At the 10377 year of Her'tur heroes were summoned to defeat the Dark One, but... they lost. Just as previous summoned heroes they were killed and their forces scattered. Most of the time heroes couldn't even come close to the Citadel, and this time it wasn't exception. Heroes, along with the royal family, were killed after the Dark Realm was invaded. They couldn't even conquer the first Fortress, before they were annihilated, and the country which summoned the heroes was invaded. In less than a month the country with almost ten million population was completely destroyed and the population turned into undead.
The Dark One was an Arch-Lich, and the strongest being on the Xu'urtar. Under his command were unduying legions, not counting the 'common' undead, as well as Fourty Generals, more like thirty nine, but Dark One didn't like the name of Thirty Nine generals, even though he could create one more to make them proper Forty, but he had troubles naming them, and naming one of the generals 'Unnamed Number Forty' would be rather strange. Though most generals named themselves afterwards. From the generals thirty of them were undead, while six were elementals, one was demon, nephilim and a golem.
The Dark Reign of Dark One was for over ten millenia, but before that he was a regular elven royalty. Few strange fetishes about beast-kin, but overall he was just a regular high elf. It all ended when humans invaded, but with his command of Treants as well as spirits, he drove back the humans, but it was not the reason for him becoming the Dark One. The reason was betrayal from the court. Upon his return from the battlefield, the court branded him a traitor and imprisoned, while seizing his possessions and gaining control of his army, however most of the treants and spirits were contracted only for one battle and therefore they were sleeping afterwards. Humans, being a fast breeding race, quickly replenished their numbers and after ten years attacked the elves once again. This time elves were without the assistance of forest spirits and besides their familiarity with forest they lost. Their capital was conquered after two years of battles, and He managed to slip away from his cell while the capital was on fire, and human pillaged, raped etc.
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And then for two hundred years he was living the life of a hermit, until one day he stumbled upon a young vampire. She was fleeing from the 'Holy alliance' which decided to exterminate everyone not of human race, or enslave them under the pretext of some 'god's will'. Basically it ended in some sob story about romance, difference of races etc. etc. BUT! She was killed by some love rival and then the Dark One came to be. Following was genocide of all the vampires, humans, elves and whatnot on the Vendrir Continent. Some of them managed to retreat to other continents, some did not, but no matter who survived the purge, the Vendrir became the Dead continent. Following was attempts to reclaim the continent, but everything was futile. For two thousand years humans, as well as other races, organized expeditions to the Dead continent, and meanwhile they researched new spells. One such spell was 'Hero Summoning', but actually it was abducting spell, not summoning, so it was more 'Hero Abducting' than 'Summoning', but creators of this spell didn't care about such trivialities. But the downside of this spell was the lengthy ritual, a lot of resources, and lengthy recharge of world mana, so heroes could be summoned once every four hundred and forty four years. And every time it was futile for the humans, while Dark One only grew stronger, though he was quite arrogant and therefore he decided against killing off the rest of mortal races... until now.
In the year 10377 of Her'Tur, or 'Grim Age' in ancient tongue, the rest of the Xu'urtar was killed off, but so did the reign of Dark One ended.