Arranok

Arranok is a world after the decline of a great civilization. Before the humans from beyond the sea in the west arrived, a powerful and noble race of magicians, today only known as "The Great Ones", inhabited the continent of Arranok. Their intelligence was without match, their abilities astounding - yet their civilization and folk was small and suffered a lack - the lack of agriculture. When the humans arrived - driven out of their former homes by an unknown threat - they made a deal with the aboriginal Great Ones: For the gift of agriculture, one of the most important features of the humans, the Great Ones would give them shelter and let them thrive in their lands, in their beauty and magic.   What followed are the three Ages of Arranok, dated and named in the current times, after Kataklysmos had rolled over the continent. Thus the ages are dubbed "Pre-Kataklysmic" (Or "The Time before the Great War"), "Kataklysmos" (or "The Great War") and "Post-Kataklysmic" (or "The Resurgence").   The first age lasted hundreds of years in which the cultures conjoined and intermixed - and at the pinnacle of their era, the whole continent was populated by both men and Great Ones and profitet from each folks abilities. On the pinnacle of their era though, an old threat, a buried evil was awakened accidentally awakened - something the whole tribe of the Great Ones had lived to hide and bind - an evil that, once freed, relentlessly rolled over the continent and the kingdom, laying most parts of it in ashes and dust and snow.   Thus the second age was dominated by the Great, continent-wide War against the horrid forces of Kataklysmos. Seven centuries of war went into the land - mankind, fighting side by side with the noble Great Ones, against the daemon forces from the mountains of the north, an apocalyptic force that meant to bring an end to the era of man. But the war ended only when the Great Ones sacrificed everything but the one thing they now tried to protect - humanity. At first, they abandoned their home lands in the north by digging a great mound and moat all across the continent, and eventually they sacrificed themselves - the whole nation of the Great Ones gave their lives in a powerful ritual that ended the war for all times - and only one of them survived. A man who went mad from the terror and chaos from the three days and nights of ritual chant - a man who believed some forces had chosen him to survive the era of the Great Ones. A man who, after the great war, claimed the title of Pharao to reign over what was left of the once blooming empire.   After the great war, with the beginning of the third age, the face of the world had changed vastly. Only a fraction of the once blooming continent still bore the beauty of bygone days. Most of the forests had burnt down, great cities and forts had fallen, a large amount of land got converted into barren desert, the further north is but a vast graveyard of petrified demons over which only icecold winds and snow reside, and in the east, an unexplainable hole was torn into the world during the war, which converted the land into a diffuse, uncanny region, shunned by the people that still reside in what is left of Silthar. In Silthar however, mankind continues to thrive as much as possible, trying to fight new threats, and to rebuild and reclaim what was lost to Kataklysmos. Hope is not lost, but there is a long long way to go to achieve the beauty, magic and harmony of yore.