A brief history of the world:
A long time ago, before the rise of the Earth Alliance, before the 5 Galactic Wars, before the arrival of the Dark Empire and even before the rise of the Folklonian Empire, ruled the great state known as the Ucharian Republic. A time so ancient that even the Elven overlords of the Elvesferran Federation only know of it as legend and myth rather than history; more than 300,000 years ago. The Ucharians were the first of the great humanoid interstellar races and legend says their republic expanded to control the entirety of the Milky Ways Alpha Quadrant, the galactic core and even portions of the Beta and Delta quadrants. They were masters of both magic and technology. The Ucharians overcame the greatest of threats, eradicating the mythical Tygernians; the eater of stars, defeated the Old Ones ; a race of elder gods that could never die and had enslaved much of the galaxy, suppressed the great Quo-Ti rebellion and even defeated the Lords of Chaos when the minion of the Dark Realms first tried to shatter the great civilizations of the Milky Way.
In time, the Ucharians grew tired of being stewards of the galaxy and set up the Folklonians to assume control and dominion over the Great Republic. The Folklonians were a mere child race by comparison, but they had the drive and spirit to take on the monumental task. The Ucharians stayed in the background for a time, supporting the Folklonians with their technology, magic and wisdom, until it seemed the Folklonians would be suitable inheritors and stewards of the Great Reublic. In time, the Ucharians retracted their presence from the galaxy and slipped into an isolationist culture, eventually becoming so far removed from outside contact that the denizens of the galaxy had only the word of the Folklonian elite that the Ucharians even still existed.
Before the Ucharians left the realms of men to their own devices, they set up one planet to be the perfect prison for the deadliest of their ancient enemies, the Old Ones; the elder Gods that could never be killed. They knew that if the Old Ones were ever allowed to escape, they would threaten the entire galaxy and the Ucharian home world itself. Thus the world of Amenia, a backwater planet not too terribly far from the Ucharian home world was selected to be transformed into the eternal prison of the Old Ones. The projects scope was so daunting, it took several generations to complete. Only the Ucharians knew of it, opting not to share their plans for Amenia with the Folklonians. The Folklonians only knew that the Ucharians were the keepers of the Old Ones, but not how they were imprisoned and that was generally good enough for them. By the time the Folklonians had assumed all the mantles of power, even the oldest of the Folklonian Overlords had been born long after the Ucharians defeat of the Old Ones, so what the Old Ones had been and the threat they represented had already passed from known history into the obscurity of myth.
The Old Ones were a race of immortals beings who had evolved beyond their simple flesh bodies and had become eternal spirits who could exist outside of the flesh for indefinite periods of time. When they came into contact with nearly any living being, the spirit of an Old One could enter and take control of the body of that being, occupying that flesh for an indefinite amount of time. The hosts the Old Ones invaded never aged and gained all of the powers, abilities and magic of the Old One, making it extremely difficult to destroy; but even should the old be destroyed, the Old One could survive in spirit form for however long needed until a new host could be found to take control of. In this fashion it was impossible to kill an Old One, so imprisonment became the next best solution. But how do you imprison elder gods effectively? Forever?
The Ucharians found the solution. By combining a most impressive combination of magic and technology, the Ucharians altered the land and water of an entire continent on the planet of Amenia so that the whole continent would become a prison for the Old Ones. First, they made it so the entire southern continent and the surrounding oceans were a technological dead zone. No form of non-magical energy could be sustained there. Stored electricity, energy fuel cells, nuclear energy, coal burning, chemical reactions (including explosives), oil burning, gasoline, rocket fuel, steam power, radiation, solar, etc. Any form of non-magical energy that reached a certain level of output would simply see that energy drained away before it could be effectively used to power any technology of note. Nothing was to prevent purely mechanical devices from being built, but the Ucharians prevented so much as a simple battery or fuel cell being able to maintain any energy for the smallest amount of time. These measures would insure no spaceships could land on the planet, nor could technology be used to generate dimensional rifts, open worm holes, allow for the use of Dimension Fold travel; simply no technological means of travel.
