Notes from the Author.
I have always been fascinated by the old stories of High King Morgrain and the Forges of Power. Ever since I was a little girl growing up in the Chronicalia Defortium in Yotenburg. My father was a member of The Annels, an order of The Magis of the Word, I spent many fond years in our family home within the Defortium. When I was 13 I decided to build a collection of the myriad scraps of lore and histories pertaining to the Ancient Forges. I spent years scouring the various source texts I could find but ultimatly gave up after I met dead end upon dead end. Most stories were only word of mouth accounts from traveling bards or the odd adventurer who went exploring one of the many sites of ancient cities. I could get no solid source material to reference beyond the one piece of scroll we had at the Defortium which dated back to the Days of the Forged Peace over 10,000 years old. Beside this exception the other materials I found in the Libraries at the Defortium were never more than 600 years old.
Many years later now I have decided to turn back to this work, now with a few decades of practice and with my own membership in the Order of Annels. One ky thing has changed since I was a child and it was a discovery of a trove of source material found in the archeological digs near a suspected site of the Heart Forge. My research team and I suspect that the massive gap in dated source material is due to the Major Cullings that have occured with some regularity for the past 10 milenia. The last Major Culling left the Magi of the Word nearly extinct as an entity in the world, that occured some 660 years ago based on guesses from piecing together the historical records. The lone surviving member of the Magi was Agustus Morillian who was able to use a blessing from a god to time travel past the Major Culling that scoured the land. Then he set to work rebuilding the Magi of the Word from the ground up. Luckily the Necroking was never able to get his hands on the more recent findings from the Heart Forge.
In this book I seek to share far and wide the crumbs of truth that we have been able to sweep up in the catastrophic history of our war torn homeland. My thanks to my father and mother for all their support and love. Many thanks to my associats and team of scribes, language specialists, book runners, editors, and understudies. Your work has helped enlighten all of the freelands to the important histories that took a pivital place in the formation of our modern world.
Sincerely yours,
Kethras Miridam
The Myth of the Forges
Long ago mortal kind was at the whims of the Gods and the Nature of the world that had been made for them. Civilization was young and new and it was still under the shadow of unthinkable monsters and evil Gods of torment and disaster. Life was short and brutal and many sought to change the world for the better.
During this time of darkness an era of peace was forged by Seven ancient kingdoms at various edges of the world of Alms Furth. Lead by their divine Kings who served the people with all their heart, loyalty, and might. These Kings founded a truce in the pursuit of the knowledge and power they needed to stop the forces of evil at work within their Lands and in their world. These Kings believed in the power of mortal ingenuity and craftsmanship. They sought to temper and control the powers of Gods, and the very fabric of the weave of Magic. They started by instantiating these mighty forces into mystical Forges of Great Power. They bartered with Gods, Demons, Spirits, Nature, and the Weave of Magic for the secrets they strove to use against evil.
Together the Seven Kings each built one of the Seven Forges, scattered and hidden across the lands, keeping the power under each Kings control, as well as free from the grasp of Evil forces at work. They obtained powerful magical artifacts to use in the construction of their forges. The scoured the realms, the planes, and the stars. Slaying dragons, capturing Gods, and harvesting mythical beasts in order to harness the innate magic they possessed. With these artifacts they embued their forges with the power to focus these Mighty forces into weapons of unimaginable power. They succeeded and for a time this brought peace.
The Order of the Flaming Sword banded together arming the most skilled and trained they had at their disposal. They embarked on a crusade against the evils that had once blighted the seven Kingdoms. They cast down Empires of evil, Destroyed Powerful Monsterosities, and even took to the Stars for a time chasing the scattered fragments of the nightmares that once overpowered them. All the while a Dark Betrayer worked within their midst turning the Kingdoms against one another. The betrayer put their schemes in motion as one by one the Kings turned from the truce seeking the power for their own ends. One day, after centuries of planning, waiting, and preparing the betrayer moved against the Seven Kings now divided and squabbling. The Betrayer used the forges to lock their creators, and the secrets used in their making, into the void. The betrayer then used the Forges to shackle death, plunging the world into darkness.
