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I will not speak of Rumedia prior to the rising of the gods we know. Some of us know civilization existed prior to our gods, but we have no direct record of it. There are signs of the ancients however; their tombs and even parts of their cities may be found by a stroke of luck in the dark places of the world. We do not know what happened to those people or their gods, for their gods were not ours. Our gods themselves do not know how they rose to divinity, or at least, they do not reveal their path to us. When they came to be gods, the world was populated with tribes of men with no real civilization to speak of, but they learned to use tools and build rudimentary homes. The Greater Gods watched and decided to each select a people to make theirs.
Hykan, god of fire, and the other elemental gods chose a bronze skinned race in the center of Dulkur, the eastern continent. This land of great jungles and deserts was horrific and untamed, much like the elementals themselves, and they taught these people how to use magic of fire, lightning and other elemental forces. None of the other gods wanted anything to do with that land, and the godless tribes quickly fell into servitude when faced with their conquerors’ magic.
The scholars among the gods took the southern continent, Tigol. They wanted little to do with the others, who were sometimes infantile in their competition, and endowed their peoples with a magic altogether different. They gave these people science, technology and mathematics, and while they knew that knowledge would eventually filter to other parts of the world, their people would always be the most advanced in the world.
Urso, the Great Bear and God of the Wild and the Hunt, took the peoples who would form the Northern Kingdoms, as they were large and hardy like him. With His presence, the tribes of the north coalesced into a hierarchy led by shamans and great warrior chiefs. Three distinct clans arose to eventually become the Northern Kingdoms.
And Garod, King of the Gods of Light, chose the people we now know as Westerners. A pragmatic lot, they easily adapted to whatever a situation called for, and they spread quickly and easily across the western continent and even established trade with the peoples of Tigol. This gave the Westerners the knowledge of iron and then steel, which they used on several occasions to war with Urso’s people of the north. The Bear’s people fought terrifically, and even armed with steel the Westerners simply were not prepared for the ferocity of such wars. Eventually, an easy truce emerged between the two civilizations.
There is yet one Greater God that has gone unmentioned, and that god is Dahk, God of Blood. Dahk did not choose a people to empower; his power was necessary for life to take hold at all, and in many ways he felt that all the people in the world were his. Sometimes, a child would be born to apparently fall ill to an unknown sickness, and if the child survived, it would eventually take on an unnatural gray pallor, regardless of its natural skin color. Dahk realized that he had inadvertently created his own chosen race, and he revealed himself to one such man. Dahk taught him of the power his blood contained and beseeched the man to find others of his kind, and as such, a race of warriors called the Dahken was born. I should relate the rest of their history in another writing.
The Western calendar starts at year one, Before Cleansing (abbreviated B.C.). In one thousand B.C., give or take a few centuries, a great meteor smashed into the eastern part of the continent. It created a great darkness, a cloud of ash and dust that settled over nearly half of the land. This meteor brought with it something terrible, and before then the world hadn’t known true evil, darkness. A new pantheon of gods emerged from the rubble, and those people too near the center were immediately changed, twisted into alien imitations of themselves, tall and gaunt, limbs and joints stretched. They found they wielded great powers of necromancy, control over the dead, the ability to cause death, famine and plague. The Loszians had arrived.
The West, caught in panic and disarray, had no defense against these sorcerers. The Loszians displayed magic the likes of which the Westerners had never seen, and while Garod’s power was equal to the power of the Loszian gods, his people were not ready for an invasion of such terror. The Loszian necromancers enslaved living and dead Westerners alike and swept unstoppably across the continent. Garod’s people were forced to flee to the south to Tigol or keep hidden their worship as they toiled to build huge purple and black towers. The Loszian sorcerers were cruel, taking what they willed and discarding of it as quickly. Many of them learned they could breed with the Westerners, creating another class between them and their slaves, and many Westerners also realized the social value of breeding with their masters.
The North remained free for the most part, not for lack of trying by the Loszian Empire. The Loszians found the northern peoples to be indomitable. Certainly they could conquer portions of the Northern Kingdoms, but even their necromancers couldn’t defeat the harsh winters and alpine conditions for long.
The Loszians also learned to leave the Dahken in their strongholds. The Dahken were content to allow the Loszians to conquer as much of the world as they wanted, so long as the Dahken remained free. They met on the field of battle only one time, when two hundred Dahken faced three thousand Loszian soldiers, undead servants and necromancers. The Loszians found almost immediately that their dark sorcery had little to no effect on their foes, and being so reliant on magic, the Loszian soldiers could not contend with an organized and fearless enemy. Combined with the Dahkens’ own unique blood magic abilities, the Loszian host was absolutely slaughtered. The Dahken returned to their enclaves, and the Loszians let them.
By roughly fifteen hundred B.C., the Loszian Empire reigned supreme over the West. The Westerners never gave up hope and put their faith in Garod, who chaffed greatly at his chosen people being trodden upon. The Loszians lived in evil decadence on the backs of His people. Contrary to many people’s beliefs, the gods are not all powerful, nor may they easily affect the lives of mortals. They can make minor impacts by sending visions, bestowing minor blessings and the like, but in order to make a major change in the world requires them to save up much of their power and loose it at the proper time.
In the year 2994 B.C. this happened. Garod instilled into one unborn child all of his strength and power. This child was born knowing of his divine link with Garod, and before he was an adult, he could perform miracles of the utmost power. Word of this boy spread quickly, bringing both pilgrims who would follow him and Loszians who would slay him. His name was Werth, and he wielded great powers bestowed on him by Garod; he could heal horrendous wounds and illnesses, even giving life back to those who had just recently died. Loszian sorcery had little effect on him, and through Werth, the West regained its pride and strength. He showed others how to recognize the power of Garod within themselves, and in 3028 B.C. the Westerners launched a holy war against the Loszian Empire, which became known as The Cleansing. The Loszians, though powerful in their sorcery were weak in their decadence, and the empire was not prepared for a massive uprising led by a peasant who wielded awesome and divine powers. By 3035 B.C. the people of Garod had freed a full half of the continent. The Loszians had finally shaken off their fugue and consolidated their power on the eastern half of the continent, and nearly three more years of warfare continued. The remade west, now called the Shining West, held its own, but could make no more headway against the empire.
In the final confrontation, two great hosts faced each other across a beautiful savannah. Werth, wanting to avoid the massive carnage that would be wrought by a full battle, directly challenged the Emperor of Losz, who was certainly the most powerful of all the necromancers, and the two hurled the power of their gods at one another, meeting in a titanic collision. It dawned on Werth that neither combatant could hope to defeat the other, and he ceased fighting and allowed the necromancer’s evil power to wash over him. Werth absorbed the Loszian’s power, allowing it to fill his being, and in one final effort, he channeled all of the dark sorcery and the power of Garod directly into the ground bel
ow. The ground shook as none had ever felt and split asunder as huge peaks plunged upward, and the two armies fled in horror and confusion as both the priest and necromancer were swallowed by a great crevasse. The World’s Spine was born, a scarred mountain range running north to south, fully separating the Shining West and the Loszian Empire.
The next day marked the beginning of year one A.C., After Cleansing. The Westerners tore down all remnants of Loszian power, every purple tower and every black temple of darkness, and using the knowledge they gained under the whips of the Loszians, they built their own cities and temples to Garod. One large country, Aquis, emerged with three small neighbors. No peace was ever declared between the Shining West and the Loszian Empire, but no large scale war continued. Skirmishes and battles occurred, but neither side ever committed to a full scale invasion, The West thrived in relative peace and prosperity.