, and goblins, having long chafed under Besire rule, refused to lend aid to the Besire.

Badly bloodied but not beaten, the Besire enacted a nuclear option to cleanse what they perceived was an ungrateful world and start anew. Unleashing their vast alchemical knowledge, the Besire created the perfect proxy soldier, a vile, lecherous warrior and despoiler genetically engineered for combat, pillaging, and extermination. This creature was the first of what would become known as the Vatborn - short-lived, chemically enhanced supersoldiers that could be grown from infancy to adulthood in giant vats of foetid goo in a matter of days. The Besire engineered these malformed supersoldiers (whom other races took to calling "Orcs") to exact specifications - obedient, quiet and dark-skinned for stealth, immensely muscular but not absurdly large, redundant organs to survive otherwise mortal wounds, a short lifespan of three to five years, an uncontrollable libido, substantial sexual organs averaging ten inches in length and eight inches in diameter that produced an addictive precum that served as aphrodisiac agent and delivered copious amounts of potent seed that could only result in Orcish spawn, and a genetic curse that rendered every Orc born a male.

After the war was won, the Besire reasoned, the Orcs would simply die off. But once again, in their arrogance, the Besire miscalculated. Their supersoldiers proved to be effective, indiscriminate killers and rapists, but they were too effective and too indiscriminate. Humans and dwarves were attacked along with the Druchire, the goblins were mostly enslaved, and the Besire soon found formerly neutral powers aligned against them. The Druchire and their allies fought back valiantly, and ultimately **** the Besire into an uncomfortable truce and ending the dominance of the Besire over the world once and for all.

For hundreds of years, the world was at peace in this new status quo.

The Dwarves enslaved the goblins and retreated to the inhospitable caverns and peaks of the valleys and mountains. Unable to compete with the growing power of humanity because of their lack of affinity to magic, but not as technologically advanced as the Besire, they became increasingly bitter (yet dependent) upon humanity. Only two Dwarven houses, Houz Puterglottz and Houz Bluborg prospered in an **** fashion as bankers, owing to the close proximity of their highly secure mountain holds to large human cities. Much of the residential districts of the Free City of Deepwater Down are effectively owned by Houz Bluborg, to the great chagrin of the majority human populace there.

Humans, relatively short-lived but proud and quick, settled the vast expanse of the world, taking advantage of the weakened Besire. Envious of their betters' abilities and lives, humanity sought to make the most of what little time they had, and relentlessly used portal magic to enable instantaneous travel. But humanity's newfound power had a price. The young race's **** of the fabric of space and time tore a growing hole in the plane of the world - the Source - and magic flooded within, changing the world forever. Humanity proved most able to channel the unbridled powers from this tear, and their mastery of these artificial powers soon exceeded the inherent, traditional sciences of the Besire.

The Druchire proved to be a close second - while they were not as attuned magically to the Source as humans - their lifespan of nearly two thousand years meant that they had far more time to master and explore the depths and intricacies of the Source of All Magic. Though the Druchire inherited the nobility and independence of their human progenitors, they also inherited the arrogance and sadism of their Besire sires. Eventually, a movement for a Druchirian state began and the Druchire carved out a small slice of the world over which they formed a magocratic city - The Black City - a dominion built upon their own eugenics program to create the most perfect Druchire sorcerers and sorceresses. Ostensibly led by a "democratically elected" supreme mage known as the Dark Lord, but truly governed by the most powerful Druchire mages and their respective powerbases, Druchire society today can either be a meritocratic paradise for the genetically fortunate, or a dystopian oligarchy where might makes right.

Many Besire, disillusioned with their leaders' wayward decisions, abandoned their nation and retreated into the forests. Over time, they became known as the Sylvire - Besire who shunned technology to dwell in forests. In the Veridian Rainforest, they somehow thrived, though it is unclear how they overcame the Besire's difficulties in having children. Perhaps, some reasoned, it was exposure to alchemy that reduced Besire birthrates.

Many dark-elves who were not magically inclined found themselves just as shunned and ostracized by the new Druchire state - especially women - as a non-sorcerer male Druchire could still find prestige and employment through sheer physical strength. These female dark-elves were left with little prospects but to become dancers, entertainers, or prostitutes, and many left to join a colony of female dark-elves in the Oasis of Sappho. After hundreds of years, they became known as the Amazons of Sapphos, an all female city state of dark-elves living in conjugal symbiosis with a race of amphibimen called Skinks.

But whilst the new powers of the world fought over petty grievances and resources amongst themselves, trouble stirred in the distant east, well beyond the gaze of mortals and the premotions of the most powerful soothsayers.

As, yet again, the Besire had miscalculated. Following the war, the Besire were unwilling to live next to the monsters they bred for **** and **** even for the few years that remained in the Orcs' lifespans, so the Besire ordered their remaining Orcish warriors to march into the Eastern Wastes to die. But admist the teeming, chaotic black morass of the Orcish remnant, a singular being arose: an anomlay, the primogenitor, the First Or'Khan.

Without the alchemical vats that could bear them ad infinitum, to survive as a race, the Vatborn Orcs must ravish. But abandoned by their masters, they wandered the wastes of the East, slowly dwindling and fighting over the wombs of pilgrims and natives who were stupid or unfortunate enough to live in the wastes.

Until the Or'Khan. The ancient Besire alchemists did their best to limit their war machines' natural lifespans to only a handful of years, but nature finds a way, especially in a race that reproduced and lived so quickly. He must have been the spawn of an orc who serendipitously impregnated some woman with some unnatural gift. Born without the gene that rendered him a fumbling, directionless brute unless commanded and without the curse that limited his lifespan to a handful of years, the mutant known as the Or'Khan united his people. Initially, this rag-tag group of five thousand posed only a threat to the most undefended of cities. But the Or'Khan's band swelled. The Orcs spawned from his thousands of impregnations also possessed his unnatural abilities and his unnatural age. A rabble became an army, an army became a legion, and that legion became a horde.

In a matter of years, Or'Khan's Horde poured through the passes of the Dread Mountains. The Dwarves have kept most of Or'Khan's Hordes at bay for now... but it is unclear how long they will hold as the ranks of his horde continue to swell. It is said that the night Or'Khan took the human city of Wonderwine Keep, he personally bred 1151 human women in one night.

Perturbed, Aeson, King of the Besire, has used the excuse of Or'Khan's invasion to reactivate the Besire's remaining Vats to produce a new generation of Vatborn. The human kingdoms, are still too busy trying to figure out how to exploit the circumstances for their own personal gain, with only one leader, Queen Rayna of Valancia, funding an expeditionary **** with Hauz Puterglottz to assist the Dwarven holds in their battle against the Orcs. In most human cities, life goes on, oblivious to the threat of the Or'Khan. Far in the south, in the Black City of the Druchire, the Dark Lord of the Druchire watches from afar. Long have his people suffered, but in the time of chaos, perhaps the dark-elves will have their day...