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Quinterra: Dragon's Ascent
Prologue. Birth of the Five Lands

Prologue. Birth of the Five Lands

Long before, in an unknown era, there were no Elfenheim, Western Kingdoms, Frost Mountains, Southern Wilderness, nor Darklands. There were no elves, humans, dwarfs, beasts, nor demons. There was only land and the vast boundless ocean.

One day, a strange object fell from the sky and landed in the middle of the ocean, reached the seafloor, bored deep through the world’s subterranean hearth, and finally stopped at its core. In modern times, the object was referred to as the Divine’s Tear.

The impact of the Divine’s Tear threatened to collapse the world. The place where it landed in the ocean formed a giant whirlpool, and the skies above were filled with storm clouds. Lightning struck randomly, and rain fell continuously. This place would be known as The Maelstrom.

Before the world could break apart, the Divine’s Tear performed a miracle. A surge of energy burst forth from the core of the world, filling the world with divine light. The collapse was prevented but instead, something else happened.

Life sprouted forth from within the Maelstrom. Lifeforms unseen by the naked eye were carried by the ocean currents throughout the world and crawled up on land as they reached the shores.

On the ocean floor, seaweeds and sessile lifeforms grew. On land, grasses and vines covered the soil. Before long, the ocean waters were filled with countless different lifeforms, and the land was filled with countless species of plants and trees.

It didn’t take long before the ocean lifeforms had grown too many and the waters were not enough for them. Creatures from the ocean crawled up on a piece of land in the south searching for a new place to live. They evolved to adapt on land, and soon the southern land was filled with creatures other than the unmoving vegetation.

The cycle of moving from place to place and evolution continued, until the very first sentient being appeared, the very first Beast King, the White-furred Ape.

The White-furred Ape lead its kin to dominate the southern lands, which in the future would be known as the Southern Wilderness, the Beast Continent. For reasons unknown, the White-furred Ape knew about the existence of the Divine’s Tear for in the ancient records, it had engraved on a piece of stone tablet a pictograph of an object that fell from the sky and brought forth life. It was assumed that the earliest creatures had a piece of the Divine’s Tear in their body, and the dreams they spoke of were its memories.

Other beasts started to gain sentience, and they joined forces to defeat the White-furred Ape and its kin. Unable to resist, the Beast King and his tribe fled north from the southern lands, but not without grievous injuries. It and its kin died under a massive tree.

The tree absorbed the blood of the dead apes, then from within its trunk it gave birth to a new race of sentient creatures. They stood on two legs, with a pair arms hanging by their sides. They had a pair of pointed ears, and their skin had no fur aside from the hair atop their heads. They would be known as the Wood Elves.

The Wood Elves lived in peace and harmony within the great forest on the lands north of the Southern Wilderness. They named this land, Elfenheim, Home of the Elves, the Elf Continent. They crafted wood, hunted beasts, and gathered fruits and herbs, while traveling all over the vast land filled with forests.

On one instance, they encountered the sentient beasts of the Southern Wilderness. This incident awakened the dormant memories of the apes within the Elves’ blood. A group of elves wanted to make their own kingdom and rise above all races, giving birth to the noble elven race, the High Elves. Another group wanted to continue living peacefully as wanderers and nomads, the Wood Elves. And finally, a small minority wanted revenge on the beasts that had driven them out of their home. They were the Dark Elves.

The High Elves built the first elven city, Sylfel, in the center of Elfenheim, where the Great Tree, their source, was found. There, they developed their culture, laws, and customs. Due to this, within the High Elves, a disparity have occurred in their wants and needs. A group wanted to stay as close to nature as possible and protect it, as they were the children of the Great Tree, while an opposing party wanted to develop their technology without regards to the damage it will bring.

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The opposing party lost and were exiled. They fled to the west and cut their ears short in fury. They went on with their plans and developed the ideas they wanted, at a cost they had not expected. The cut ears could not regrow, and their children had the same appearance. Due to their actions they lost their connection to nature, and all they could do was grieve at their foolishness. What was done had been done, and they could not change the past. They discarded their memories, longing, and regret, and started anew. They called themselves Humans. Soon, they prospered, raised kings and queens, built cities and kingdoms, and the land where they began their new lives were called the Western Kingdoms.

Almost at the same time as the birth of the Wood Elves, a sentient race had evolved from the creatures that had gone further to the snow covered mountains of the north. By coincidence or by fate’s design, they had appearance slightly similar to the elves and humans, but were much shorter and their bodies stockier. This shortness, about as tall as an elf’s chest, allowed them to live comfortably within the caves they had dug through the mountains. Their thick skin and muscles allowed them to adapt to the cold when hunting and gathering food.

As they dug deeper and deeper into the mountains, they found, tough stone, ores of metal, and rivers of molten lava. With the heat of the molten lava, they changed the shape of the ores with the help of tools made from the tough stones. It didn’t take long for them to figure out the secrets of metal crafting, and afterward with the metal tools they made, they built cities within the mountains. They developed a society of ranked standings. The Noble Caste lead groups of dwarfs and made important decisions. The Merchant Caste were composed of craftsmen and traders. The Warrior Caste were those who had focused on improving their strength for hunting wild beasts and protecting their cities from the horrific creatures of the cold north.

The north was then known as the Frost Mountains, the Dwarf Continent.

After some time, strange children appeared within the dwarf’s offspring. Some were only half as tall as the elves and humans, and there were even those only up to their knees. The Noble Caste was in an indecision on what to do. A group wanted to accept them as their own, while the other didn’t. The latter’s decision won out in the end, and they were called Halflings and Gnomes. They lived within the dwarf cities, but they were not considered as one of them.

The four sentient races came to know of each other’s existences, and would interact with each other every few hundred years. Sometimes they would make peaceful trade, and other times they would fight bloody battles.

When the divine light burst forth from the Divine’s Tear, it carried within it boundless energy, and this unseen energy had stayed all over the world. This was first discovered by the High Elves. The energy was called mana, the fuel of magic. The other races soon found out about this and began their research on this energy.

Unknown to them, another sentient race was born to the unexplored east. These were the Demons, sentient beings born from the concentration of mana on an object. Their sentience were formed from the mana, and the object were the mana gathered turned into their material body. The land were the demons were born would soon be known as The Darklands, the Demon Continent.

And thus, the five continents and their races were born in this world, which would be called by the future generations as Quinterra, the Five Lands.

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