Then the Ucharians encased the regions around the continent, both out in the oceans, miles beneath the soil and miles above the land, with a magic dead zone. Magic would work inside this area, so while on the continent or on the nearby oceans, magic would work just fine, but any magic that involved reaching out beyond that encased bubble, simply failed. In this fashion, no one could leave the continent by way of teleportation, dimensional travel or travelling to different planes of existence. Nor could magic be used as the power source to effectively supplant technological power sources to drive ships or mechanical devices. The Ucharians knew that if they intended to imprison the Old Ones here for an eternity, the Old Ones would also have eternity to try different methods of escape; which necessitated a massive over-engineering of the planet to prevent the Old Ones from finding any crack on that prison. Thus the masters of half the galaxy spent hundreds of years perfecting a single continent on a single backwater world to be a prison for their most deadly enemy. The last and final lock on this perfect prison was to develop a means to prevent the old ones from simply swimming, flying (with magic) or sailing a boat outside the bounds of the continent so otherwise perfectly set up to hold them. For this, the Ucharians were able to identify the uniqueness that was the Old Ones soul energy and found a magical means to temporary disperse and move that energy. So should an Old One manage to reach the boundary of the protected bubble surrounding the continent that was their prison, attempting to pass beyond that bubble ripped the soul energy of the Old One; the essence of their being, apart and scattered it into the winds, backwards into the protected zone. Even this could not kill the Old One (but it always killed the host), but the Old Ones soul energy was so scattered that it might take the Old One hundreds of years to coalesce that energy back together to once more be a functional, intelligent, fully conscious entity again.
Across the central ocean from the southern continent, which became the Old Ones prison, to the east, the Ucharians established a completely magic dead protected zone where a small garrison was established. The garrison sat atop a unique, custom-built technological wonder of a city that the Uncharians built to self-manage the upkeep of their prison and to act as an early warning system should an Old One escape. The city sat atop a doomsday device designed to blow up the entire planet and use the energy of the explosion to power a device that would rip apart the soul energy of all the Old Ones on the planet and disperse that energy to such far flung places in the Universe that the hope was that it might take the Old Ones hundreds of thousands of years to manage to coalesce that energy back together again to regain sentience.
And with their perfect prison built, the Ucharians dropped away from contact with the other races entirely. For tens of thousands of years the Ucharians maintained their small garrison on Amenia, watchful against the possibility of the Old Ones escaping, until eventually even they began to suspect their prison had indeed been built so perfectly that no guard was needed anymore. The guard was eventually withdrawn and the planet and its automated prison was left to its own devices.
Amenia: Early History: Pre Myth:
The Ucharian transformation of Amenia into a prison for the Old Ones began shortly after the Ucharian people began turning over the reigns of empire to the Folklonian race, nearly 400,000 years ago. The one consequence of the decision to turn the world into the prison planet was that it essentially doomed all living life on the continent-turned-prison to become hosts and / or slaves to the Old Ones. At the time, however, only two primitive forms of humanoid life existed on Amenia, a simple tribal culture of Sularians and a cave dwelling primate pre-curser to humans. The Ucharians deemed it an acceptable consequence to keep the Old Ones locked away from the rest of the galaxy. Over the course of a hundred thousand years, the diversity of humanoid life on the planet began to slowly expand. Space pirates, traders and prospectors, not realizing the dangers of the planet would fly down to the planet in their ships (and typically, promptly crash when their ships hit the technology dead barrier) and the survivors would be stuck, left to begin a new life there. The Old Ones would aid and support these new-comers, seeing any new element or diversity to the mix of life within their reach as an additional tool or resource potentially available to them in their quest for freedom.
During this period the Old Ones largely worked together, managing their primitive slaves and experimenting with every possible means of escape. They used all of their massed knowledge to make mechanisms of technology to improve their standard of life and aid in establishing the most sophisticated technological base that could be attained within the extreme limits of their continental prison. They tested the limits of their prison, creating ships to sail the oceans and find the bounds of the magic prison, seeking even the smallest crack in the magical barriers. They forced their slaves into undertaking massive earth moving projects, digging miles into the planet to explore the lower limits of the prison. Lacking the ability to power aircraft or flying machines, incredibly tall towers were built to allow the Old Ones to reach heights of several miles into the air, merely to test if their prison encompassed the air above them. Some of these projects were so mind boggling in scope they took thousands of years to complete. Towards the later part of this period, the last of the great projects ground to a halt as the Old Ones came to grips with the fact that their prison was sealed in every way and to escape, it would take beating it rather than simply escaping it.
After a hundred thousand years, the last of the Ucharians in the garrison city decided their prison was working flawlessly. It was also decided that the automated securities of the city itself were sufficient to prevent outside forces from tampering with the city or the great prison itself, meaning it was no longer required to have an Ucharian presence on the planet at all. The Ucharians pulled up stakes and returned to their home world, marking that the last known time any Ucharian was ever seen by the other humanoid races.
