Arkadia's landscape before the ice age was diverse. Running along the equator was the great Jerulan Desert, ruled over by the Kurgan Dominion. The Kurgans were a mostly nomadic people, with only a few major permanent cities dotting the landscape of the Jerulan Desert. Kurgans made their fortune by trading, with whole communities living in massive trade caravans that moved along the border of the Dominion. Kurgans were also great craftsmen, as they did not rely upon magic to build your structures or tools. Everything in Kurgan society felt precious since it was hand made. This, in turn, made Kurgan goods highly sought out by other empires. Nowhere else in the world could one find weapons or tools as high quality the ones from the Dominion.

But before all that, there was a time when the Kurgans used magic as much as the rest of the world. It all ended when a group of Kurgan miners, digging for precious stones and mana crystals, stumbled upon the ruins of an even more ancient civilization. No names were ever recorded, and this civilization barely exists in any of Waldenkore's records beyond brief mentions. The miners quickly set out to explore the strange catacombs, and came across a tome. The language was oddly familiar to the Kurgan people, and over the course of a few months, the tome was translated. It was discovered that the writer of the tome was a magi, the first magi in fact. It was he who had created mana, and ethereal energy source, that held Arkadia in a stable orbit around the sun. The tome also shed light on the mystery of mana itself, and revealed that it was a finite resource. It explained that while mana could be used and wielded, it should only be a privilege of the few, and never anything more. Mana could replenish itself, but it was a long, slow process. The book also detailed how the effects of mana could be negated. The Dominion secretly applied this knowledge to outfit an elite fighting force with anti-magic weapons and armor.

The High Sultan of the Kurgan Dominion recognized the widespread use of magic, and foresaw its depletion in the coming decades. It was by his royal edict, that magic be outlawed in the dominion. The Sultan then sent out emissaries to the other nations of Arkadia, in an attempt to warn them of their impending apocalypse. The emissaries were either sent back to the dominion with lackluster results, or executed for their perceived words of heresy. When the Sultan heard of the deaths of his most trusted envoys, he sent a warning out to the world. "Any magi to step foot on the sands of the Kurgan Dominion, shall be executed. Any and all magical artifacts will be destroyed, and their owners arrested."

The Sultan even formed an inquisitorial branch in the Kurgan military, consisting of mage hunters equipped with mana defusing weapons and armor. These inquisitors carried out the High Sultan's edict, with lethal efficiency. It wasn't long before the common Kurgan people both respected and feared the inquisitors. And the borders became closed to the rest of the world. The High Sultan knew that, while magic no longer existed in his lands, the rest of the world was rife with it. And so he he began to march his armies across his borders, and started the Kurgan Crusades.

North of the Kurgan Dominion, the Triarchan Republic ruled. The Republic was easily the most powerful nation on Arkadia. They farmed on fertile lands, graced with warm weather throughout the year. The Republic began on both ends of a land bridge that connected two continents together. This natural bridge meant that any trade to be done with nations on the other continent, must first pass through the Triarchan Republic. Because of the volume of trade that went through their land, the Triarchans prospered and grew to immense power. They wielded their magic to focus it inward on themselves; thus, allowing for each individual to surpass their human limitations. Triarchan soldiers were stronger and faster than most men. A single Triarchan Hoplite could match five Kurgan footmen. Being that the Triarchan Republic's heart lies between two continents, the people became fine ship masons. It wasn't long before ships of Triarchan make did away with manpower for propulsion, and used magic to control the winds and drive the ships onward. With the best ships and soldiers at the Triarchan Republic's disposal, none could stand up to their might.

When the senate was called to an audience with a Kurgan emissary, they were none too happy to hear that magic must be abolished. Doing so would cripple the Triarchan armies and fleets. Some senators simply dismissed the emissary's claims of apocalypse, while others claimed that the abolishing of magic was a ploy, so that the Kurgan troops could move in against a weakened empire. The emissary was sent back to the Dominion with instruction to tell the Sultan, "We will not succumb to your attempts of subversion."

