Preface

In the pursuit to dominate the other, the civilizations of the world stumbled upon secrets of advanced craft.  This enlightenment invoked hostility and suspicion between peoples.  With each additional truth, more blood was shed.

Men sought innovation, expansion, and hierarchy.  Orc-kind demanded submission by all others.  Even the higher races, eladrin, dragonborn, deva, could not resist their lust for the newfound sciences; in the name of “progression”, they led their own campaigns of conquest.  At the pinnacle of hostility, the death toll became so daunting that the leaders of the world would eventually become forced to some kind of resolution.

The Last War, the events that plunged the world of Rasa into cataclysmic war more than one hundred years ago, ended with the signing of the Treaty of Thronehold and the establishment of six recognized nations.  Each of them was granted respective power—Vector, Morgwold, Scorlanthe, Grothkor, Primidia, and Elenion—as it was decreed that bloodshed should stop lest all of Rasa perish.  This created a conditional peace in the land that was held together by delicate threads pulled tight from struggle for power.  There was one nation, however, that sought nothing but to rupture the fragile balance. 

 

Olucra, the dark syndicate, stewed in violent bitterness, for they would have been a seventh nation had they been welcomed to take part in the treaty.  Confining them to the murky and hidden cracks of the land, the Six Nations marked them as a common enemy, refusing them audience out of fear that they would only offer further perversion to an already scarred existence.  It would have appeared that the Olucra dwindled into extinction if it weren’t for the corruption that began to infiltrate every corner of the land. Abominable secrets were whispered into eager ears. Technology became twisted with alien and incompatible influences; the nations cultivated paranoia that the other would gain the upper hand.  Some now ravage the planet for every last resource to fortify their armies.  Others have drawn the line and now seek to defend the world.  The strings of tension are pulled their tightest.