Amenia: Early History: The First War of the Gods:
Trapped as they were on the southern continent, the Old Ones were not fully isolated. Humans who lived on the northern and eastern continents would, occasionally travel to the southern continent to trade. The traders carried both goods and information with them and sometimes the Old Ones would pay more for information than the trade goods. It didnt take the Old Ones long to learn of the final Ucharian departure from the world, giving them a renewed sense of hope. They quickly rallied their most loyal generals and followers and dispatched the Grand Armada; a fighting force of more than 5,000 sailing warships and over a half million soldiers towards the eastern continent to seize the Ucharian city. This, the Army of the Gods (named after the Old Ones, who had become known as gods to the locals they ruled over), entered the lists in what later became known as the First War of the Gods. The Old Ones hoped their minions could unlock the secrets of the prison and disarm its magic. The army quickly took control of the city, slaughtering the rift raft of space pirates and exiles that had settled into the space port after the departure of the Ucharians and enslaving the remaining. The Old Ones generals quickly expanded their reach to conquer the rest of the eastern continent, though the native Vulkerian giants that had settled along the south coast caused the Army of the Gods tremendous loses. Armed with great strength and a fighting doctrine supported with advanced technology, the Vulkerians were finally overcome by sheer weight of numbers and the fanatical will of the Army of the Gods, but not before the Army of the Gods had suffered several hundred thousand dead.
After the conquest the Old Ones controlled the eastern continent by proxy. Exporting slaves from the east back to the south, along with all sorts of technological items and supplies, all for the purpose of finding new ways to attack the Ucharian prison. The Army of the Gods would attempt a multitude of ways to attack the Ucharian city, trying to terminate its automated maintenance of the Old Ones prison. Each time the city would fight back, empowered with an arsenal of automated defenses left behind by the Ucharians. After a decade, the generals in charge of the army ceased all such further attempts to overcome the citys defenses, no longer daring the hostile responses the Ucharian city would give in return. They found so long as they left the citys core operations alone, the citys central intelligence was willing enough to let them stay there. The Old Ones became furious, demanding the assaults on the city continue. The generals, in response, declared their new kingdom independent, naming it the Empire of the Shards (named after the predominantly crystalline appearance of the old Ucharian space port).
The Old Ones refused to let any of their followers back in the southern continent know that the Army of the Gods had rebelled against them. Instead they spun a story that their rival gods had captured and enslaved the Army of the Gods and formed the Empire of the Shards. A new army was raised, even larger than the last, and sent to the eastern continent to try and bring the Army of the Gods back to heel. The war that followed would last three decades and exhausted the economies and fighting prowess of both sides. The Old Ones second army was finally defeated when the Empire of the Shards reached an accord with the Vulkerians, who had broken away from the empire when the war first began. The Vulkerians helped to break the last siege of the Ucharian space port (now named the City of Shards) and helped dismantle the remnants of the Old Ones second army. The Empire of the Shards had been so decimated by the war, however, that any pretense to being an empire was lost and the rulers settled on simply maintaining their existence as an independent city state. The rest of the eastern continent splintered into dozens of new kingdoms, generally along racial boundaries.
Amenia: Early History: The Second War of the Gods:
Towards the end of the First War of the Gods, the stress of prolonged warfare on the enslaved peoples of the southern continent finally overcame the fear of the Old Ones and there arose massive slave revolts that erupted into full scale rebellions. These, more than anything else, were what forced the Old Ones to finally give up, at least for a time, the reconquest of the Empire of the Shards. The decades of warfare across the Great Ocean spawned into decades more warfare in trying to squash rebellions. Finally it came to be that insanity began to plague the gods. The Old Ones, an impossibly ancient race, born and risen to power hundreds of thousands of years before even the great Ucharian Republic came into being, trapped for over a hundred thousand years began to gain a sense of hopelessness at their imprisonment. Immortal and cursed to live forever, and now trapped forever, on a backwater planet with virtually no technology available to them, some of the Old Ones splintered off from the rest and began to see domination of the natives as pointless. Slowly some of these Old Ones began to aid the rebels, sometimes secretly and sometimes openly joining their cause. The Second War of the Gods had begun.
