=begin comment This is the source for some of the books in crossfire, at least, it should become one. Authors: Gorlin Mark Wedel Marc Lehmann Each =head1 should become its own book. =end comment =head1 Ancient History, by Khalis, Volume I In the beginning the land was barren. No life yet moved upon the large continents and islands that lay empty between the seas. In the seas, nothing moved as well. The world itself held its breath while the Creator rested. Then, a spirit from outside, serving the Most High, entered the world, and she saw a place yet empty of life. So she began to create grass to cover the face of the earth, and trees and other plants. Other spirits from outside watched, and agreed that Gaea had wrought wonders upon the devoid place. Since she was by far stronger than the others, those lesser spirits asked her for leave to join in her work. Gaea accepted their offer, and so the spirits of the Elements of Fire, Air, Water and Earth began their work as Gaea's servants. It can be assumed, that outside the world, the Creator watched and approved. In time, the elemental spirits came before Gaea, and beseeched her to help them create beings able to move of their own free will, living among the plant world. And Gaea saw that without animals, the green world would still miss a vital element, so she in turn went before the Creator. What happened between them noone knows, but soon afterwards living beings began to populate the land. Fish swam in the seas and rivers, birds flew their first flights through the air, and other species moved on the land. The cycle of Nature seemed complete, and Gaea was content. Already, however, other spirits had noticed what Gaea had done. Dark were they, and they treasured still the image of the empty world. To them, a place devoid of life seemed far better, far more perfect, and so they entered the world to return the world to its past. Sicknesses and poison began to spread among the animals, that threatened to extinguish entire species - yeah, indeed several of them might have died during that time, of which we have next to no information. Bones in the ground seem to indict that there were large animals which do not exist anymore, and sadly, we may not meet them evermore. In anger, Gaea named these dark spirits the Devourers, since they were those who devoured all life, and she and her Elemental allies fought them back, and tried to heal what they could. =head1 Ancient History, by Khalis, Volume II In that time it also happened, that a great many of the creatures the Fire Elementals had helped to make were betoken of great madness, and started to rampage among the other beings. In time Gaea and her allies found out the truth, that one of the greatest Elementals of Fire, Ruggili, had turned against them, perhaps on order of the Devourers. Yet, Ruggili now served neither Devourers nor Gaea, instead he sought to increase his own power, and spread madness and chaos upon the world, and he became mightier than any other Elemental in existence. The other Elemental beings came to Gaea, and spoke, "With both renegade Ruggili and the Dark Ones to fight, we need others to assist us. Some of the beings we created are already strong enough to do their part, such as the unicorn or the sphinx. The strongest of them, however, the dragons, have switched their support to Ruggili. We need allies, or this world will become either a place of eternal fire or one of darkness." Gaea was clearly troubled by this, and again left the world to commune with the Creator. Shortly afterwards, new, more intelligent races emerged on the world, among them the dwarves, elves, trolls, goblins, humans, halflings, lizardman, any many others, and they joined the fight on the side of Gaea and the Elementals. During this time, which we now call the Second Age, cultures grew and were destroyed, races rose to prominence and disappeared again, mighty magics were found and forgotten. Ruggili#s followers were beaten back at great cost, and the forces of Gaea could again concentrate on the fight against the Devourers. The fight went on for a long time, but it seemed that the Nature Goddess was able to reform the world into a place of Life. The mortal races assisting her had become weary of the fight, however, and spoke to her thus: "The fight has clearly been won, the death spirits and the Fire God are in retreat. We wish to fight no more, but to settle down in peace. Though we still respect you and always will, we can give you our support no longer." Gaea accepted in silence, even though she knew that this meant that the war would not have a definite ending. Neither the Devourers nor Ruggili would be defeated be her alone. The Devourers and Ruggili watched the retreat of the mortals, the Devourers planning to attack and destroy them now that Gaea was not near, and then to use their own dead spirits against the Nature Goddess. Ruggili instead bided his time, sending down dragons to burn mortal cities and Devourer strongholds both. The Elementals serving Gaea assisted the mortals still, and gave some protection to them so that the Devourers would not destroy them. During this, Third, Age, the mortals segregated according to their nature. The dwarves moved into the mountains, and with the help of Earth Elementals began their first kingdoms underneath the face of the earth. The elves moved into large woods, the lizardmen into swamps. Wars broke out between some of the races, none however anywhere in that measure as the Great War of the Second Age. =head1 Ancient History, by Khalis, Volume III In the Third Age it also happened, that spirits from the outside, who had been content to watch until that time, took pity on some of those races. The goblins, orcs, trolls and giants began to serve a being called Gnarg, who had promised to raise and protect them. He helped them build up protection against the many poisons which still plagued the lands, and in time they began to use poison as a weapon against their enemies. Their most hated enemies were the dwarves and the elves, who each had been stronger than them before the coming of Gnarg. Now, stronger than ever before, they attacked them and sought to utterly destroy them. First they moved against the elves. They burned down forests and elven cities, until the being Lythander came to guide the elves and to