Dark Art

Eons ago, the world was in turmoil.

Whilst the humans, dwarves, and goblins 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. Amidst the teeming, chaotic black morass of creatures that men called "Orcs," a singular being arose. Once, the First Or'Khan's people were created as servants - war slaves - by the Besire - what ancient humans called "Elves" - for a war of extermination that even the Besire had forgotten about. To create the perfect war machine (one that would not only excel at ending the Besire's enemies but would never pose a risk to the Besire), the ancient Besire engineered the 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 a dozen or so years, an uncontrollable libido, substantial sexual organs filled with an addictive, virulent 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 discarded their creations. Eventually, they thought, the Orcs would simply die off.

To survive as a race, the Orcs must kill, pillage, and ravish. But abandoned by their masters, they wandered the wastes of the East, slowly dwindling and fighting over the wombs of the daughters of headstrong, naive pilgrims who were stupid enough to cross the Dread Mountains.

Until the Or'Khan. The ancient Besire alchemists did their best, but nature finds a way. Some Orc serendipitously impregnated some woman with some unnatural gift, and sired an son. 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, though not 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 haughty, stoic dwarves were humbled and submitted to the Or'Khan - arming the Orcs with the finest dwarven-steel in exchange for the safety of their womenfolk. The goblins willingly submitted to Or'Khan, claiming that he was their messiah, and went on to serve as a potent auxiliary for his armies. With humanity's cities in sight, Or'Khan descended upon the unprepared human kings, who were each still too busy trying to figure out how to exploit the circumstances for their own personal gain. City after city fell to Or'Khan as the ranks of his horde continued to swell. It is said that the night Or'Khan took Wonderwine Keep, he personally bred 151 human women in one night.

Perturbed and perhaps wracked with guilt by the acts of his ancestors' creations, Aeson the Fool, King of the Besire, intervened against the wishes of his court. The Besire, a folk of lofty ideas and science, were never numerous - too busy for carnal desires and frippery. To muster an army of any size, many of their soldiers had to be Besire women. To prevent his gunmaidens from succumbing to Orcish impregnation after some were inevitably captured, Aeson gathered his greatest alchemists to render their female troops sterile. The Sylvire - Besire who shunned technology to dwell in forests - rendered a beloved plant extinct to create a potent birth control potion that prevented even the most potent Orc seed from taking root in any woman's womb. The Amazons of Sapphos, an all female city state of half-elves living in conjugal symbiosis with a race of amphibimen called Slinks, taught human women the secret technique of vaask, the art of consciously opening (or closing) one's cervix to prevent impregnation.

The hosts of the Besire beat back the Ork'han's horde at great cost, but in the end, Aeson rallied humanity and its allies under a united banner and together, victory after victory, the forces of order prevailed. Unable to replenish their numbers without captured females as hosts, the parasitic Orcs found their armies shrinking. Shrewd but without the tactical and strategic minds of the greatest Besire and human commanders, Or'Khan's horde crumbled. Just as his progeny had inherited the mutation of independence from him, they began to question his leadership and began to mutiny.

In the end, some say that Or'Khan laid dead at Aeson's feet. Others that Or'Khan simply retreated beyond the Dread Mountains with what was left of his army and thousands of captives. The result was the same in the end: the great horde was scattered, the time of the Besire had ended, and the lesser races were allowed to flourish and grow.

For a moment(in elven time), the world was at peace. Humanity, short-lived but proud and quick, settled the vast expanse of the world, taking advantage of the weakened Besire. The Dwarves enslaved the goblins and settled the inhospitable caverns and peaks of the valleys and mountains. Envious of their betters' abilities and lives, humanity sought to make the most of what little time they had, and developed 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 hole in the plane of the world, and magic flooded within. 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 elves and dwarves.

Aeson's daughter, Celine, fell for a powerful human sorcerer. His name is lost to history, but the seed he planted within her womb signaled the end of the Besire. Their spawn, the first of the Druchire, carried the blood of human and elf, as do their descendants. Dark-eyed and dark-haired, they were teased by their peers for their "man-ears" and pale, untanned skin, but prized for their ability to channel the powers from the source. But it did not take long for the Besire realized that the Druchire were afflicted with the same lust that overcomes humans. Fertile and fecund, the half-blood, magically inclined brethren of the tanned, blonde-haired and blue-eyed Besire multiplied in numbers that threatened their Besire cousins.

The purges, the entanglement of alliances, and the wars that followed as the "Bright Elves" turned on the "Dark Elves" brought the world to the brink.