The Second War of the Gods was a horrible event to behold, with the power of the Old Ones pitted against other Old Ones. Old Ones would be destroyed, only to shortly thereafter possess a new body and take up arms again. The humanoids under their command could not easily follow the identities of their gods, with such rapid transitioning from new body to new body. Chaos ensued. This, the Second War of the Gods would wage for nearly 50 years and would see the wholesale destruction of every major city on the southern content and the collapse of all the Great Works. The huge mines were collapsed inward and forgotten. The 3 mile tall tower of Arkos in the Sularian desert was damaged and broken at the 135th floor, with the bulk of the tower falling over and destroying the city below it. The land was transformed from a moderately advanced society to a society completely enveloped in a new dark age. While energy based technology was never very feasible given the constraints of the Ucharian prison, mechanical technology and low levels of steam technology had been possible, allowing for a modestly modern society. As the war raged, all the humans and other races under the heel of the Old Ones suffered, with all major cities becoming destroyed, support of educational institutions for the masses becoming non-existent and civilization crumbling. The diversity of races and population that the Old Ones had been cultivating as a tool to advance their efforts at escape had been devastated, leaving the continent with a tiny fraction of its pre-war numbers. After a time it became apparent to the Old Ones that the war amongst themselves was pointless and that even they lacked the power or ability to subjugate or kill others of their own kind. The war slowly ground to a halt as the Old Ones simply lost the will to continue it.
Amenia: The Early Kingdoms:
The spirit of cooperation between the Old Ones had shattered when the Second War of the Gods had begun and it did not return with the wars end. The Old Ones divided up the land amongst them and each became the living god of a given territory or kingdom. Some began to rebuild civilization while others had lost the will to work at keeping the peoples within their territory subjugated as slaves, choosing to the let the people within their territory fend for themselves. Within those territories civilization would break down even further, but would eventually give rise to a larger number of small kingdoms. Conflict between these smaller kingdoms was frequent since their living god never objected. On occasion an Old One would enjoy watching the struggles and conflicts of the mortals living within their realm and would use their ability to possess bodies to secretly assume command of key leaders so they could guide the direction of events unfolding for their own amusement. In the larger kingdoms that others of the Old Ones had allowed to build up, sometimes the Old One would grow bored after thousands of years of continued research and experimentation on trying to beat the Ucharian prison, then would rejoin the affairs of the mortals within the territory they ruled and destroy that civilization utterly, purely for the amusement of watching its survivors slowly crawl their way back into building a new civilization. The Old Ones remained known to the people as living gods and the gods were hated universally.
On the northern continent of the planet city states were starting to emerge as settlers to the space port found the land open and looked to establish a new life there. Many of these settlers were refugees from the Folklonian Empire, the intergalactic Empire that had eventually come to replace the Ucharian Republic. These settlers preferred life on the northern continent because it allowed them both the use of technology and magic. The settlers, however, had to keep a low profile on their new world since the Folklonian Empire had come to recognize the importance of the planet and generally had the whole world on quarantine. It wasnt an overly well maintained quarantine, so small ships could generally come and go without much attention, but larger ships or any large technologically based cities on the planet would draw unwanted Folklonian attention. So the cities became something of a back-world retreat for a wide assortment of peoples looking to escape interaction with the broader galactic scene.
Amenia: Odellafax and The Long Winter:
A hundred thousand years after the Ucharians had abandoned the planet an Old One named Odellafax had arrived at a new plan to beat the prisons defenses. He hatched this plan on his own, having spent several thousand years in seclusion making the magical items that would aid his effort. As god-like beings, many of the Old Ones had learnt to craft fairly powerful magical items. Odellafax was the most skilled of the Old Ones in the Magic Smithing craft. He had crafted several hundred magical daggers, each made of the most precious of metals and empowered each with a multitude of powers that would be available for their owners to use. The most potent of the magics embedded in these blades, however, was an extremely powerful dominion magic; a magic that could assume command if the person who owned the blade and make that person a virtual slave of Odellafaxs. Slowly, over a period of years, Odellafaxs most trusted followers carried these weapons to the City of Shards and carefully planted them with powerful ship captains, traders and mercenaries that visited the space port. Odellafax establish a floating city that sat permanently positioned just on the eastern most inside barrier of the southern continents prison barrier. This made it much quicker for his minions operating in the City of Shards to sail a ship to the floating city to provide frequent status updates on his plans and to receive new instructions. Odellafax had followers and magical devices situated within his floating city so they could communicate with him back at his seat of power in the southern continent. Gradually Odellafaxs magical blades crept into the hands of ever more influential people and within a couple decades, the slaves of Odellafax had complete control of the City of Shards. Subterfuge had accomplished what had not been possible in the previous hundred thousand years.
