Almost nine hundred years ago, the realm was shattered by a devastating calamity known as The Arrival. A great meteor struck the one dense green forests of what is now known only as the Wastes, obliterating the land for miles around. From the epicentre of the blast rose a single, foreign entity: The Nameless One.
A being of unknowable chaos, the arrival of The Nameless One brought with it untold change. From the point where the meteor struck, the land itself began to shift and change, twisted into unnatural shapes and patterns that were completely alien to the once pristine landscape. The Time of Strife had begun.
Tears in reality began to appear across the realm. These portals swallowed mountains, rivers fell as waterfalls from tears in the sky, islands of rock tore themselves from the earth and floated, suspended in the sky. The beasts of the land were torn to shreds by the influence of the Nameless One, reshaped into beings that barely resembled their natural form. Where the Nameless One moved, chaos spread, and hordes of horrors began to sweep the land, consuming and changing everything in their path.
Magic, once a rare and gentle force in the world, was amplified incredibly by the presence of The Nameless One. For those who could tap into the roiling storm, magic became an incredible, if extremely dangerous weapon against the horrors that plagued the realm. Cities rose and fell, new weapons were developed, and the world endured almost forty years of extreme volatility. Many great civilisations fell during this time, while others rose to combat the forces of the Nameless One.
Though records from before and during this period remain, they vary dramatically. The Nameless One’s arrival reshaped reality itself, and so consistent records date back only eight hundred years - everything before this is drowned out in conflicting, but equally accurate reports. What is known is that the inexorable advance of the Nameless One was eventually halted. As even the most powerful individuals were unable to destroy the entity, the Nameless One was imprisoned within Exivor, the third moon.
For the first time in almost half a century, the world settled into relative peace. But the influence of the Nameless One would forever scar the land. Now, almost nine hundred years later, magic remains a potent force in the world, though rare and diminished by comparison. Even the most powerful casters of the current age cannot hope to match the wonders created by those who lived through the Time of Strife. The power of magic waxes and wanes with the unpredictable and erratic phases of Exivor, which was itself twisted and reshaped by the Nameless One’s presence.
While the hordes of horrors that swept the lands were largely destroyed, they remain a constant threat in less civilised lands. Though irrevocably twisted with both beauty and horror, the realm lives on, and the Nameless One survives in legend and myth.