oppose Gnarg. He sent confusion to the goblin races, and cursed them to utter stupidity. this curse is still active even now, there are fewer orcs or goblins who possess high intuition, intellect or magical affinity then in any other of the mortal races. During the time the curse was first spoken it was much worse. The orcs fell down muttering insanely, the giants and trolls clubbed each other senseless, and the goblins jumped down high cliffs to escaped the voices in their head. The goblin attack faltered, and all the goblin races and giantkind returned - after a few accidents and wrong turns - to their homes. They also immediately stopped their plans to attack the dwarves. The dwarves, however, had other problems. The dragons also claimed the mountains, and the followers of Ruggili sought out the dwarven cities and the treasures they offered. The pitiful cries of the dwarves, and the many deaths among dwarvenkind, roused the spirit being Mostrai, who entered the world and came to the dwarves. He showed them how to create magical weapons which might wound even the greatest of dragons, and he also helped them to withstand the dragons' fire. As was Gnarg to the orcs and goblins, and as was Lythander to the elves, Mostrai became god to the dwarves, protected them as they worshipped him for it. The most numerous of the mortal races had no god of their own, and they despaired, seeing that others had gods of great power to call upon for assistance. In their fear of being destroyed, in their anger for being left out, and their hatred for those who left them alone, they cried out for help. And in the darkness, someone heard them. Far away, in another dimension most probably, dwelt beings of great power. Endless torment was their desire, hatred, fear and anger the ways to their dark hearts, and fire their most potent weapon. When the humans had cried long enough, the doorway was opened, and the demon host went through. The demon lord Gorokh led those who entered the world, and he offered the humans many riches and great power in exchange for their worship and for sacrifice. many humans fell, and began to serve the powers of darkness. Others sought redemption, and a pure spirit called Valriel came to their aid. Others again returned to the worship of Gaea, hoping that the forces of Life would protect them, a few humans even went to the goblin, elven and dwarven gods for help. =head1 Ancient History, by Khalis, Volume IV As the human worship began to spread out among all the gods and beings of power who had entered the world, a small group of them who wished not for the blessings of Nature but the power of the elements as weapons spake to one of the Elemental Lords following Gaea. And as Ruggili long ago, Sorig left Gaea's path and accepted the mortal's worship, teaching them the way of lightning and thunder in return. Other small sects began to emerge, and then the one things noone had foreseen happened. Some humans began to worship the powers of Death, who until then never had living followers. Those poor deranged people believed that in death they would be truly free, and the Devourers gladly accepted their help. When those humans died, the most mighty of the Undead were finally created - those who joined the Devourers of their own free will: the vampires, the spectres and the liche. And so the world lies before us today, turmoil and chaos has spread among the many gods who have entered the world. The fights are numerous, but at least we can be called lucky that no single faction has power as great as during the Second Age - for another Great War would probably destroy the world itself. In the First Age only the spirit being existed, in the Second Age we mortals served the forces of Life to survive, in the Third Age we left them and began to worship other Gods. This then is the Fourth Age, in which we hope the ceaseless fighting and wars will finally end, and we will be allowed to live in peace. But whose peace will it be, which gods, which peples will lead and which will follow? Khalis, Grand Hierophant, Servant of Gaea =head1 History for the Impatient Written by Maris the Scholar, a student of Khalis whom he opposed much later in his life. Gaea created the world. However, for things to thrive, rain is needed so Sorig came along, and provided the rain and lightning. The lightning created fire, and so Ruggili was born. Gaea is the source of all nature and life, without any great need for followers, as the natural world itself gives her power. She gave life to a number of sons, all gods of their own. Her son Mostrai saw a flat and uninteresting world and created massive mountains and deep dungeons. Her other son Lythander was bored and created some animals. Gnarg saw that and created the goblins on the world for some reason we no longer know. Lythander, disgusted what the goblins where doing to the beautiful forests, created the elves and halflings to help protect the forests from uncontrolled goblin destruction. Mostrai, seeing what was happening to the forests, decided to take pre-emptive measures and created the dwarves to live deep within the mountains he created. Then Gaea created the humans, to protect and provide balance in the plains and along the coasts. With the constant battles for balance, many of these new life forms died. The gods that created them did originally see the souls that these new life forms had, but the gods Gorokh and Valriel did. They took the worst (and best) of these departing souls in order to create creatures for their own desires. The souls that neither claimed became the domain of the devourers. What the god of devourers lacked in the strength of individual souls, he gained in the sheer number of souls he controlled, and with these he created wights and vampires to give him even more souls. Some of the powerful humanoids worshipped him in hopes of eternal life. For some of these, they gained this eternal life in the form and lichs and demilichs. The Red Dragons were created by Rugilli because he wanted some worshippers of his own. It is believed that the other dragons eventually resulted from those by the constant in-breeding experiments Ruggili made. Nobody knows where the nearly god-like titans came from. Some scholars claim they could be descendants of some of the forgotten gods so little i known about nowadays.