The Sword of Zithulian
Prologue
It began with the Great Wars of Magic. All of Shintaegwyn was entrenched in conflict. The human country of Nichweld and the Ligwarean woodlands of the elves were fighting viciously with the orcs, gnomes and trolls of the northern lands. The war was a stalemate for years. The humans and elves, collectively known as the free races, would trade small patches of lands for hundreds of casualties. However, such positions were not held for long. The northland alliance, as they called themselves, would take back said lands quickly.
Each side had its fair share of spell casters. Beings of intense power, they could command the winds with the wave of a hand, shake the earth with a mere shake of the fist, and even alter reality for a short while. However, there were limits to their power. Their bodies could only take such prolonged punishment for so long. With each spell cast, the spell casters would lose precious amounts of their bodily energy. If too much was released, they would die. Thus, each spell casters greatest desire was to increase the stores of their bodily energy so that they could keep using their abilities many times per day.
Of the five races, the elves and the orcs had the most bodily energy by natural birth. The elves were first created out of trees by pure luck. The Shitenhouji stream, the magical stream which governs all life, touched a small cluster of trees in a strange way. Thus, the elves were born in the protected realms of their forests, which blessed them with increased natural energy. They had an affinity for nature and earth based spells, most centering around the planet herself, and to some extent, the trees and other plant life.
The orcs on the other hand were quite the opposite. They were first created through an unnatural spell of an old and confused human warlock. Wounded by the pain of loss, he had been researching a way to bring the dead back to life. After three years of research and experiments, he concluded that it could be done. So, he prepared his ritual circle and began to cast his spell. However, he had not realized the time that it had taken him for his preparations to be complete. For, as he aged, his bodily energy had decreased and had fallen below the required amount to complete the spell successfully. He did not realize his mistake until the very last moment when the spell consumed the last of his energy and sucked him into the black abyss of death.
The result of his incomplete spell was the orc, a large hulking mass of conscious thought but not of entirely living tissue. The orc had gray skin and elongated features. She was slightly taller than an average human and a bit stronger. Her eyes were dull and vacant, and her teeth and snout had been enlarged much like an ape's mouth. Her incisors were greatly enlarged and protruded from her lips as if she were an animal.
Unfortunately for the rest of the human race, she was not the only orc created that night. The old warlock had made more than one mistake in his experiments and had inadvertently created another. In contrast, this one was larger, a bit taller than a human male. He was thicker in the chest and shoulders, and his teeth were much longer. Both had an insatiable hunger for meat, and a vicious hatred for humans. They were discovered by a band of hunters and soon fled to the north where they were accepted by the gnomes and the trolls.
The unnatural birth of the orcs imparted their race with a strange power based off of their bloodlust. This power grows with their bloodlust and empowers them to strange voodoo magic which requires totems, dolls, and reliefs to perform.
So, suffice to say, each side was well equipped with their fair share of magical energies to throw at the other. This, in turn, led to the massive stalemate. While both sides had those who wished for peace, there were more who wanted to completely and utterly destroy the other side. It was this drive for total annihilation which paired the most unlikely beings together, the elven druid, Akiko, and the human Sorcerer, Vladik.
They had been ambassadors respectively to the others' magical community. While they disagreed on the best way to come up with a way to break the stalemate of the war, they acknowledged the fact that something had to be done. They stepped down as ambassadors so that they could devote themselves wholly to their task and immediately set to work. They collaborated; brain stormed together, and even tested small new spells on each other's defenses. For ten years they studied together, slowly reaching deeper into the mysteries of magic itself, until finally they found the secret to magic itself. Or so they believed.
They immediately presented their findings to their respective leaders in the hopes of finally achieving victory. However, their views were so radical and so preposterous that they were dismissed as crazy fools who had no idea what they were speaking about. They tried desperately to convince their leaders to let them at least try what they had discovered. Unfortunately, their pleas fell on deaf ears.
It was Vladik who proposed that they try their methods out in secret, though the humans say it was Akiko. They fled into the great plains of Stratheimem, and constructed the necessary stone pillars for their ceremony. When all was ready, they began their ceremony. It was a long process, and they were about half way done when something went wrong. It had been going well and Vladik was getting impatient as men often do. So he increased the flow of his energy to try and speed up the process, though again the humans says that it was Akiko who did this. The result was that the weapon they were supposed to be creating turned into a portal. This portal connected directly with the Shitenhouji and coincidentally, not only bridged the gap between their world and another world, but it also sucked all of the magical abilities in every existing spell caster through it as well.
The lack of magic was not discovered immediately, for as soon as the portal opened, streams of black mutinous beings poured through. They were demons. Vladik and Akiko had opened a portal to the world of demons. They were immediately captured and the demons poured out all across the lands.
The free races and the northland alliance, for the first and only time in history, combined their forces. They had to, without any type of spell casters among them, they needed to beat back the demons somehow.
After almost 5 years of bloody battles, the original inhabitants of the world had pushed the demonic army back to the portal from whence it came. Fortunately, the Shitenhouji heard their pleas for magical assistance. It used itself as a barrier and locked the demonic horde behind the gate and sealed it forever. The races of Shintaegwyn celebrated.
Vladik and Akiko, on the other hand, were not celebrating. They had lost their original magical abilities when the portal was opened and they were not happy. They bartered with the demons, they promised to be sentries just in case something should go awry. In return, they received demon magic. A refined form of warlock magic, which was beyond compare. However, it fused with their old blood in different ways.
Vladik became warped, and grew to a size larger than that of even the largest troll. His physical strength tripled and his magical abilities augmented that strength.
Akiko mutated as well. She became smaller and more agile. She was able to change the colors of her skin and clothing to blend in with most terrain, and her magical abilities further increased her stealth capabilities.
Together, the two of them began to create strife and unrest among the races of Shintaegwyn. They reformed the northland alliance under their own control and began training small bands of demonic spell casters to serve them and give them an advantage against the struggling free races, who still struggle to regain their magical abilities. With the old alliances reformed, the Great Wars of Magic have begun again.