Prologue

A Brief History of the Divided Races

The first of all Races was the Faeries, with their magicks and immortality. No one knows how or why the Faeries came to be, simply that they were Gifted above all others. After the creation of the Faeries, they quickly spread throughout and dominated Aorth, their planet. The fairest of all beings was content to live and pursue the fine arts for many years before finding a special power that they alone could wield.

All legends agree that the Faeries shaped all other Races, though the process was never recorded.

The Elves were created first, made to be the pets of the Faeries. The Elf Race was made to be a less fair version of the Faery, immortal but with no magicks of their own. So the Faeries began to bestow Gifts, from something as simple as tracking Instincts to Gifts as complicated as future Sight and Mind Speech. The Elves developed an interest of their own in arts and culture, before spreading throughout woodlands, whereupon the Race was Gifted with a Sensitivity for all living things, causing a passion within the Elves for speaking with plants and animals alike. The passion, according to the Goblins, caused the Elves to abandon reason in favor of frivolous things such as kindness and serenity.

After several millennia, the Faeries grew bored with their first creations, and began the Race of Goblins. The Goblins were also beautiful, but not nearly so much as the Faeries or Elves. Rather than physical appeal or immortality, the Goblins were Gifted with Strength and were trained as workers in the fields. Although that’s not to say that the goblins were not permitted individual Gifts, some similar to the Elves, and some unique, such as the Gift of Rationality. Just as the Goblins disapproved of Sensitivity, the Elves were convinced that the Goblins’ Gift changed the tall Race, making them wise, yes, but bitter.

The Goblins were sent to develop the prairies, and eventually the Race claimed the prairies as their only home. As with the Elves, the Race of Goblins was given one last Gift, the gift of great Height. Although the Gift was at first regarded as useless, it was soon found to make hunting and traveling much easier, and later found another use for such skills.

For several hundred years, all three Races lived in peace under the rule of the Faery King and Queen. However, the Faeries again became tired with the existing beings and brought forth the Race of Dwarves.

The Dwarves were the most unattractive of all the races, tending to have an average height of only four and a half feet, and the men always being overly hairy. The Dwarves were also made to have strong arms for mining and were, like the Elves, Gifted with immortality. The Dwarf Race was not favored, and so was banished to the mountains, adapting to the dark and stale air with keener eyesight and hardier lungs. Along with the evolved strengths came a delicate temperament, causing the Dwarves to anger quickly and maintain grudges for obscene lengths of time.

Time passed and the Faery Domination of Aorth began to falter. To better preserve the Race, the Faeries rescinded the Gift of immortality given to the Dwarves and Elves, and instead granted the two Races long life. At this time in History, the number of creations was fast outgrowing the number of creators. So the Faeries gave birth one last Race to help control the other Races.

Humans were created to come in as many shapes and sizes available, so as to permit the Human Race to better restrain the Elves, Goblins and Dwarves. No Gifts were given to Humans save one- Curiosity. The Gift was intended to allow the Humans to learn and adapt to the other three Races. However, the Gift was corrupted, and instead left mankind pursuing the answers to what all other Races save the Faeries viewed as nonexistent questions.

Seeing the difficult time the Humans had in the attempt to overpower their preceding Races, the Faeries selected twenty individuals to become Shifters. These Shifters were given the ability to take any shape at any time, be it living or not. The Shifters were an incredible success, due mainly to a special shape that was created just for the Shifter to use when extreme force was necessary. No known record has a description of the mysterious ‘Bestial Form’, as named by the Elves, except that all the forms were similar yet unique to the individual.

The Faeries slowly succumbed to Time; reduced to taking their own lives to end the torment of watching their creations destroy the once perfect Aorth. With the fall of the Faeries came the fall of the Shifters, though the reason is yet undetermined. In secret, however, legends say that one last Race was created, but such rumors have yet to be confirmed.

As the legends tell, Goblins soon became the first Race to seek power, forcing the small number of Humans into bondage. This act of ‘cruelty’ caused the original conflict between the Elves, the oldest and largest Race, and the Goblins. The conflict caused the Races to renounce all relations and Aorth was renamed Maers, after an ancient god of battle.

War became regular, and the Faeries were left to slowly dwindle away, until only two of their kind were left. Those two were forced to wait and watch as the oldest Races irremediably decimated each other. The Dwarves stayed secluded within their mountains refusing to aid either Race in battle for fear of the other Race’s wrath. So passed nearly five hundred years.

The last two Faeries became desperate to end the war, and began to search for a solution. They were forced to wait for nearly two centuries before a solution presented itself, in the form of a Human child willing to become the last Shifter. After seven hundred years of war, the peacemaker had finally been chosen.

The only clue to the existence of the Shifter came from Aaron, an unusual Specter, in that no one had summoned him. The exact phrasing of Aaron’s prophecies is unknown to all but those he spoke to; all that had been recorded of him in his passing was that he spoke of two things: the greatest Shifter and the end of the War.