History of Genesis

As the dragons develop consciousness and thought, the gods are created to fulfill their unanswered needs. The Great Gods are first and oldest, with the rest of the pantheon appearing more over time as need for them arises. The Skinwalker is generally believed to have predated this creation and his origins remain unknown.

Conflict between the rival factions of the Empire breaks out into open war, destabilizing the planet's climate through massive overuse of magic and kicking off a series of ice ages. The draconic population as a whole is decimated, and the Southern faction all but completely eliminated.

In a bid to overthrow the time god Lore, five vampire siblings consume most of their own kind in order to become near-divine beings known as the Blood Gods. They fail in their attempt and are driven from the Worldshadow into the far reaches of the Evernight.

A rogue faction of the waning Dragon Empire triggers a cataclysmic volcanic event in an attempt to wipe out the fledgling human race. Showing their anger, the gods turn their backs on mortals entirely for several years. The guilty faction of dragons is destroyed by the rest of the empire, but the repercussions of the Silent Years are seen as a final condemnation to a slow slide into extinction.

Following aggressive Seraph interference behind the scenes of the Crusades, Wynn declares unofficial war against the family and their allies. Her assault is backed by many factions within Genesis; the Seraphs' influence in Europe and the Middle East is drastically reduced by the end of this period, but tensions between humanity and the magical races is pushed to a breaking point.

Disheartened by the rising strife between humanity and the other races in the aftermath of the War of Dark Flames, Wynn Khajib makes a bargain with the gods to make a refuge for those who no longer belong to what will be known as the Old World. Over the course of one year, those who want a home away from the encroaching of humanity prepare magical groundwork to mark the boundaries of their new lands.

Followers of the Bound One openly eliminate another vampire clan, turning the conflict into an open war spilling out with little regard for secrecy or human life; a few clans strive to try and cover the fallout, but this becomes increasingly difficult as the struggle escalates. The Reaper Rei Arren meets with vampire forces in an unprecedented alliance for the sake of trying to resolve the rapidly deteriorating situation and preventing calamity.

Knowledge of the existence of the Painted Ways, rediscovered by Artemis Hunter, begins to spread between the different shards of Genesis. In the wake of the Flame’s very public death, their existence as a secure way to travel directly between shards proves more crucial than ever.

In the Old World, a bizarre affliction called the Illuminada begins to affect vampires. It’s suspected to be engineered due to the specificity of how it acts, and proves to be the first incident of human experimentation specifically targeting one of the magical races as part of rising fear against the presence of magic.