This had just been the beginning of Odellafaxs plan. Through control of the City of Shards Odellafax began to establish a small, but powerful fleet of pirate and raider ships and began to plague the nearby star systems within the Folklonian Intergalactic Empire. By this time the Folklonian Empire was in a rapid state of decline and was beset on multiple frontiers and had no resources left to deal with the small nuisance that Odellafax had become. This allowed Odellefaxs followers to expand their reach even further and Odellafaxs magical blades were seeded into the hands of several Folklonian fleet commanders. The new Folklonian servants of Odellafax brought their fleets into orbit around the planet of Amenia and enacted his plan: to bombard the City of Shards from orbit with the might of an entire fleet of starships. The fleet attacked the city for several hours, laying waste to much of the land and most of the city, but the core of the city proved to have a defensive energy shield that the fleet could not penetrate. Further, the city fought back, destroying several dozen ships before the Folklonian ship commanders ceased the attack. Odellafaxs next plan was to assault the planet itself, hitting it with enough force to tilt its axis and cause a massive shifting of the planets tectonic plates, in which they were successful. The planets rotational axis was shifted several degrees and the tectonic plate system of the planet shifted along with it, causing earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and massive tidal waves the world over. In a flash the population of the world was decimated with fewer still surviving the following ice age that came. But even this could not total destroy the City of Shards, though during the coming Ice Age the city would become completely buried under a mile of glacial ice. The other Old Ones were so upset with Odellafaxs independent action and the result it had generated they stripped him down to a lesser rank among the Old Ones and he was denied control of a territory of his own to rule. The ice age would last nearly two hundred thousand years and leave civilization teetering on the brink. To this day, the influence of Odellafaxs magical blades lingers with members of the Cult of Odellafax spread throughout the known worlds, but after such a great amount of time, knowledge of the location of the planet Amenia has been lost to them.
Amenia: The New Spring:
During the long ice age Odellafax nursed a growing hatred of the other Old Ones for their near slave-like treatment of him. In secret he began crafting his next magical masterpiece; a weapon he planned to use against the other Old Ones. Found deep in underground, at the bottom of the deepest of the old mines, some seven miles down, Odellafax found an extremely rare gemstone, two stories tall. Experimentation with the stone proved that it could hold select magic properties unknown to any other crystalline structure known. Odellafax came to realize that gemstones like this one were essential components originally used by the Ucharians in crafting the prison for the old ones. Though Odellafax didnt know how to undo what the Ucharians had done, he realized he could use the gemstone to capture the soul essence of other Old Ones and use it to increase the power of his own magics a thousandfold. If he could capture the soul essence of enough of the Old Ones, he might be able to use brute force to shatter the chains of the Ucharian prison. A few thousand years after beginning magic smithing into the giant gemstone, Odellafax had finally completed his masterpiece. His followers raised the Gemstone to the surface and it was installed into his fortress where a new army was beginning to be formed under his banner. Odellafax knew raising an army, an act expressly forbidden to him by the other Old Ones, would draw their attention quickly. A trap was set for Xorgan, the first of the Old ones to arrive at his fortress with an army. Xorgan was killed during the battle, but instead of his energy being able to simply leave his body and find a new host, his soul energy was sucked into and trapped into the gem stone. When the next few Old Ones arrived to challenge Odellafax, he channeled his enhanced powers through his magical gem stones and defeated them easily. With their soul essence added to the power of the gem stone, the other Old Ones quickly came to realize that none of them could dare to confront Odellafax. Nonetheless, Odellafax went on the hunt, tracking down Old Ones and killing them, also adding their power into the gem stone. The other Old Ones went into hiding to avoid a similar fate. Before they did, Odellafax had managed to defeat and capture the power of more than thirty of them. The power held within the gem stone had grown so great that Odellafax unleashed its power on a sustained effort to warm the planet. Just a decade later the ice sheets had withdrawn towards the poles enough to make the three continents glacier free.