Despite the tensions that arose between the two nations, trade continued. As per usual, merchants and traders from the Republic were escorted by a cohort of Triarchan hoplites to fend off bandits and aggressive wildlife. Dozen of these cohorts were within Dominion territory with the High Sultan formed the Inquisition, and outlawed magic. Since each hoplite was a mage, they became the first targets of the Sultan's inquisitors. Thanks to the mage hunters' anti-magic equipment, the hoplites' weren't able to enhance themselves with the magic they so heavily relied upon. It was shown to the Kurgan people that the Triarchs weren't unbeatable, as inquisitors cut through them with ease. This act of aggression spurred the Republic into action, and it began to mobilize its armies to the Kurgan border. Trade ended, and aggressions flared.

At this point, the Republic was unaware of the details on how their hoplites were killed in the Dominion. They figured perhaps an ambush, or maybe they were overwhelmed. So when the first wave of Kurgan troops charged over the border, the Triarchs were woefully unprepared. Kurgan citizens who had witnessed the deaths of the hoplites had been inspired to join the ranks of the inquisition. These inquisitors served as the Kurgan cavalry vanguard. With magic negating horse armor and spears, the Kurgan onslaught broke through the Triarchan lines. Without magic, the hoplites equaled the Kurgans, but they were outnumbered ten to one. Before the Triarchan senate would here of the news from the front line, three whole armies of Triarchan soldiers had nearly been completely wiped out. The Supreme Chancellor of the senate, angered by this crushing defeat, irrationally deployed the rest of the Republic's armies to meet the Kurgan forces on the battlefield, while the fleets would simultaneously assault the Kurgan coast.

The fleets were more successful than the armies. Their mana driven ships swiftly pushed into Kurgan waters, and had won a number of naval battles along the way. Kurgan port cities were the targets for the fleets. They moved to engage the defensive ships in the ports. It was then that the Triarch admirals met the first inquisitorial ships. Much like their soldier counterparts, ships of the Kurgan Inquisition were able to negate the mana which propelled the Triarchan ships. Before the captains and admirals knew it, their fleets had ground to a halt, and were sitting ducks when the Kurgan ships fired volleys of arrows, and rained flaming brimstone from above with catapults and trebuchets.

With the grand majority of the Triarchan military crushed, the Kurgans faced little resistance as they campaigned across the Republic's lands. Any and all magical artifacts were taken and destroyed by the inquisition. Magi of all ages were either imprisoned or executed. To the rest of the world, the Kurgans were aggressors who were moving to aggressively expand and wipe out cultures along the way. Though the Kurgans, rightly so, knew they were marching to save Arkadia from certain doom. Despite the noble intentions that the Kurgans had, the nations of Arkadia only saw them with the Triarchan Republic in flames behind them.

Before the mana sustaining Arkadia's orbit and rotation dissipated, the far north one of the coldest regions on Arkadia. Summers were short and cool, with seasons like Autumn and Spring lasting only a few weeks before the long winter would set in again. The people of the South, known as the Shotum, had adapted to survive in the frigid cold. The Shotum were less of an actual empire, as they were a union of multiple clans. Before the calamity, the Shotum were a proud, if not barbaric people. Despite their label as being barbaric, most Shotum of the time were quite welcoming to foreigners. Their barbarism comes from their traditions and religion, as well as their nation's level of development. The Shotum were just beginning to develop new farming techniques and methods of construction, that the rest of the world had learned long ago. The Shotum were highly ritualistic and stubborn in their ways. Many clans were too busy skirmishing with their neighbors to focus on advancing as a country. Their knowledge of magic was more unrefined than other places in the world, but also more powerful. Shotum shamans couldn't contain their power as well as magi from other lands. This led to Shotum magic being very devastating in its delivery.

The Altioc Empire to the South viewed the Shotum as uncivilized, and would often raid into Shotum lands to acquire 'stupid brutes' for manual labor. Despite what the Altioc believed, the Shotum were more than simple brutes from the north. One Shotum in particular rose to notoriety, Khalash. The young clan chieftain was a visionary, and a very capable warrior. Khalash had grown up in a village near Altioc's border, and had witnessed an Altian raid that resulted in the taking of his entire family. Khalash was orphaned, and in Shotum society, he was doomed to scrutiny and persecution so long as he had no family to support him, thus branding him the title of 'Rokh': a shameful prefix to his name that meant alone. Rokh-Khalash resisted the persecution throughout his young years, all while overcoming the elements over the years. Despite the Rokh stigma always being present, the people of his clan respected his resilience. Rokh-Khalash grew stronger and stronger, and eventually became an honored clan warrior.

