What We Leave Behind

You are all young, but I remember The Great War, the hungry hordes of the Dark Lords, the Necromancers. For two decades we fought them with fire and steel. One day we slaughtered undead, the next day we slaughtered our fallen brothers and sisters, over and over again. Every time I closed my eyes, I feared waking up not knowing if I was alive... or something worse.   Then King Ynedar died on the battlefield and Queen Korinthia carried the hope and sorrow of our people. She inherited his mount, the legendary Master and she led the forces of light against the armies of the night. A terrible burden for a twelve year old girl.   I still remember the day she fell, I saw it with my own eyes. The field of battle was chaos, a heavy rain had turn the fields to mud and crawling around in it, the living and the dead embraced in a morbid dance of death.   Then I saw her, the young Queen, on a hill surrounded by her battle-hardened Templars. The undead surged like a boiling sea around them. Then the clouds opened and the Light of Prios blessed them, her white armor and mount like a beacon in the black void.   But no light could calm the boiling sea of the dead. A black spear killed the King’s mount and our beloved Queen Korinthia was taken captive.   But the Dark Lords had underestimated the love her Knights had for her, and even death magic could not stop them. Years later her Templars rode into the heart of the Dark Lord’s fortress and freed her. It is said that the a priest of Prios walked naked through the unholy fire and carried her out of captivity.   The war ended that day, but the horrors did not. We grieved. Tens of thousands had died; the maimed and broken were beyond count: the land ravaged by death magic. There was famine, and the children were born dead. The Queen had returned, a shadow of herself, her face disfigured, her once radiant sunshine smile hidden behind a lifeless mask.   Twenty one years had passed since the Dark Lord’s were defeated and the Queen realized that the lands of Alberetor were dying. Crops failed, the soil blackened, lifeless, the cattle died of hunger, cities were abandoned, the castles deserted and villages were turned into ghostly places where only memories and carcasses live.   Queen Korinthia led her people north, beyond the mighty Titans and claimed her ancestral homelands. She named it Ambria “The Shining”. There they have found fertile soil and a means to start anew, or so they say.   But this paradise is not without it’s own problems. There are barbarian tribes, and the bloodthirsty elves kill all who venture into the forest of Davokar.