The dark reign of Odellafax would last several hundred years. Backed with the power instilled into his gemstone, nicknamed the bloodstone, Odellafax was able to smite entire armies from nearly any distance. The only place safe from his reach were the northern and eastern continents, outside the boundaries of the Ucharian prison. With the City of Shards now free of glacier ice, the city began to regrow itself and once more freebooters, black marketeers and outcasts began to settle in. Within a generation the city had become a budding black market port and pirate haven. The northern continent was mainly devoid of life and in an effort to rebuild his own populations, Odellafax strictly controlled the movements of anyone in or out of the southern continent, making settlers venturing back into the north far and few between. On the southern continent all the lands were unified under Odellefaxs rule and civilization began to rebuild. Odellefax enjoyed near complete control with only a small resistance movement lead by the more daring of the Old Ones. It was a relative age of peace and prosperity where Odellefax left his minions alone to develop their society while he focused on using the power of the bloodstone to prepare for his ultimate attack against the Ucharian magics and technology keeping him and the other Old Ones in prisoned.
Amenia: The Liberator:
Odellafax had tried several times to use the power of the Bloodstone against the Ucharian prison but had failed to breaks its chains. Still, he claimed his Bloodstone was so powerful that during its assault, the containment fields marketing the boundaries of the prison were temporarily weakened. He concluded if he could absorb even more power into the stone, it might yet be powerful enough to help set him free. By this time, the remaining Old Ones had learned to mask the presence of their true essence from Odellafax while they inhabited a humanoid host. This made it impossible for Odellafax to seek out the other Old Ones to drain them of their power and imprison their essence into his Bloodstone. Growing desperate to grow the Bloodstones power, Odellafax began experimentation on draining the life essence from a human into the stone. He realized that any humanoids life essence would also increase the power of the stone, but the power of their essence was so finite compared to that of an Old One that it would take millions and millions of souls to garner him the power he needed. If he sacrificed every living humanoid on the southern continent, he might not even have enough. So he began to breed his slaves at an industrial scale. Magical potions were made to increase the sterility of his humanoid subjects and each family was given was given a birthing rate quota or face extreme torture for failing to meet it. Within a decade, the drafts began. Each year, every population center would be given a target number of people to be sacrificed and lotteries were instituted to select those who would get the honor of serving Odellafax.
Each slave that was to have their soul essence drained into the Bloodstone was put to further use. Rather than let the body of the slave die after the soul had been drained, Odellefax found a way to use the Bloodstone to summon forth a shard of energy from the Realms of Light and instill it into the now lifeless body. This shard of energy was a source of Order magic that enabled Odellefax to effectively program the lifeless shell as a slow witted, but otherwise willing enough slave who would follow any commands given to it. Over time, the bodies of these lifeless slaves turned a pure white; a white so bright that it would make most albinos seem to have severe sun burns, and they became known as the Legion of Ghosts. Odellefax would find further use for the Legion of Ghosts by sticking them on ships to be sailed to the City of Shards where they could be sold as exotic slaves. In turn, the money gained from those sales funded the purchase of many more regular slaves at the black market port, who were in turned shipped back to the southern continent where their souls could be drained. This began to draw the attention of the Lords of Chaos within the Dark Realms, who did not like what they were seeing. Odellefax had enslaved an entire continent and had such finite control there that its entire population had been transformed into a breeding farm. Worse, with the power of the Bloodstone, hundreds of thousands of souls had been drained and each time, a shard of Order Magic was called into the Universe. Wherever the Legion of Ghosts were shipped after being sold, that little shard of Order Magic travelling with them would subtly instill Order into their surroundings. The Lords of Darkness acted quickly and began using their Chaos Gate magic to transport a wide assortment of different peoples and monsters from all over the universe into the northern continent, the one place their Chaos Magic could actually reach on the planet.
Attempts to create Chaos Gates on the southern continent all failed, blocked by the Ucharian defenses. A more creative approach was going to be necessary in order for the Lords of Chaos to get an agent directly into the southern continent to shut down Odellefaxs slave farm and its ability to continue spreading Order Magic. With an inability to use any magic or technology to teleport, chaos gate or transport persons into or out of the southern continent of Amenia, the Lords of Chaos engineered a more natural delivery system. They used their Chaos Gates to transport an enormously large asteroid into space above the planet on a trajectory to crash into the southern continent. The asteroid was of such immense size that should it strike the planet it would be a total world killing event. Still, just in case that proved insufficient, the Lords of Darkness established a ring of Chaos Gates around a small kingdom on a small island named Britain from a far distant world. This small kingdom and its legendary king, together with his court wizard and well trained army of knights, had been stomping out the chaos there that had persisted in the British Isles ever since the final withdrawal of the Roman Empire from that land. The Dark Lords were apt to remove that little isolated island of order from the region and put it to use helping to destroy Odellefaxs own particular bent on order. The entire kingdom of Camelot was spirited away off the planet Earth by a ring of Chaos Gates and placed into the asteroid about to crash into Amenia, a split second after the asteroid had entered the planets atmosphere but just before it cross the boundary field marking the limit of the Ucharian jail. The Dark Lords also expended a huge sum of energy to extend a protective shield around Camelot to insure the kingdom and its people would survive the impact. Should the asteroid have successfully impacted the planet, the power of that impact would likely have destroyed all life on the planet (excepting, of course, the Old Ones who could not be killed thusly). But the asteroid failed to hit the planet. At the last minute, Odellefax saw the threat and conjured up the power of the Bloodstone to smite the asteroid, which disintegrated just shy of impact. That proved to be such a monumental task that the effort exhausted much of the power from the Bloodstone. The asteroid vanished in a flash, but the entire kingdom of Camelot, protected by the Dark Lords, managed to land moderately safely out in the middle of the Kirabaan desert. Moderately safely being, its cities were only mostly destroyed and only half its population killed or injured.