When Altioc came again to gather a fresh batch of Shotum slaves, Khalash and his axe-brothers met them in bloody battle. Despite being outnumber three to one, the Shotum warband was victorious, and the North's snow was stained red with Altian blood. Khalash had attained the honor of beheading the Altian lord responsible for the raids, thus removing the stigmatic title of Rokh. In the very same battle, the clan chieftain had fallen in battle, and Khalash was unanimously chosen by the clan to take the mantle. With Altioc staved off for the year, Khalash turned his gaze further North. He would unite the Shotum clans, and march south on Altioc.

Within a single year, the North was united under Khalash's rule. Word had spread into Altioc that the Shotum were preparing for war. With the Kurgans beginning to encroach on Altioc from the west, the Altian King was forced to make a decision. He attempted to bargain with the Shotum in order to avoid war. But secretly, the ambassador would poison Khalash, and shatter the united clans so they would squabble among themselves once again. The plan had succeeded as far as Altioc was concerned. Khalash was on his death bed, quickly succumbing to the poison. His axe-brothers scoured the north in an attempt to find a healer versed in Altian poisons. One of them brought back a Shotum shaman, but he too was a Rokh. Unlike Khalash, this shaman was far more weak willed, and had lived as a hermit in the mountains where he would hone his magical talents. The persecution of being a rokh had stirred the hatred inside of the shaman, and that in turn translated into his magic.

The shaman began to cast a spell, but as with all Shotum, his magic was volatile and difficult to control. He healed Khalash of his poison, but stripped him of his soul as well. But the shaman couldn't contain his magic, and it continued to pour out. Most magi would die from the torrent of mana coursing through them. But, as the shaman was attempting to cast healing magic at the time of the outburst, it was healing him as fast as the mana was pouring him. The magic spread through the great halls and did to other Shotum what it did to Khalash, stripping them of their souls and turning them into animalistic husks. The shaman was no exception, and he became nothing more but a wellspring of rampant mana, perpetually drawing the energy sustaining Arkadia.

Before long, the entirety of the Shotum people had become mindless and enthralled. They reverted to a pack animal form of intelligence. They were little more than undead hordes at this point. The mana coursing through the Shotum began to mutate their bodies over time, and even past death, they remained functional. The souls that were stripped from their bodies, became akin to a hive mind, and Khalash was at the head of it. The north had gone silent, the King of Altioc had reasoned that his assassin's report was accurate, and the Shotum had gone back to warring with themselves. He turned his focus on the Kurgans and waged war.



To both the Kurgans' and the Altians' surprise, winter had come early, extraordinarily early. It was hardly a week into autumn when the sky darkened early and the snow fell to the ground. The Kurgans had their guesses, and they were right. The shamanic wellspring deep in the heart of the north was bleeding off Arkadia's mana, and fast. The Kurgans and Altians continued to fight in the odd winter, but on the third week of straight snowfall, the Shotum arrived.

The initial battle was a three-way bloodbath. The Kurgans fared better than the Altians, their anti-magic equipment serving well to quickly dispose of the new Shotum threat. Nevertheless, the Shotum were strong, and they had been physically altered by the mana to be taller and faster than a normal human. Some had turned into horrors that didn't even resemble a human at all. It wasn't long that the Kurgans and Altians set aside their differences to unite against the Shotum threat. Even with the new alliance, the Sultan of the Dominion still demanded the Altians abolished their battle mages, and forfeited all arcane artifacts to be destroyed. The king refused, and continued to employ spellswords and wizards on the battlefield against the Shotum. This refusal continued to work against the alliance, as the Kurgans couldn't reliably fight alongside the Altians without negating their ally's magic. As the Winter War carried on, the Altians continued to lose ground without the anti-magic capability of the Kurgans. And the Kurgans were quickly becoming overwhelmed without support from the Altian battle mages.

