Anacharia

6th of October 4567 A.G.I

Anacharia is an old land, a land that has seen many conflicts, and overcome them each time. It was first settled by the Elves and the Dwarves, many ages ago, so long in fact that even the most ancient Elvish books or Dwarven tomes can not tell us now how they came to be there, only that they have lived there for many thousands of years.   They lived peacefully with each other, neither sparking the flames of war as neither had reason to. The Elves for their part lived on the surface, while most Dwarves preferred the Deep, what they came to call the endless caverns, tunnels and underground lands they both discovered and created. Elves on the other hand preferred the joy of the sun, the feel of the wind on their face, and lived mainly among the forests that Anacharia had to offer.   Trade flourished between the two races, and all was for the most part peaceful, though occasionally bands of Greenskins from the south required culling, or a beast or monster grew to the point of requiring slaying. Such as it was that War was far from the minds of the allied kin, until war came upon them.   It is said the Dwarves dug too deep into the foul places of the world, that they unearthed hell itself, but whether that is true or not, it cannot be said by mortal mouths. What is known, is that a great Demon, a nameless creature was unearthed, a monstrous being of red flesh, it immediately fell upon the Dwarves with hellish fury. Those few Elves as well, those who lived in the Deep and enjoyed the company of the Dwarves, many were slain, and many more were corrupted. For the Demon sew a seed in the land, a root of evil in the earth, even as it fought it’s way to the surface, it’s darkness could be felt on the land above.   The High Elves, mightiest and most militarized of the Elven people organized a force to bring down the Great Demon that was laying waste to the lands below in it’s journey to seek the sun. Even the Great Spell-Lord Lothdarian joined the cause, but they were unable to stop the demon. The beast burst from the mines, finally free of the cloying darkness, only to meet the Elvish force between him and true freedom.   The Elves for their part fought bravely, but with a new army of corrupted Elves and Dwarves, the Demon lay waste to them, even slaying the Spell-Lord himself before marching onwards, his new goal set. He marched South, burning all in his path with hellfire. Such fire and rage turned the grass to bare earth, the trees to ash, and finally when he met it, the sand to glass. The Demon marched Southwards with his slowly dwindling army, until he vanished beyond the known borders of Anacharia, into the Southern Wastes from which Greenskins ravaged.   Those remaining thanked the Gods that the Demon was gone, but did not account on him remaining so forever. The aftermath of his rampage was incredible, not only with the countless deaths and endless destruction he left behind him, but also in the new race of peoples. For as time passed, those corrupted souls lost their true taint of Evil. No longer were they the pure souls they had been, ever changed for the worse. They returned to the devastated caverns of the Deep and remained there, though in time many of the newly christened ‘Dark Elves’ came to the surface once more, and their change was made prominent by the sun. Black-skinned, they took the only lands left available, the Deadwood, in all it’s dismal glory.   And so life changed in Anacharia, warriors trained, armies formed, allies made stronger by blood. They swore they would be prepared for what came next, but much as they tried, they could not prepare for what force came from the South.   A great time after the Great Demons departure, many had grown complacent, and only viewed the training of new recruits as a waste of time and resources. Even the High Elves began to think that the Demon had merely continued his way South, never to return. Their thoughts were proven wrong however, as the Great Demon’s legacy returned to Anacharia.   Over five centuries they had prepared, but they had not been prepared for what came. The spawn of the Demon, came into the land, bringing with them an army the likes of which had not been seen by Elves before. A force numbering possibly a billion, Greenskins all. No such force the Elves and Dwarves could muster would counter such an army, and so a call to aide was sent, Elves traveling beyond the edges of the world to seek aide.   To the West, in the endless ocean, the ships of the Dark Elves, who by that point were the finest sailors known to Elf-kind, came upon an Island nation, where seemingly another group of Hellspawn enslaved a race of small, furred creatures. These were the Bachians, forced to work all the seasons to prepare a great feast for the Hellspawn. These kind were unlike the Great Demon, as they showed little more than hunger, rather than the keen intelligence the Demon had shown. Were the Hellspawn not fed to their satisfaction once a year, then they would fall upon the Bachians, and devour them until their hunger was sated, before retreating back into the earth once more.   With the help of the Dark Elves, and the provisions they had gathered the last nine months, they managed to make an escape, at least the majority. The fleet of Dark Elven ships returned to Anacharia with the Bachians, rescuing them in return for aide in the War. No great fighters, the Bachians instead took over the Elvish farms, seemingly almost capable of magic with how they grew crop and raised livestock. The armies now had food aplenty, and no Elf nor Dwarf went hungry, even on the war-front.   The second to arrive, were the Xhol. Venturing from the Greawood, the massive forest on the Eastern-most known side of the world. No Elf nor Dwarf had ever passed through the deeper parts and returned. None had ever found the other side. While the WoodElves may have called it home, they remained only on the outskirts of the endless wood.   