RIGHT... This is an infodump chapter. It is not mandatory reading because more will be clarified as we go, but if you want to get an idea of where we are when it comes to how the setting got the way it is, then it's recommended you read it. It's essentially the Ancient History of the world around 50,000+ years back, well into the Age of the Gods. It also allows me to show how the elements of the different franchises merged together and those who know the lore of their franchises well will be able to highlight which part belongs to which franchise.
Type-Moon and related IPs belong to Kinoko Nasu and Takashi Takeuchi. RWBY belongs to Rooster Teeth, Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross. Lyrical Nanoha belongs to Masaki Tsuzuki and Bleach belongs to Tite Kubo. Ancient Aliens, from which derivative lore is used, belongs to the History Channel. The Synchronicity Key belongs to David Wilcock. The Cruciator lore belongs to me... and the X-Men forever belong to Bryan Singer but that last one's neither here nor there.
So let's get on with it and the inevitable doubt and confusion train that comes from not starting a story from day one.
People have always wondered about their origins...
Perhaps it's chance, perhaps curiosity... perhaps even the sense of belonging that the initial years of their existence caused. Nonetheless, mankind has always strived to understand itself, its place in the world, its history... and its past.
In an effort to understand the reason things were the way they were, at any point in time, man created the concept of History. Born from the collective memory of men, these events would be initially be carried in the minds and hearts of men, so that even if tragedy should befall civilization, its legacy would endure, and its mistakes would thus not be repeated. What had started as words... tales narrated around bonfires, —first by elders, then by parents, to their children— had soon evolved into stories, legendary epics of such great stature and scale that the men of later eras would see them as mere myth. However, what had happened in the distant past... the past where language was so different we cannot understand it anymore? The past where records weren't kept? The answer, which to this day sleeps within the very heart of men, is one even the far reaching powers of Wonder Working and Science cannot answer... but the answer lies within every descendant of a witness... every person whose ancestors' minds were burned into, with the long forgotten events of men from ages long past even by the god's standards residing in the collective past of those surviving bloodlines of a civilization long gone, living on in their heart's memory... their Historic Memory...
At the dawn of men —and well into the depths of an Ancient Prehistory we know nothing of—, laid the answers to one of our most primal questions...
Does God exist?
In the distant past... the gods we know about —each and every single one of them—, were like us. Just men. Humans. Mortals... Once upon a time, at least...
In those ages not recorded, a distantly long ago, mankind prospered across the glove. Civilizations emerged throughout our planet, flourishing under the support of two immensely powerful kingdoms. These two kingdoms —known as Mu, or the 'Kingdom of Darkness'— and Lemuria —or the 'Kingdom of Light'— were established by competing dynasties, both having been one and the same in the past. Both of these kingdoms laid claim to the vast majority of long Lost Continents today bearing their names.
One day, the peaceful prosperity of these two kingdoms was interrupted. Men were awed by a discovery that changed the course of Earth's history; the visit of alien civilizations, confirming that indeed men were not alone in the cosmos and life thrived elsewhere. That there were more like us.
One of these highly advanced civilizations —known as the Belkan Empire— established contact with the royalty of Mu... gifting them with the wisdom needed to create powerful weapons and wage war on unprecedented scales. The Lemurians, on the other hand, established contact with a larger, vaster civilization known as the Sylvanian Syndicate, which taught them how to bend the land and nature to their will and build to heights surpassing Earth's peaks. Through the wisdom, advancements and the manpower of both, mankind flourished in ways that used to be unthinkable. All in all, these four civilizations exchanged everything one could possibly imagine... goods, people, knowledge, technology... and yes, magic as well.
However, the Belkans were forceful and grew heavy handed, whereas Sylvanians were flighty and of a detached, disinterested spirit. When Belka's ham-fisted nature exhausted the people of Mu out, the former left —promising to return to conquer the world. The Sylvanians, on the other hand, stayed. However, their numbers dwindled as they found themselves fighting against the very empire that the people of Mu had refused.
With mounting casualties, corpses littered everywhere, the Earth was raided and plundered by Belka. The land itself was charred... as if it had been ravaged by a forest fire. In the sky above, a spectral silhouette shaped like a tree seemed to tower over the world —The Belkans made good on their promise, sending one of their many superweapons to lay waste to these civilizations... Desperately in the need of a united front, and supported by their collective wisdom, Mu and Lemuria joined forces. The people of Lemuria managed to combine their technology with the magic of the people of Mu and together were able to create what would go on to become the most powerful warrior-caste for thousands of years hence... It was the dawn of the gods.
