The Rebirth of the Surface World
At the beginning of this age, trouble brewed on the surface, but a mighty dragon named Zenabr?n rose to power. He flew through the Dragon Peaks, uniting all the good dragons into the first En?r?z, a conclave of benevolent dragonkind. This was no mean feat. Even with the tyranny of Belkunib?r, the good dragons resisted the rule of a second dragon.
It took years of work, cajoling, bullying, bribing, wheedling, bellowing and begging. Finally, they declared war on Belkunib?r and his brood.
As the war raged in the Dragon Peaks and the Fell Hammer carried the honor of the Dwarven kings, God awoke a new race. The Elves.
The Elves were a nature-loving people, a magical race that delved into strange and mystical forces. Druids led the race, and their mages brought true magic to the world for the first time. Since no books came to the world, just as no tools did, the Elven minds held the only answers to some of the great questions of creation.
The future saint Zenabr?n was oblivious to the battles going on in the world?s great forests between Elves and nephilim. He was too busy launching attack after attack against evil dragons. He had the advantage. Although the good dragons had been slow to organize, they worked well together. The good dragons had carved themselves a large piece of the mountains before their enemies fully rallied.
Meanwhile, Bamon still plotted. The Elves were too effective in the woods, their hit and run tactics devastating against the overlarge nephilim. He placed some of his nephilim and placed them in the Ulcer, corrupting them the even more brutish ogres. Bamon thought that these smaller ogres would fight more effectively.
But he had other concerns. The Elves had brought incantation and enscorcellment back into the hands of mortals, while the only of Bamon?s minions capable of powerful magic were the dragons.
He sent out Shugharz, the most brilliant of all ogres. She climbed high into the Dragon Peaks, looking for a specific forest glade. When she found it, she saw a painfully handsome ogre--a dragon in disguise. They lay together and she left pregnant with the first half-dragon, Nagrakh, the origin of all ogre mages.
God was right to fear awakening all the races in the world at once, because about this time, the first Elves had stumbled upon the kingdom of Durand?l. King Bal?n of the Dwarves ordered them captured and tortured.
What he discovered horrified him. The surface was veritably crawling with intelligent creatures, and he was certain that anything on the surface was evil, because anything up there was willing to live under a nighttime sky, like the Fallen in Heaven.
So the Dwarves flooded out of their tunnels, slaughtering every Elf within one-hundred-miles of Durand?l. After they cleared this buffer zone, they pulled back.
The Elves retaliated in bands but were unable to pull together in enough numbers to affect the mighty Dwarven war machine. Nonetheless, they continued attacking, sure that these Dwarves were minions of the Fallen.
Thus the war went on for years. Mostly one-sided, after a time the Dwarves took little note of it.
Meanwhile, an Elven warrior named Perion, who?d been born in Heaven, began uniting the Elves. The task seemed impossible; the Elves were too individual to unite easily. Only a great feat would win the respect of his people, so he set about making peace with the Dwarves.
He entered the Dwarven kingdom proclaiming his desire for peace. The Dwarves took him prisoner immediately.
While in prison, he was visited by Kagur, the Dwarven high priest. Over the next years, they exchange theoretical volleys. Kagur worshiped God through the Dwarven Savior Ziruk-Nurak while Perion followed the Atavistic religion the Elves had practiced in Heaven. After one of these sessions, Perion experienced a tremendously strong vision where he saw the Elven Prophet Eldinar and his hand in the Sundering. Perion realized that the Dwarves almost had it right, but that Eldinar was the Savior, not Ziruk-Nurak. Perion converted to the worship of God through Eldinar, and he and Kagur came to an accord.
After a time, Perion became a full priest of God. Kagur secured the elf?s release from prison and Perion traveled freely through the Dwarven halls, though he wasn?t permitted to leave.
At this time, the Dwarven cleric Gharak rose to power. While Perion could remember life in Heaven, there was no longer a Dwarf alive who could, and Gharak despised the surface dwellers. It sickened him to see an Elf wandering around, freely accepted by the Dwarven people. He appealed to Irbind?m, the Dwarven king. His pleas for intolerance fell on deaf ears.