But the Xhol had come from the other side, being of great might and power. They were a race of shape-shifters, born with the power to transform into a being that was half-beast. They normal forms resembled the Elves, but taller, broader, without the pointed ears or nimble bodies. Even in this form they were mighty, if not as agile as the Elves, but their Xholtic nature allowed them to wield great power, for there were those that even matched a Troll for raw strength.   The Xhol were a tribal people, having once been a great culture reduced to ruin, and now scattered into many tribes, which warred among each other. The Elves saw their might and offered a deal, that the Greatwood would become their land, should they aide in the war.   Many tribes saw wisdom in having the Elves as allies rather than enemies, and all it took were a few encounters to realize the extent of the Greenskin’s savagery. Disgusted by the creatures and entranced by the metalworking of the Dwarves, an agreement was made that all tribes who joined the War effort would be given metal weapons and armor, great mounds of precious metals and gems, and some of the Chiefs even requested Elven maidens for company.   With all this granted the tide began to turn against the Demonspawn and it’s Greenskin army. Their march forwards had been stopped, for though the Xhol were relatively small in number, with the weapons forged by Dwarvish hands, they became a force to be reckoned with.   Thus a stalemate was formed, for neither side had the strength to push the other back, until the third and final ally of Anacharia came pouring from the North, both from over the Northern Border Mountains, and from underneath them, the Dwarven tunnels aiding in their speedy arrival.   The Snow Elves had sent envoys up North before, discovering a race which resembled the Xhol’s less beastly form, bigger and stronger than Elves, though short-lived and without grace. These were the race of Men, and with the promise of new lands, the agreed to join the War.   The First Men to descend upon Anacharia were a savage lot, though less like the Orcs in that nature. They fell upon the Orcs alongside their new allies with great force, their numbers equaling the remaining Allied forces, effectively doubling their number of troops on the battlefield.   With these new allies the Orcs began to lose ground, and the Demonspawn’s efforts began to falter. It all came to a head on Folskegg’s plain, a place notable for the first crowning of a united Dwarvish King.   There was fought the bloodiest battle known to the earth, where millions of casualties were inflicted. In the end, the amount of blood spilled onto the ground turned that land into a wide expanse of red-marsh, cursed to be without life, but the Demonspawn was slain, it's head cleft from it's shoulders by the ferocious Xholtec Lion, Zli, forever known from then on as Zli Hellbane.   Their leader dead, the Orcs fractured into splinter armies that warred with each other as much as the Allies. These armies were finally pushed beyond the boundaries of the known world, back to where they had come from. With that, the Allies treaties were honored, and settlements sprung up in the world, Human, Bachian and Xholtec, living among Elves and Dwarves.   Time passed, peace reigned, broken only by the occasional Orc attack, as was common before the arrival of The Great Demon. However as time wore on, the Elves began to underestimate the human’s expansionist nature. They bred quickly, at least by comparison to the Elves and Dwarves, and unlike the Bachians or Xhol, they weren’t happy with their lot. They wanted more than just the Northlands, or most of them did at any rate.   Eventually they began to move south, settling down in villages, which grew into towns, which grew into cities, which grew into Kingdoms. At last, the High Elves had had enough. The humans were now seen no longer as an ally, but as an infestation. True they may not destroy all life like Orcs did, but they were seen more and more with each passing decade as an enemy of the High Elven Citadels. Their lands were being taken from them passively, small encroachment by small encroachment. Their demands to leave were ignored or even laughed at by some, and enough became enough.   The first strike of the High Elves wiped a large town off the map. The act of brutal violence and destruction were almost Orcish in nature, as they burned the town to the ground and slaughtered all they humans they could find. Only a few escaped their grasp, and only one managed to make it to another settlement to spread word of the Elven betrayal.   Thus the first Elf-War was born, and with it much strife. Most of the other Elven Kingdoms, the Wood, the Snow and the Dark joined in as well, the Snow Elves resenting having been pushed into the high peaks of the mountains, the Wood Elves resenting the destruction of their forests and the Dark Elves corrupted desires forming into a hatred of humanity far beyond even the High Elves level of hatred.   The first Elf-War was bloody, but mercifully short, for the peaceful Meadow Elves managed to broker peace between the two sides after the brutal Battle of Eagor’s Pass, named after the hero Eagor the Hunter. Such a peace would not last long however, as a century later another Elf War broke out with the founding of the Kingdom of Teutonica.   These wars continued on and off for over 2000 years, until current day. Now we rest in a time between Elf Wars, the most previous being the 17th in a long line of conflicts. The 9 Kingdoms of men have once again struck an uneasy truce with the High Elves and their allies, who have dwindled over the ages as the Dark Elves have abstained from the last 500 years of war, and the Snow Elves were nearly made extinct in the 11th Elf-War.   But all while they war with each other, a Darkness grows in the South, the raids of the Orcs becoming more daring, War Parties increasing with size at every turn, pushing further and further North, wreaking havoc and destruction. In such grim times, there are those who fear this is merely the beginning of another invasion, as the Great Demon in the South gathers his hordes, his offspring and his strength to strike once more at Anacharia.