It took the courage of an Altian general to defy his king, and forego the use of magic. The general would instead purchase advanced weapons of war from the Mythshan Empire to replace the battlemages. The general would then use the agreement to forfeit magic as a bargaining chip to obtain Kurgan anti-magic weapons and armor. The general's name was Lupus Walden, the man whom the city of Waldenkore is named after. Thanks to Walden's cooperation with the Kurgans, the two empires managed to push the Shotum back into the deep north. Unfortunately, any attempt to go further and destroy the wellspring was viciously repelled. Unless a solution could be thought of quickly, all humanity would be able to do is watch the world end in ice. The remainder of the Kurgan army and Walden’s forces were merged under Walden’s leadership. This army consisting of two nations did well to mend the wounds dealt between the Dominion and Altioc. When more Kurgans arrived in Altioc, they weren’t there as enemies; rather, they were there as allies to find back the Shotum hordes.

General Walden was not a stagnant man, however, and he couldn’t bear to watch humanity sit and wait for their cold demise. Walden proposed a plan: Humanity would band together, and apply their combined knowledge to survive the ice age until a time would come when the Wellspring could be closed, and the world would be given a chance to recuperate its lost mana. Walden spoke of a vast cavern, joined by dozens of tunnels below Altioc. It would be possible to build a city underground, using the heat from underground lakes of lava, and geothermal vents, to outlast the cold. The Kurgans didn’t initially agree to the plan. Rather, they continued to send soldiers into Shotum territory to try and close the Wellspring before the planet got colder. The Kurgans sallied forth into Shotum territory for over a year, but as the ice age settled in, the expeditions ended up getting shorter and shorter. Reluctantly, the Kurgans abandoned the effort, and joined the Altians in their attempt to create the underground city. Despite the combined effort, development of the city was slow. The Kurgans refused to use magic to help build, which resulted in lost time with physical labor. The Altians, while adept with magic, had to focus their mages on the war against the growing Shotum menace. General Walden’s army was repurposed to solely guard the underground city during its construction in case the Shotum broke through. The best men both the Kurgans and the Altians could muster, would keep the city safe at all costs. Walden knew that by the time the city was complete, the Shotum would have overrun them long before. Walden dispatched his fastest messengers, and sought out the help of the Mythshan Empire.

The Mythshan Empire was south of Altioc, beyond the Jin Quoh Desert. The land was mostly mountainous, with a handful of valleys which acted as borders between the Mythshan provinces. As Arkadia destabilized and descended into the ice age, the Mythshan empire saw the effects first. Before long, the Mythshan empire descended into a never-ending night, and temperatures were colder than anywhere in the civilized world. Prophets of the Mythshan faith believed it to be the wrath of their divine emperor as punishment for years of internal strife and civil war. The Emperor knew otherwise, he had attended the hearing with the Kurgan emissary all those years ago, and decided to keep the truth hidden from his people. To the Mythshan, the Emperor was divine, and drunk with that superstition. He preferred the nation believing that he was demonstrating his power, rather than be seen helpless in the face of the apocalypse. The provinces had risen in revolt long before the ice age began to set in. The people were unhappy of the emperor’s rule, and dared to challenge his divine might.

Walden sought out the Mythshan Empire because of their reputation for stone masonry. With the majority of the Mythshan Empire being in and on mountains, the people had come to use their magic to mold, shape, and animate stone. The Mythshan built some of the strongest fortresses and buildings in the world, just what Walden’s city would need to outlast the ice age and the Shotum onslaught. As the Mythshan Empire warred with itself, they also developed weapons to be able to destroy such fortifications. There were one of the most advanced nations on Arkadia, and their help would be crucial if Walden’s city was to be built on time. The emperor agreed, but only under the condition that him and his loyal subjects were secured a place in the city when the gates closed. With little time to spare, the messenger spoke on behalf of Walden, and allowed the emperor entry. In turn, the emperor addressed his nation, telling the people that the world was freezing over, by his divine command of course, and that it was too late to stop it. He offered an ultimatum to the rebelling provinces, pledge loyalty and survive, or freeze in cold darkness. People desperate to survive followed their emperor north to Altioc, while the rebels who didn’t pledge loyalty remained to die.