Sourced from the best Hidalgos, —Warriors of Noble blood— the gods would go on to replace the rulers of the known world. They commanded an immense amount of offensive power and brought their full might to bear against the Cannibal Star sent by the invaders... but even this power would prove insufficient. The star was hungry, and it had a grim and savage banquet with the deities of the world.
In the end, it was the Lemurians who were able to forge a weapon powerful enough to eliminate the threat. A weapon that had to be forged within the core of the Earth, embodying the very last stand of men. It was the first of many Signatus—ancient superweapons that would be lost to history forever— and one of the most famous. Enchanted by the wisest Warlocks and forged from fragments of the Earth's solid core, the blade's might exceeded that of the abominable beast. In the end, the beast was slain and our world spared.
To prevent any further such scenarios, the remaining gods pooled together their powers to heal the Earth and seal it off to any and all other threats. They used an extraordinarily powerful pillar —the second of the Signatus— to project a barrier that would seal the Solar System and also the Planet to any hostile intruders. This pillar, known today as the Axis Mundi, would run from one end of the world through to the other, changing the tilt and curvature of our world.
Regardless... the pillar's price and toll was vast: it severed Earth's magic off from the rest of the mana everywhere. To circumvent the ensuing drought, the gods created Leylines as channels where mana could travel. These Leylines would work as recycling mechanisms, keeping the world and the gods supplied. However, as with old structures, they too would soon start to fail. Mana leaked off to space, far beyond our reach, heralding the looming demise of the Ancient's magic.
Regardless of the future it would bring, man rebuilt civilization, attempting to bring back the sense of normalcy that predated the 'Space Men's' arrival into our world. But even beneath this surface, considered a veneer of peace, tensions started to boil. The possession of the original Signatus by the Lemurians irked the Mu Nobility, who sought it for themselves. One day, a Nobleman from Mu managed to steal the mighty sword. In an attempt to protect the blade, he hid it in a tower alongside his eldest daughter, who would keep watch over it. However, the woman was rescued by a young warrior, draped in robes of black and green, hailing from Lemuria. The man would eventually toss the blade away into a river, never to be seen again.
A romance soon blossomed between the two... but it did not come to last. The man would one day fall ill and perish, ending their idyll. The woman refused to give in to despair, however. Instead, she went to the Domain of the Lemurian Royalty, where she met the King of Lemuria, the white god of light. The woman begged the white god to bring back her beloved from the grave... but heeding calls from minor gods —those who were in charge of overseeing the balance between life and death, and had in fact lived during an era where they were one and the same—, refused to bring the warrior back. He mentioned that there was wonder in death itself, and he wished for her to understand this.
The woman, —indignant towards this response— then traveled back home, to the abode of Mu's Royalty. Their King, —a god himself and the 'black brother' of the Lemurian King— gladly received her, thankful for the lavish praise heaped upon him by the woman. Happy to know he was being favored over his Lemurian peer, he granted her wish and brought the warrior back to life. However, the woman's progenitor, who had learned of her elopement and disapproved of her daughter's suitor, informed the god of light of her intentions. He rushed to stop his black peer from giving in to the woman's folly. The revived warrior was dispatched by the black god and they together reminded the woman that the dead deserved to rest.
Frustrated and enraged by this act of selfishness, the woman manipulated countless nobles and roused them in a Rebellion against the current Monarchs of both Kingdoms. The god-kings, brothers who had braved the fire of the Alien Incursion, realizing what she had done, quelled the Rebellion by spiriting away the millions of souls involved to a far-away world. They then bestowed immortality upon the woman, sending her to the new world as well to oversee the people she had led in rebellion and be their goddess. In doing this, her penance would show her the true value of mortality.
