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- Character cannot be developed
- in ease and quiet.
- Only through experiences
- of trial and suffering
- can the soul be strengthened,
- vision cleared, ambition inspired
- and success achieved.
- Helen Keller
The Kingdom of Kronar, before the last great rising of the dark, was a massive global kingdom, ruled by an enlightened administration consisting of the king, who by tradition was always human, his privy council of barons, who represented the interests of the noble class, and an elected body known as the Congress of Kronar, whose members served five year terms of office. Elections to this body were staggered so that no more than one third of the congress was standing for re-election at any time, and no person was allowed to serve more than two terms of office. The king and his council could veto actions of the congress, but in turn, the congress could override that veto if they could muster a two-thirds majority.
The people of Kronar were, in general, literate and well educated, given that education was mandatory, requiring twelve years of schooling for every child, and further education was on a voluntary two track system. Track one was towards advanced collegium level studies in areas ranging from business management and engineering, to advanced magical theory, while track two was towards skills that required a more manual touch such as metalsmithing, cabinet making, and construction.
Track one students, which generally amounted to about 30% of the student pool in any given year, would spend three years earning a first level degree, which some elected to follow up with two additional years of master level training before joining the workforce. Certain skills required the master level degree to practice, such as those practitioners of the ars magica who specialized as healers; an art nearly lost after the forces of the rising dark destroyed much of the world’s social infrastructure.
Track two students generally spent a year in classroom instruction before joining their respective guild, which took the students and assigned them to a master craftsman as apprentices, where they would complete their training. These students would rise within the guild hierarchy to the level their native skill and drive would take them. The guilds had an apprentice, primary, secondary, and master level, and less than ten percent of craftspeople ever reached the master level of any given trade.
At its peak, Kronar had ten principalities, which eventually became the eleven kingdoms after the rising of the dark splintered the great kingdom. Each principality was administered by a prince regent, who was of the dominant race from that region. For example, the prince regent of the Greenwood was always of elvin blood: which meant the prince regent could be Asrai, Alvar, Hazar, or an elf, but was normally an Alvar. Each principality had its own regional congress to administer to local affairs and issues. The nation had a series of roving lower courts to administer the king’s justice when and where necessary. Decisions of the lower courts could be appealed to the upper court in Kelandra, who were the final arbiters in matters of law throughout the old kingdom.
The nation and its people were, in the main, content and prosperous, with plenty of opportunity to advance one’s station in life through hard work and determination. This contentment, in the end, proved their undoing, for when the forces of the dark, led by Zixor of the Asrai, attacked, far too many chose to ignore the threat, or to believe that it was not something that could happen to them, and that their leaders could respond effectively to a threat none of them fully comprehended.
As a result, the response of the free peoples against the aggression of the Asrai was slow, uncoordinated, and ineffective. Given the centuries of peace the kingdom had enjoyed, its armed forces were little more than ceremonial in nature and not prepared for the kind of brutal, naked terror being brought to bear against people who knew nothing of war. In the end, it was the elvin and dwarven peoples who remembered their martial heritage and began to mount an effective resistance against the progenitors of the elvin peoples, the Asrai.
The leaders of the elvin people, the Alvar, met with the leaders of the Dwarven peoples, the Damarrk, and forged an alliance which enabled the two peoples to fight as a team and to begin the process of extending protections to the floundering human leaders of Kronar, who were facing threats they had never imagined, on a global scale.
In a war lasting for generations, it was an Alvar prince, Kostin, who discovered the breeding programs of the Asrai that developed the orc, goblin, harpy, undead, and yes, the quarter-blood Asrai. When Kostin found how powerful the quarter Asrai were, he led an assault team that freed the quarter Asrai, who, in gratitude, joined the fight against their former masters. As things began to go badly for the Asrai, they lost control of their most potent weapon, the undead. These unnatural creatures saw the opportunity to throw off the yoke imposed by their creators and rose en masse against the Asrai.
While it is commonly believed that it was the participation of the quarter Asrai that led to the downfall of the Asrai nation, this was only part of the story. The revolt of the undead was put down, barely, with massive losses to the ranks of the Asrai. The revolt, and its associated losses, badly frightened the Asrai, with Zixor himself falling to an onslaught of undead. Still, the timing of the revolt couldn’t have been better for the combined forces arrayed against the forces of darkness. While many of the Asrai were fully engaged in putting down the revolt of the undead, and sealing them away for all time, the forces of the other races attacked the dark alliance while it was severely weakened and its attention focused elsewhere. The final battle was not a walk in the park by any means, with great loss of life inflicted on both sides, but gradually, the forces of the light won the day through the combined effects of the undead revolt, the loss of the dark force leadership, and the surprise of their attack.
In the end, the quarter Asrai, in cooperation with the leaders of the gold and silver dragons, consigned the Asrai and a large number of their more rabid followers to the lower planes of existence, to dwell forever in the misery they had inflicted on a war-weary world. The quarter Asrai lived for many years, aiding the reconstruction of Gaia, and the healing of its many wounds before ascending to the higher planes of existence, where they became the gods of the new age.
While the new gods and goddesses dealt with many of the threats posed by the darkness, they left in place tools that the right person, with the proper balance of charisma, strength, and force of will, could use to dark ends: those tools were the orc, the goblin, and the dark dragons. The new gods allowed them to continue to exist out of hope they could one day be redeemed, when in reality, they grew to huge numbers and provided a ready weapon when Farwalker Redbush stood ready to start his mad gamble to free the Hazar, yet another race that had fallen under the sway of dark influences.
Those influences would lead the Hazar into a second rising of the dark, but this time, the leaders of the free peoples saw the signs and acted quickly, destroying the threat as it emerged, and banishing the survivors from the land of the living for time and all eternity, sealing them away with the most complicated spell-craft ever seen, spell-craft so complex, the gods themselves became involved to ensure the safe completion of the wards over the old Ravenrock fortress. Still, the gods hoped that one day, the Hazar might be redeemed, and so the wards were keyed to a relic of the God Mecaii, the Xendon stone, which was eventually given to the servants of Vindayin for safekeeping. The Xendon stone was said to be stored at the Abbey of our Lady in White, in a place not of this world. Over time, the stone was forgotten by the world at large, and even by the servants of Vindayin. Thus, its secrets remained safe for centuries, until the knowledge of the stone came into the possession of the traitorous former chancellor of the Greenwood: Farwalker Redbush.