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intro

 

 

 

This is the world of Cralavaine, the world that you now live in. Sit down, take a mug of ale and I shall weave you a tale of myths, magic, dreams and death and the fate of a plucky young lady.

In the beginning there was light and darkness...or so they say. In reality there were only shades of grey that the foolish saw as black or white. Unlike most worlds, in this one magic was permeating the very air as if screaming “I am the purpose of life itself, come use me ... YEARN for Me.", and so it was. However, the magic would develop differently and its potency from one person to another was different, some could simply think a spell and the magic would answer but it would only affect select things; others needed great preparation and forethought, yet could affect anything they might imagine. As use of magic grew so too did the existence of magical constructs from harmless objects to great beasts of burden, however they were all imperfectly made and lacked the complexity that naturally developed creatures had, magic being innately in their make-up would allow sudden leaps from mindless things to forms of new intelligence, some even rivaling humans or in a few cases surpassing them and yet they could not reproduce naturally and more of their kind could only be created by the mages.

As time passed some of the humans grew to unforeseen heights of mysticism than others and believed themselves superior, and humans beings began to feel the sting of envy, sects and cults formed to study in ever growing detail more advanced spells, some to increase their power began to hunt for the creatures of power that had been created over time such as Phoenixes for their ability to reincarnate, dragons for their ability to tap directly into the source of magic and Pixies for their stealth. Wars began between the humans and the Constructs with the forethought too preserve themselves hid in the forsaken places of the lands to avoid the bloodshed and loss of life. Battles were fought, lost and won all in the name of power. After many years of strife a group of good-hearted high mages banded together to rid their world of the ones who had abused the people and desecrated the land. This group named themselves the Council of Vorad, and worked to create or find a spell to defeat the other sects and bring about peace. After many years of study and many attempts that where revealed to be only stop gap measures, a solution seemed to be found.

This was a spell that once cast would pull humans from other dimensions and dragging them trough the very essence of magic to reach Cralavaine would result in almost god-like powers. These humans had more power than any of the mages on the Council combined could muster, while this seemed the answer to their needs the mages paused in fear of bringing forth a greater evil. So to prevent an abuse of power, a new element to the spell was added; for the brief time the humans were drained of all magic and rendered physically and mentally weak after being summoned so that the mages could cast a binding spell on them to prevent an even more destructive force from being born, this spell commanded them to harm no other humans. Positive of success the Council cast the Summoning. However, the first human summoned did not understand any language spoken by the mages, consumed by fear of this world he took his own life by plunging to his death in an attempted escape.

Distressed over their first failure, the Council worked tirelessly to somehow perfect the Summoning spell. After six years of study and research, a newly devised element of the spell was finished to work in conjunction with the incantation. Three symbols of power, carefully crafted and enclosed in the summoning circle would aid in restraining the power of those summoned and help with their transition into Cralavaine.

The first would be a symbol of tongues so that until their time of death all languages both written and spoken would be known to them, the second a symbol would form an image to show where and how great their strength in magic would develop, the third a symbol of submission so that they could be controlled by the Council of Vorad who had summoned them, so that they could not harm the few people left or give information to the sects. When the second summoning was successful, the woman who came forth held sway over the growing plants, commanding seeds to take root in even the most desolate of areas, curing crop blights and providing food in plenty for the starving people. The Summoning spell seemingly perfected the mages used it in earnest.

The summoned humans, later called Avatars, grew in number until their numbers had swelled to four score, each commanding a different aspect of magic. Many screamed and railed at the mages viewing them as abductors, the mages after some discussion assembled the rebellious Avatars before them and beginning with the most violent seeming among them commanded the Avatar to forget the life that he had lived before coming to Cralavaine. Seeing the result the rest of the Avatars bowed down sullenly to the mages.

The dark sects that had grown and spread across the land where eradicated one by one. Once peace returned the nonhumans sent ambassadors from their hiding places. After a brief time they left again saying that while Avatars where still summoned and used by the mages of the world they would hide themselves from the humans for only grief would result unless the Avatars where returned to whence they had come and the spell to summon them was eradicated from all memory.

Now that the war was over and the land recovering, the mages attempted to return the Avatars but met with little success, the first sent back; a mother longing to return to her children reformed as a warped and twisted facsimile of a female gasping for life only to die minutes after returning home. The second; a man whose strong character and will had made him the Avatar of Metals, arrived whole of body but bereft of sanity a jabbering animal. None of the few sent back where able to return to their lives and of the Avatars left most lost hope. The mages offered to cast a spell of Timeless Sleep that would hold them in a dreamless slumber until a safe way to send them home was found, most took this option using their powers to craft a deep underground complex to safe guard their bodies from the events of the world. A few of the Avatars elected to remain in the world to act as it’s protectors even should their lives become forfeit due to time or strife, these where the Avatars of the Green, Sea, Mind and Fire.

The mages though they struggled could not gather enough power of their own to find and cross the world barriers without harm coming to the creature sent; they began to experiment by gathering magic from the slumbering Avatars. With this new source of untapped power in grasp they set only a pitying few of their number to search for a way to send the Avatars back, instead concentrating on improvement of the land and people. Years past and still there was no progress to return the Avatars home, the great mages who had summoned the Avatars and the Avatars themselves begun to grow old and die. The Avatars became lost to the peoples of Cralavaine and faded in to myth for hundreds of years, until an ambitious but lacking in power apprentice mage found a well preserved journal in his family’s library.

And here younglings now that you know a bit of the back-story does our true story begin.