The Bloodstone was not drained of power, but as the essence of a powerful being could be temporarily exhausted, so it was also for the Bloodstone. The other Old Ones sensed that the Bloodstone was temporarily out of the picture and rose up in mass against Odellafax. Armies of freedom fighters rose up in a dozen places across the continent, led by the Old Ones. With Camelot suddenly arriving onto the planet just a couple hundred miles from his tower, Odellefax marshaled his elite guard quickly and began marching on the new kingdom. Within a week of landing, while still trying to clean up the devastation from the transplantation of their kingdom, the peoples of Camelot faced invasion. The Knights of the Round table were hopelessly outnumbered, but began a campaign of hit and run tactics against the invading force, stalling it while defensive preparations were begun to make a stand at the capital. Within a week Odellafaxs elite guard was at the doorsteps to Camelot, the city, and the Knights of the Round Table had run out of maneuvering room. The Knights of the Round Table numbered a mere 300 strong, back by another 1,000 foot soldier, who were all that remained of Camelots great army after the devastating transplantation of the kingdom. They faced Odellafaxs elite guard, numbering over 10,000, and were backed by Odellafax himself and his bloodstone. Odellafaxs forces surrounded the city and began preparations to lay siege. King Arthur and his knights had faced overwhelming numbers before and had the advantage of their capitals defensive fortifications, but had never faced something and ancient and powerful as an Old One nor a bloodstone containing the essence of many Old Ones. Even though his bloodstone was heavily drained of its power, Odellafax still called upon its might, channeling his magic through it and at the onset of the battle through a mighty burst of energy that struck the castle at Camelot and shattered the structure in its entirety. The devastation would have been complete if it were not for King Arthurs infamous wizard, Merlin, having been there to shield King Arthur himself and the knights around him.
Odellafaxs elite guard swarmed into the ruined city and castle seeking to put a quick end to King Arthur and his knights, but the King and his men fought with legendary skill and courage, the King himself cutting down Odellafaxs men in waves. As King Arthur and his surviving knights fought their way outside the city walls, they gathered together to form a fighting wedge and began a push towards Odellafaxs position. None of Odellafaxs champions could stand long against the fighting prowess of King Arthur and his mystical sword, Excaliber. Odellefax himself, hurled mighty magical attacks at the King, all of which seemed to have no affect. Legendary Excaliber protected him. The remnants of the Knights of the Round Table and King Arthur fought their way to the center of Odellafaxs army where Odellafax himself then engaged in an epic sword dual with the King. It quickly became apparent that Odellafaxs skill was grossly superior and in the span of a few seconds King Arthur had obtained several sever cuts to the chest and arms. But the flow of battle had seen King Arthur and Odellefax change their position and the King now fund himself closer to the Bloodstone. With willfull intent, the King turned his back to Odellfax and surge forward at the bloodstone and struck it with Excaliber. The bloodstone shattered into thousands of pieces and released a horrified shrieking sounds; the sound of hundreds of thousands of souls screaming.
We only have the journal entry from the wizard, Merlin, to account for what happened in those moments, as the release of energy from the Bloodstone either killed or knocked everyone else unconscious. Odellefax vanished in a blink of the eye. It is unknown whether he somehow perished that day or escaped to haunt the world once more. The energy released from the bloodstone shot forth in a thousand different directions and the majority of the stone itself was gone afterwards, with only several dozen smaller shards, no larger than a fist, remaining. What happened to the rest of the gigantic magic gem, no one knows. Some speculate that the stone splintered into millions of tiny dust-sized particles and wherever that dust settled, exists areas that would prove dangerous to an Old One. Only a handful of the Knights of the Round Table and Odellefaxs elite guard survived the blast. As they came to, Odellefaxs men surrendered as they realized the Old One was no longer with them.
