The Shadowfront Incursion

"The first shadows fell long before the war."

In the centuries following the First Elven Schism (5700 BGW), the High Elves believed time would wear down the ambitions of the exiled Dark Elves, now scattered across underground enclaves such as Draidiff. For over a thousand years, an uneasy silence stretched across the land—an unspoken truce between the two elven factions.

This peace was not to last.

By 4300 BGW, disturbing reports began surfacing across the borders of High Elven territories. Entire stretches of forest grew dim beneath the canopy, their leaves withering into a pale, brittle husk under an unnatural twilight. Leystones that once hummed with the pulse of magic flickered and dimmed, their energy siphoned by unseen forces. In isolated villages, the veil between the material and shadowy realms grew thin—people vanished, and strange phantoms of twisted elven figures haunted the edges of elven sight.

This creeping darkness became known as the Shadowfront, the first tangible evidence that the Dark Elves had not been idle in their exile.

Origins of the Shadowfront

The incursion was not driven by war-horns or armies but by subtle acts of magical sabotage. From their hidden cities beneath the earth, Dark Elven mages—emboldened by centuries of isolation—began experimenting with forbidden magic. Desiring to fuel their growing underground empire, they devised methods to drain ethereal resonance directly from leystones.

These rituals, however, had consequences.

The more resonance they siphoned, the greater the instability above ground. Magical corruption spread like rot through ancient glades and over elven citadels, warping nature and creating regions where light faltered.

The Incursions Begin

At first, the High Elves dismissed the strange phenomena as isolated magical anomalies. But as entire regions became shrouded in darkened magic, King Elenion Starleaf ordered a series of campaigns to purge the spreading corruption.

This marked the beginning of the Shadowfront Incursions. High Elven warriors, accompanied by battlemages and wardens, marched to reclaim the lands twisted by shadow magic. Clashes erupted at the edges of leyline nexuses, where Dark Elven agents sought to continue their siphoning rituals. These battles, though sporadic, were brutal—fought in silence and shadow, as ghostly figures rose from the darkness to defend the leystone wells.

Consequences and Escalation

The Incursions never erupted into full-scale war, but their impact was undeniable.

• The leystones beneath High Elven cities weakened. This fragile state contributed to the diminishing influence of the High Elves in the millennia to follow.
• Animosity deepened. The High Elves, seeing the Incursions as an act of slow-burning war, tightened magical regulations and further ostracized those suspected of sympathizing with the exiled.
• The Dark Elves thrived, refining their use of shadow-binding techniques that would later culminate in the forging of the Crown of Dominion (3187 BGW).

Though the Shadowfront Incursions ended without a decisive victor, the seeds of the War of Two Moons (4000 BGW) were planted in this era—ensuring that the next confrontation between High and Dark Elves would leave no room for shadows to hide.

Legacy

The Shadowfront left scars on the land that remain to this day. Some areas within the Hollowed Plains still bear signs of this era, their once-verdant growth replaced by twisted, blackened roots.

It is whispered that in the dead of night, under twin moons, the echoes of those lost to the Shadowfront return— lingering in the places where the veil first began to thin.