The emperor brought his armies, and better yet, had called upon his magi to animate the legions of Terracotta Soldiers to fend off the Shotum while the Mythshan architects worked. The citizens of the Mythshan Empire were happy enough to travel further from the south. Some had almost forgotten what light from the sun looked like, no matter how dim it had gotten. The abandonment of the empire was known as the Mythshan Exodus, and it added over twenty million souls to the city’s population; far more than what was anticipated by Walden and his messenger. Walden became concerned about food stores, and space. They would need a plan. Unbeknownst to Walden, and the Mythshan people, the Divine Emperor already had one. When the architects finished molding the cavern into a working city of stone, the project was considered complete, and humanity began to pour through its great gates. The Kurgans were uncomfortable at first, that the city was crafted out of magic, but understood the necessity. Just mere weeks before the city’s completion, the Altian King had succumbed to the cold, and appointed Walden as his successor. Altioc followed Walden without complaint into the city. The remnants of the Triarchan Republic had arrived, and their bad blood with the Kurgans created tension in the stone streets. The Mythshan Terracotta formed defensive lines outside the four great gates of the city, and remained vigilant. The Emperor had his architects for a great palace deep in the city for him, and proclaimed himself the ruler of this new city. This self-proclamation was met with great disdain, and once again, the emperor faced a rebellion. This time, in the streets of humanity’s last bastion.

Arkadia's landscape before the ice age was diverse. Running along the equator was the great Jerulan Desert, ruled over by the Kurgan Dominion. The Kurgans were a mostly nomadic people, with only a few major permanent cities dotting the landscape of the Jerulan Desert. Kurgans made their fortune by trading, with whole communities living in massive trade caravans that moved along the border of the Dominion. Kurgans were also great craftsmen, as they did not rely upon magic to build your structures or tools. Everything in Kurgan society felt precious since it was hand made. This, in turn, made Kurgan goods highly sought out by other empires. Nowhere else in the world could one find weapons or tools as high quality the ones from the Dominion.

But before all that, there was a time when the Kurgans used magic as much as the rest of the world. It all ended when a group of Kurgan miners, digging for precious stones and mana crystals, stumbled upon the ruins of an even more ancient civilization. No names were ever recorded, and this civilization barely exists in any of Waldenkore's records beyond brief mentions. The miners quickly set out to explore the strange catacombs, and came across a tome. The language was oddly familiar to the Kurgan people, and over the course of a few months, the tome was translated. It was discovered that the writer of the tome was a magi, the first magi in fact. It was he who had created mana, and ethereal energy source, that held Arkadia in a stable orbit around the sun. The tome also shed light on the mystery of mana itself, and revealed that it was a finite resource. It explained that while mana could be used and wielded, it should only be a privilege of the few, and never anything more. Mana could replenish itself, but it was a long, slow process.

The High Sultan of the Kurgan Dominion recognized the widespread use of magic, and foresaw its depletion in the coming decades. It was by his royal edict, that magic be outlawed in the dominion. The Sultan then sent out emissaries to the other nations of Arkadia, in an attempt to warn them of their impending apocalypse. The emissaries were either sent back to the dominion with lackluster results, or executed for their perceived words of heresy. When the Sultan heard of the deaths of his most trusted envoys, he sent a warning out to the world. "Any magi to step foot on the sands of the Kurgan Dominion, shall be executed. Any and all magical artifacts will be destroyed, and their owners arrested."

The Sultan even formed an inquisitorial branch in the Kurgan military, consisting of mage hunters equipped with mana defusing weapons and armor. These inquisitors carried out the High Sultan's edict, with lethal efficiency. It wasn't long before the common Kurgan people both respected and feared the inquisitors. And the borders became closed to the rest of the world. The High Sultan knew that, while magic no longer existed in his lands, the rest of the world was rife with it. And so he he began to march his armies across his borders, and started the Kurgan Crusades.