In a fury, Gharak raised followers among his people. He led a secret assault on the royal chambers. His goal: to seize the Fell Hammer and declare himself king.
As his followers handled the royal guard, he struck Irbind?m down. When he reached for the Hammer, Perion tackled him, and knocked him to one side.
They fought for almost an hour, their duel echoing through the royal chambers. The royal guard, meanwhile, seized the stricken king and dragged him to safety.
Finally Gharak struck Perion down, but the Hammer was gone, the king saved, and the duel over. When Gharak heard the guards approaching, he almost hated the Elf enough to sacrifice his life to kill him, but instead he stabbed and slashed at him three times, then fled.
Gharak disappeared into the depths of the deepest, unexplored caves with his followers. Perion?s wounds were so grievous that Kagur himself came to heal him.
Irbind?m awarded Perion with the highest Dwarven honor. He had his greatest smiths forge the sword Kibad-Durag (The Bond of Brothers). They gifted Perion with this blade, one second only to the Fell Hammer.
Thus did the Dwarven king and an Elf become the closest friends.
During the intervening years, the dragon war ended. The good dragons utterly defeated the evil, sending them fleeing from the Dragon Peaks. The cost, however, was great. Zenabr?n lay slain on the rocks of the greatest peak. This peak, its location a secret known only to the dragons, became their holiest of shrines.
For the rest of the age, Perion acted as a diplomat between the Elves and the Dwarves. Finally, he brought the Elf-Dwarf wars to an end.
This gave him great weight among his people. He united them and they crowned him the first Elven king. Under his leadership, he opened trade with the Dwarves and taught the Elves to work the non-magical metals of The Mortal Realm.
Later, Irbind?m died. Perion attended the funeral, and out of respect for his father, Prince Ural?d had the Elf king, not the high-priest, bestow the Fell Hammer upon him. This moment became the defining image of Dwarven-Elven friendship.
The Gnomes Reawaken
God looked down upon the world and decided that it was time to awaken a new race, that peace between the Elves and the Dwarves was a symbol of things to come. He awoke Orva, whom he blessed with the ability to awaken all other Gnomes with a kiss and a song. Thus, Orva took the role of mother of all Gnomes in the new world.
Meanwhile, Perion died. Deneth, Perion?s right-hand-man, wove a crown of laurels and placed it on the young prince?s head. The boy then declared him regent. Years later, the prince took over the Kingdom of the Elves.
Meanwhile in the Dwarven kingdom, raiders appeared from the deepest caverns. Further investigation revealed the culprits to be Fallen Dwarves, the followers of Gharak who had lost their Divine Spark. Thus began a war between the Mountain Dwarves and the Fallen Dwarves that continues to this day.
The Gnomes spread. One, named Gobach, went off to find his fortune. What he found were the Elves.
The Elves sheltered Gobach. There, they formed a friendship between the two people that has lasted to this day. In addition, he learned the power of Elven illusion magic, which the Gnomes had not successfully brought from Heaven. He took this information back to the Gnomes, along with knowledge of the new, Savior-based religion. It wasn?t long before the Gnomish priests had realized that both other races had it wrong, that the Prophet Gyllmoulin had been the actual Savior.
In the Dwarven kingdom, the Dwarves began discussing the future of the Dwarven people. With so many surface dwellers roaming around, they decided the time had come to consider preserving the Dwarven way of life.
K?m, the brother of King Sirun, offered to form an expedition to the west, where there was no one but the dragons. After much debate, everyone agreed that this was the best course of action.
So K?m gathered some of the best and the brightest Dwarves and set off. They traveled through the endless tracks of wilderness. Finally, three years later, the Dwarves settled in the west, just east of Belkan?th and delved the kingdom of Gabad-Dag?l.
There K?m built the diamond throne and constructed a place of greatness. In the west, there was no one to challenge them but the evil dragons, and the Dwarves lived underground, beyond the reach of the wyrms.
By the end of this age, the Gnomes had spread into a niche of their own. They?d restored their knowledge of magic and made it a part of their lives. They prospered and slowly spread across the world.
