In the time before time, the Gods were challenged by primal elemental and emotional monstrosities whose power rivaled their own. Their greatest enemy was Halina -- by some accounts the first daughter of the universe, the oldest and most powerful single creature in existence.
In the Beginning
In the time before time, the Gods were challenged by primal elemental and emotional monstrosities whose power rivaled their own. Their greatest enemy was Halina -- by some accounts the first daughter of the universe, the oldest and most powerful single creature in existence.
Halina laid low the champions of the gods until a young knight in golden armor appeared. He called himself Solgarde ("The Guardian of the Sun" in the Celestial tongue) and wielded a shimmering sword behind a shield of fire. He challenged Halina and, after a titanic clash, defeated and slew her. As reward, Solgarde was given the right to create a world from Halina's corpse. He called it Kyrell.
The first peoples of Kyrell were humans, fashioned in Solgarde's own likeness. From the trees came the Halvaen (Elves); from stone itself came the Thwarch (Dwarves). Each was accompanied by a companion race: halflings with the elves, gnomes with the dwarves. Despite some conflict -- particularly between elf and dwarf -- the five races got on well enough, until the first giants began to stir.
The Giant Wars and the Empire of Venn
From almost the beginning, giants were seen as a threat. Their enormous size consumed resources at an unsustainable rate; great herds of giant lizards and mammals diminished wherever giants went. The humans and dwarves launched separate wars against the giants, but their strength was all but insurmountable.
The gods gifted their mortal followers with magic for the first time, escalating the conflict. Eventually, the five races united under the Council of Venn, originally a temporary alliance. The Council became the Empire of Venn, ruled by a long line of human Emperors with the advice of leaders from all member races. The Empire of Venn stood for ten thousand years.
The Fall of Venn and the Spirit Dragons
The fall of Venn came not from without but from within. Solgarde, seeing that even combined the Vennites could not eliminate the giant threat, gifted them with five living weapons forged by his brother-in-law, the Master Craftsman Vorathem: the Great Spirit Dragons, fashioned in the likeness of primal beasts, their bodies gold, silver, copper, brass, and bronze.
The Spirit Dragons served as Venn's protectors for generations. With the giants gone and Venn grown corrupt, the Spirit Dragons' original purpose became unclear -- and rather than seeking guidance, they became overzealous guardians, making unilateral decisions about what was best for mortal peoples. Their metallic colors faded as their nature shifted from protector to overseer. They launched a war not of avarice but of ideology: the conviction that mortals could not govern themselves, and that the Spirit Dragons were obliged to rule for them. The peoples caught in the crossfire -- orcs, goblinoids, and others -- were displaced and scattered, forced to forge their own survival cultures in the chaos of a war they had not started.
The gods raised new, uncorrupted dragons to oppose them. The last human Emperor, Weohstan, fought alongside those defenders. His defense was valiant, but Venn was too far gone to recover.
The Time of Nightmares
The thousand years following Venn's fall are called the Time of Nightmares. Almost no records survive. The Orders of Wizardry first coalesced during this period, establishing their first regulatory frameworks for the practice of arcane magic.
The period ended with the re-founding of Caernguard by descendants of Weohstan, which became the focal point for cultural rebirth.
The Weohstannuk Empire
Caernguard, at the confluence of the Caern River and the Blue Vale pass, became the centerpiece of the Weohstannuk Empire -- the first truly human nation, and the last great alliance of humans, dwarves, and eventually High Elves.
The second great empire was doomed to a much shorter life than Venn. A group of Imperial Advisors called the Maygus conspired to seize control of the empire and ultimately brought it crashing down, inaugurating a second dark age. Caernguard still stands, much diminished.
The Maygus
The Maygus were a faction of wizards and sorcerers serving as Imperial Advisors whose reformist ideas -- unconventional theories about magic, governance, and the nature of draconic power -- proved too radical for the empire's established order. What began as a movement for magical and political reform became a catalyst for ideological civil war, as the empire fractured between those who embraced the Maygus's ideas and those who saw them as a destabilizing threat. The empire fell not to deliberate betrayal but to the weight of an irreconcilable divide. The Maygus's legacy continues to shape how the Orders regard practitioners with draconic bloodlines -- not as inherently dangerous, but as carriers of theoretical frameworks that the established Orders view with deep political suspicion.
The renegade archmage Artemis Wyrm, who arose in the chaos following the Weohstannuk collapse, established the precedent that the Orders would regulate all magic-users of Kyrell without exception.
The Spirit Dragon Whistles and Magnus
During the Spirit Dragon Wars, the Orders produced the legendary Spirit Dragon Whistles -- magical artifacts that helped turn the tide against the corrupted dragons, requiring the formal unification of the Orders under the Conclave.
Magnus, a Grey-Robed Wizard and companion to Weohstan, was instrumental in defeating Artemis Wyrm. He carried a ceremonial dagger alongside his staff -- a personal symbol of scholarly dedication and unwavering commitment to his craft and his Order. After his death, the Orders adopted the ceremonial dagger in his memory: a symbol not of violence but of the same dedication Magnus embodied -- to arcane knowledge, to one's responsibilities, and to the Order above all.
The Present Age
The Weohstannuk Empire has fallen. The Orders of Wizardry remain the dominant arcane power. The Blue Knights hold the Blue Vale. The Nexus stands unexplained at the heart of the continent. Something is stirring.