On the human continent of Corus, the three greatest powers, which are referred to as the Three Thrones of Humanity, struggled against one another for the title of humanities ruler.
To save mankind from its inevitable demise at its own hands, the Three Thrones of Humanity came together to negotiate a temporary peace treaty. As magic was the deciding factor in any war, they decided upon creating an organisation that would unite the magical knowledge of humanities greatest nations within it, for if the worst was to come, but their magical knowledge still surpassed that of any other race, no amount of casualties would put humanity at a disadvantage against them. Hence the Arcane Union was born.
The Three Thrones knew that each of them would still withhold crucial information regarding their most well-kept secrets, but they also believed that the thirst for magical knowledge inherent in all who studied the magical arts was beyond any loyalty one held for one's nation, making leaks more than likely and thus forcing a balance between the Three Thrones.
The Arcane Union proved to be more valuable than its founders had imagined, as throughout the years they would make one incredible discovery after the other. One of the greatest changes the Union brought with it, was a uniform system to categorize all forms of magic, which would later be adopted by the rest of the world. It replaced the previous system, the Magical Trinity, which merely divided spells into Red Magic, which included offensive spells, White Magic, which consisted mainly of supporting spells, and Blue Magic, which described all other forms of magic, and instead sorted them according to their attributes into one of the Seven Schools of Magic:
Arcana, which manipulate Mana directly.
Elemental Magic, which makes use of the seven fundamental elements of nature: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Light, Darkness, and the Neutral Element.
Transfiguration, which influences organic life.
Synergy, which influences lifeless objects.
Conjuration, which influences energy.
Reality Magic, which manipulates Mana to bend the laws of physics.
And lastly, Ethereal Magic, a form of magic which borrows from the primordial forces and can only be used in the form of miracles provided by a deity.
This fundamental change of how magic was looked at lead to another, less significant categorization, where spells where ranked according to their complexity and the efficiency of their incantation on a scale from 0 to 9, the Magical-Tier-Scale.
The lowest, 0th-Tier was referred to as Null Magic, as it described the simplest form of magic, which neither required any preparations nor a high amount of skill when it came to the use of magic.
Spells up to the 3rd-Tier, Lesser Magic, was considered to be easy to understand for even the least gifted, and the 5th-Tier, Greater Magic, the highest one was able to reach without dedicating one's life to arduous studies and magical training.
The most powerful spell a mortal was able to cast was believed to have been of the 9th-Tier, which was known as Supreme Magic, though those capable of casting such grand magic are rare enough to warrant questioning their existence.
These new systems caused many scholars to restructure their methods of research, which allowed for multiple breakthroughs never thought to be possible, such as the discovery of a way to manufacture spell-scrolls, a magically infused medium imbued with the instructions of a spell, which only needed the right amount of energy supplied to it to be cast, an item thought to only be found in Abyssal Rifts up to this point. Even an item that could measure one's magical aptitude, the Ordo Siderum, became a dream made reality.
Despite all these breakthroughs, a similar organisation within the Independent Nations of the south known as the Scholar's Alliance, which was said to have been the inspiration for the Arcane Union, and both refused to acknowledge the changes made by them as well as any discoveries made from them for hundreds of years, as they likened the scholars of the Union to dogs chained to the leaders of the Three Thrones. Nevertheless, the leaders of the Scholar's Alliance would later be forced by the majority of their members to accept their defeat despite years of formal protest due to the obvious benefits the new systems and discoveries brought with them.
Though the criticism offered by the Scholar's Alliance may have seemed petty and disingenuous at first glance, there was undeniable truth to their words, as politics did indeed play a major part in decisions made by the higher-ups of the Union. The Three Thrones placed spies into leading positions within their board of leaders to make sure that the organisation prioritized research which catered to the specific needs of their founding nations, while cutting off funding from all other projects not conforming to their direct guidelines. As the scholar's of the Union greatly disliked having their creative freedom restricted to such a degree, they secretly started to amass wealth through various means such as fulfilling contracts made with nations which were not part of the Three Thrones and funding covert expeditions into the ruins of civilizations from the Dark Ages.
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One of these expeditions was led by a mercenary by the name of Phineas Finis, an expert in spelunking who often received tasks involving the exploration of newly discovered caves and ravines. After years of working for the Union, Finis felt that he was growing too old for this kind of work, thus agreeing to one last expedition into the Vitreus mountain-range, which served as natural border between Domitor and the nearest nation part of the Northern Alliance, Yhose, not knowing that it would be the discovery which would forever cement his name in the history books of humanity.