In the end, the woman was driven insane, saddled with a burden she neither asked nor wanted. The gods, —having also sealed off the new planet as a precaution— had also drained it of all mana to prevent magic from being used in an effort to return to our planet, instead replacing it with a solidified, petrified form of mana; a substance that was hardly useful beyond the confines of the world, but which could grow polluted and impure if stagnated, turning all wildlife into savage beasts and killing men and women alike. The woman attempted to rid herself of her curse by jumping into one such pool, convinced her immortality wouldn't suffice to keep her alive ...or so the myth went... but was instead corrupted beyond recognition, twisted by the same emotions that turned pacific animals into abominations. The first true Witch of both worlds had been born.
On Earth, minor gods —and the mortal populace as a whole— saw this as an abuse of power by the Brother Deities. To placate their indignation, they resurrected the Witch's lover, endowing the fallen warrior with the ability to jump from body to body within the confines of the New World, and tasked him with overseeing its growth. At the same time, he was entrusted with four artifacts that were to be used if he believed the world was ready to reconcile and rejoin the Earth. Finally, they gave solace to the descendants of the Witch, who had given birth to four daughters, and bestowed them with the power to use magic that the gods had taken away almost entirely from everyone else in the husk of a world they would have to live on.
Yet this was not enough to calm down the discontent and dissidence back on Earth. The masses soured further. Minor gods rebelled and clashed with each other. At last, gods and men alike took up arms and picked sides. Soon, the two gods leading both kingdoms blamed one another for the conflict and Mu and Lemuria ultimately clashed... The greatest war mankind would ever see had begun.
The war ravaged the world, bringing ruin to the land. As weapon after weapon and soldier after soldier marched towards the battlefield, the death toll rose over the course of nearly two hundred years, until finally, the unthinkable happened; Born from the arms race that the war spurred, the greatest weapon in the history of Earth saw action for the first and also last time. The Signatus' power, vastly exceeding that of the blade that had saved our world, wiped off both civilizations and leveled both continents. In the end, no more than 10,000 people survived...
Science had gotten this far into the past, and scientists know this as the Toba Catastrophe. To date, it remains the single most destructive event life on Earth has ever endured.
Once the dust had settled, the surviving gods, —who had seen to the protection of mortal men and women— met again for the first time since the war's end. The ruins of the Ancient City of Gobekli Tepe, today the oldest city known to exist, served to host this Summit, back when the settlement was still in its infancy. A Summit to decide on a new system to govern the world. The gods divided Earth into Spheres of Influence, defined by the people who dominated a region of the planet, and set forth a list of 'Ancient Laws' that were never to be broken, so as to prevent another cataclysm that would surely, this time, end all life on Earth. The War that had just taken place was thus baptized 'The Primeval War' and today is remembered only by the original Brothers Deities that led each of the two main kingdoms... those followers of the Slavic Pantheon —whether Old Believers or Rodnovers— revere them as Belobog and Chernobog —the god of light and the god of darkness— and the leading gods of the Slavic Pantheon.
That's where our story —the story that predated stories— ends.
The myths of our past would impact the future of civilization for ages to come. Regardless, this history would remain hidden for centuries. All wisdom, all memory and all records of the tale would vanish, turned to dust. Only one day, upon returning from a most ignominous quest, would one of the last remaining records... a treasure trove of the ages long gone... be found, retrieved and wielded once more. It would be the start of a new era.
In the hands of a champion of vast power, for he was able to unite those who would rather destroy each other, the wisdom contained upon this treasure would lead to the emergence of a new class of heroes. The Compact of Myths, as the relic was called, would soon lead the world towards a new era.
Soon, quickened by the Compact's power, which would resonate far and wide across the world, the hidden gifts of the heroic bloodlines of old would awaken. Those who could claim descent from Emperors, Kings, Pharaohs, knights, bandits and demigods even, would soon be able to harness upon these powers as if they had always had them. Furthermore, their power would grow over time, as these heroes now had knowledge and abilities their predecessors could only imagine. Soon... a new class of legends would emerge.
In the East, they became Bogatyrs... in the far reaches of the North and South, the Huntsmen.
In the Iberian Peninsula, where they had been born, they were known only by one name.
Cruciators. Today, they are only remembered by their translated name; as Crusaders. Created by the last vestige of the Prehistoric Era, these gifted children would rise to prominence among men for their abilities and discoveries, taking the world further beyond and writing down their names to be remembered for centuries to come.
And even then, it would only be the start of our History. One thing is for certain, however...
Our Story has just begun.
Ending Notes: Hopefully I will not be lynched for trying to put everything together without showing favoritism.