Amenia: Dawn of the New Age:
In the years following the battle the remaining Old Ones resurfaced to reclaim much of the continent, establishing new kingdoms that were divided amongst them. Only now, a handful of humanoid kingdoms had emerged free of Old One control. The city of Dresmara was the first of the Thousand Cities to shake off Old One dominion on the main land as it established a small sphere of influence around itself and amongst its neighboring cities. Camelot faced several more challenges before the other Old Ones learned it was best to leave the kingdom alone. The Sularians also rebelled and destroyed the Old One holding dominion over them and the wizards there established the great Sularian Council. And Elmar the Great, a wizard of legendary skill established a small independent island kingdom in the far east. Where once it had been impossible to resist the might of the Old Ones, the destruction of the Bloodstone had given the mortal of the land new weapons in their struggle for freedom. The remaining shards of the Bloodstone, while infinitely finite in power compared to the whole of the Bloodstone, retained the power to potentially trap the soul energy of an Old One, when wielded by a spell twister of sufficient power. The world now possessed dozens of talismans with the power to defeat and trap an Old One. Over time, one by one, more of the Old Ones would fall in battle and become trapped by those Talismans until the dominance of the Old Ones passed into ancient history.
Amenia: The Present:
It has been a thousand years since the world had seen an Old One. No one knew, except the Ucharians, knew how many Old Ones were imprisoned on the planet at the beginning and that captivity began so long ago, knowing how many had been captured by the shards of the Bloodstone was impossible. Tales of the Old Ones became the stuff of bedtime stories parents told to their children. Politics on the southern continent became the affairs of men and their heroes, free from the Gods. The various kingdoms have each developed different levels of technology, though with the confines of the prison, none too advanced. Some even preferred to stay clear of technological development. The nations has gone through two great wars, each driven by the ambitions of the great Sularian Council. The Sularians would intermittently hold dominion over the warrior-like Lizarians or be at war with them. When the two were unified, the Greater Lizarian nation would threaten much of the world. The Thousand cities were the hotbed of localized conflict, with surrounding nations constantly vying for control of alliance with the more powerful of the smaller city states. The small island kingdom of Elmera spearheaded the last great alliance, but that was long ago and the great nation has since regressed into a more feudal state. In more recent years, the greatest disruptions to the political status quo has been the great migrations. First it was the Dwarves, then the Dark Dwarves. Later came the Centaurs, Rylar, Orcs and Adarkans. Each a displaced peoples thrust by the Lords of Chaos onto the northern continent.
The northern continent had remained a chaotic land, largely made that why by the constant intervention of the Lords of Chaos. The Lords of Chaos, continuing to seek a means gain influence over the events on the southern continent, played with the northern continent as if it were their very own special play-land. Using their Chaos Gates, the Lords of Chaos would transplant entire kingdoms into the northern continent, adding new races to the world. Some of these newcomers would wage war to establish themselves in the land, some would migrate southwards seeking less turbulent lands to settle. Two of the latest powers to take up residence in the north, however, came of their own choosing. The first of these were the soldiers of the Earth Alliance, come seeking a backwards planet near the heart of the Folklonian Empire to establish an outpost on. From that outpost, they would conduct ongoing raids on Folklonian space in an effort to turn the tide in their desperate war with the Folklonians. The latest newcomer were not people at all. The Arken Assembly is a land of androids and artificial intelligent run machines, fleeing the extending reach of the mighty Thrash Empire. Escaping the notice of the Thrash, the Adarkan Assembly quickly established a presence on the planet and began transforming their territory into a new base of operation capable of propagating the Assembly back to a position of strength.
The City of Shards remains a black market space port lacking much of a central authority. The Folklonian Empire suffered one catastrophe after another, first losing much of their empire to the Empire of Froth, then encountering a resurgence of the Quo-ti and lastly a war with the upstart newcomer to the intergalactic scene, the Earth Alliance. Today the world of Amenia no longer falls within the bounds of the Folklonian Empire. Sitting in unclaimed space, the space port rapidly grew in popularity. Some of the more powerful local barons have established positions to the north, within range of the city, but safely outside its immediate bounds for those occasions when someone stupid tries to tamper with core city operations and the city decides to fight back.