Upon entering the cave, the entrance of which had been unearthed after an avalanche, he could not believe his eyes. The walls around him were inscribed with all kinds of runes, some of which even completely unknown to the scholars from the Arcane Union in his party. They followed the runes ever deeper into the chasm, until they reached a spacious room, in the middle of which a massive white crystal had been placed on a pedestal. Seeing as the scholars of the Arcane Union could not make out what it was used for, Finis decided to take matters in his own hands and activated it.
The crystal turned out to be a relic, an item of immense power created by a celestial being, and, as soon as it sprung to live, the earth beneath them began to quake, as 7 mountains started to rip themselves from the earth, including the one they found themselves in. While in the air, the mountains began to flip upside-down, thus creating 7 enormous flying islands, which now soared higher and higher into the air, until they reached a height of approximately 4 miles above sea-level.
Finis decided to name this relic Edenia, a word which he believed to have heard one of the scholars read out loud as he tried to pronounce the runes carved into the walls, and gifted it to the Arcane Union. The sudden appearance of flying islands in the sky above Domitor and Yhose distracted the Three Thrones, as they neither knew how they came to be nor what to do with them. The Arcane Union seized this window of indecisiveness and used their secretly amassed funds to build a city atop the islands, which they declared their new headquarters. In accordance with Finis' wishes, they decided to name it the Flying City of Magic, Edenia. Subsequently, the scholars rebranded their organisation into the Magician's Guild, and declared their independence from their founding nations.
The Three Thrones did not look favourable upon this new revelation, with the king of Domitor being the most furious about it. However, seeing as the Magician's Guild consisted of humanities strongest spellcasters, the Northern Alliance and Merdelum decided against antagonizing the Magician's Guild and reluctantly acknowledged their decision without further consequences. Domitor, however, saw this move as betrayal of the highest order, and readied a battalion of anti-air units, comprised of Wyvern-Riders and magi who pledged their loyalty to the kingdom, to attack the flying city before it could be moved out of reach.
Despite sending an almost absurd amount of troops towards the city, Domitor stood no chance against the full might of the Magician's Guild. Even so, the scholars of Edenia knew that Domitor would not relent until all 7 islands were completely erased from the sky, hence making some form of retaliation necessary to emphasise just how outmatched the kingdom was. The guild did not have to think about such measures for long, as an opportunity presented itself soon after.
Upon exploring the islands, a vault was found within one of them, containing what was believed to have been a weapon lost during the Dark Ages, but later turned out to be another relic left behind by divinity. This mistake was made due to the fact that the weapon, which received the name Nihilus, unlike the crystal that served as Edenia's heart, was not made of an unfamiliar material, but rather of normal, unalloyed Mythril, which, though it was considered to be rather valuable to mortals, was believed to be far beneath anything that would be used by celestials. Therefore the current guild-master at the time, Melchior Rifton, decided to test Nihilus' power on Domitor, and commanded it to be aimed at a military base in the area which connected the peninsula of Nirion with the rest of the continent, as it was deemed far away enough from other cities and villages to minimize civilian casualties.
Upon activation, the weapon started to draw the raw Mana from its surroundings and channeled it into a beam so powerful that it completely vaporized the area it had struck. The damage the weapon had dealt was beyond anything the scholars of Edenia had believed to even be possible, as it had created a chasm of such size, that, after it had filled with seawater, Nirion had now been turned from peninsula into a fully from the main-land disconnected island. No one knew the exact number of lives lost that day, but historians would later estimate them to be at least 250.000, most of which had been civilians.
Fearing that this devastating event could be replicated, the Magician's Guild dismantled Nihilus and destroyed both its parts and all documentation containing instructions of how it was used shortly after. Guilt ridden by the destruction he had caused, guild-master Rifton resigned from his position after he saw the grief and despair his decisions had caused, and left Edenia, never to be heard of again. Despite knowledge of the weapon having been destroyed shortly after it was used for the first time having spread rather quickly, the event struck fear into the minds of the people all across the world, forcing the nations who learned of it into a state of peace as no one dared to incite Edenia's wrath.
Centuries have now passed since Edenia's retaliation against Domitor, and the peace was upheld without a single incident. Many people from all over the world now traveled to Edenia to learn and research magic. However, though they were not the only ones capable of casting magic, only humans where allowed to join the Magician's Guild, as despite them having abolished most rules their founding nations had placed upon them, they still strongly held the believe that their sole purpose must remain the advancement of the human race.
An Age of Prosperity had washed over Corus but, as with most ages, this one too was fleeting, as the fate of Edenia, and with it humanity as a whole, would soon be turned on its head, all set in motion by the actions of a single archmage.