The Splintered and broken world that we know today was once a very different place. Before the lands were separated by the horrific event, all creatures of the Planet lived together on a single land mass. It was wild and crowded. Some monsters met natural ends at the claws and teeth of stronger monsters, while others grew into civilizations that rose and fell like a great tide through the Planet’s years.
The Ancient Ones were always there, watching the creations of their world and assisting with their magical powers in any way they could. After many thousands of years, the Ancient Five all shared a chief concern: That the people had become too powerful. The Ancient Ones knew from the place before that great power can only lead to a single thing: Violence.
The Ancient Ones continued to watch as the kingdoms of the Planet created weapons of bloodshed whose power only increased through the years. They watched as their children used these weapons time and again to slaughter one another, to burn and destroy their beautiful creations and their only home. And like good parents unwilling to accept hopelessness, the Ancient Ones gave them chance after chance.
A thousand years before the Splintering, the world was in a dark state. The empire of the Belludae had spread to every corner of the Planet and wherever they could be found, the Efreet armies scorched the ground with magical weapons. The Khymian Order, empowered by the power of the Silver Sword and the Silver Shield marched throughout the lands, imposing their version of order on the poor masses. The weak, the small and the ugly were persecuted by the powerful, and the powerful could not be swayed, even by decree of the Ancient Ones themselves. And this was only the beginning of the Thousand Year War.
By the end of a thousand years, the war raged on with no end in sight. It had become a curse of the entire Planet, turning brother against brother and species against species, claiming the lives of countless millions through the years. Even Lagfael, the darkest of the Ancient Ones who relished in death and destruction had had his fill. The Spirit of the Forest was in hiding, and the Frost Giant had retreated to the coldest (and least habitable) place in the world.
It was a flight of the Elemental Phoenix one fateful night that called them all together at the Seed Crater. She soared over the entire world and with a great cry, she invoked the ancient rite and called them all to meeting. Each one of the other four honored her by attending.
Almost nothing is known of the dark and costly ritual the Ancient Ones performed to cause the Splintering to happen. With all the violence and destruction that plagued the world, their magical powers were at an all-time low. So to create a catastrophe as terrible as the Splintering, a deal must have been struck with a greater power than is known by even the Ancient Ones. They thought the Splintering would end the violence. Perhaps they were deceived. But by whom?
The Splintering did not end violence in the world. In fact, it created more violence in the course of a few minutes than the Thousand Year War had caused in the last hundred years. The Ancient Ones, who had all been inside the Seed Crater when it began, were separated that day and they have never all been together since. They each found themselves at the heart of the cataclysm in one of the five new splintered continents. An unnatural and jagged island (now called Mount Mox) rose fast and hard from the sea exactly in the middle of the land, causing schisms in several directions. These schisms broke apart, and within hours they had drifted hundreds of miles away from one another in the raging waters. These were just the immediate effects of the Splintering. There were superstorms that wracked the Planet and climate shifts that froze entire forests while burning others in a matter of moments. There were fireballs from the sky and boiling geysers from the oceans, among the calamities that continued for years after the event. Once the dust had settled, those who survived wished they hadn’t.
The Planet was now clinging to life by a thread. The Ancient Ones, with no magic left and no hope of reuniting with one another, feared they had finally caused enough damage to (like their predecessors) completely destroy a living Planet after all. For the next several hundred years after the Splintering, it would be the people, not the Ancients who would continue to try, pick themselves up and begin to make something of the broken world.
For the worst of the times, the people of the Planet put aside their differences. The Khymians scrambled to locate their sacred objects and rebuild their culture, while the people of the wild fields and forests found that they must work together in order to have roofs, food and healthy children. It was in this reconstructive spirit that the Kingdom of Lyveria and the city of Gobson were formed, the earliest two civilizations in the Splinterlands. This period became known as the Reconstruction.
As the years went by, the buildings and kingdoms grew, and the Ancient Ones watched as the people prepared to make all the same mistakes over again. They built weapons, raised armies, and before long, there was war once again. It was not until the year 202 AS that Summoning magic was even discovered by Xantar Silva. In the period following that discovery, the Spirit of the Forest helped Silva (the Magi) refine the system into the Civilized Combat that we know today.
Summoning combat would be the greatest offering the Spirit of the Forest had ever given to her children. They would grow together in a world where fighting was unnecessary, and where the base need was filled by a game of Summoner’s Combat in which no creatures needed to be hurt or killed. This hope led her to make deals with the Dragons, deals that would be binding for many generations to come. Of all the mistakes the Ancient Ones have made, these dealings with the Fire Blood may have been the greatest and most costly yet.
@tipu curate
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