Prologue – A Dream
There once was a dream. A dream that people who had never met before shared. For this to be possible, only by experiencing the same nightmare. This nightmare had a name. Gralgor. Not just one, but many. The Winged Death, Rage Incarnate, Evil In Scales, Doom From Above, Ruin of Life, Black Devastation, The Last Fire, Burner of All, The Beast, The First Calamity, The End of the World. The number of its names grew along with its fame. That thing was more than a dragon, it was a punishment, as soothsayers said all over the world. It killed, destroyed and burned without distinction. Good. Bad. For Gralgor, there were only victims. That is until there were servants. The Beast began to see value in the existing and potential tyranny wherever it went. The dragon seemed to have an incredible and arrogant sympathy for the oppression that beings he considered inferior were capable of carrying out against beings even more inferior. Gralgor’s disgust for the wretched was so great that he felt no motivation to even blow a spark of his fire to incinerate them, or even move his colossal paws to crush them like vermin. No, the suffering and despair of those who were already slaves did not amuse or delight him. There was no pleasure in taking the lives of those who did not even have one. Thus, Gralgor preferred to allow the existence of tyrannies that exploited and removed the pleasure of life from the lives he would no longer take pleasure in taking. Devotion and tributes. Everything that Gralgor asked of those who remained governing due to his benevolence. Whether with statues, monuments, temples and prayers, they paid their devotion. Whether with gold, jewels or slaves, they paid the tributes. All in exchange for not having their empires that took years to build, destroyed in a few days. The continent was then taken over by corruption, cruelty, violence, ambition and tyranny. Gralgor took possession of the region of Swormundí, in the center of Eredwyn. A flat region of vast green fields, now obscured by the presence of the Beast and his fanatical followers. Because it was located in the center of the continent, Gralgor kept its territory close to all the governments that owed it money, moving an immense amount of resources and people to the core, like a true funnel that unified and monopolized everything on the edges. False devotion and forced payments. This was how the tyrants supported by the dragon kept their governments and themselves alive. Always keeping their proud heads low, for they were afraid to look up and see nothing but the dragonfire that would extinguish their ambitions for great conquests. Through strength and fear, Gralgor brought the greatest names on the continent to their knees, and kept them that way throughout his life. All these tyrants who had their plans and ambitions curbed would be known as “Successors”. In the south, there was Maliris. The oldest, at least among those born in Eredwyn, of the tyrants conquered and allowed to continue existing by the First Calamity. His government was the Dranate, which he ruled with his descendants generated and multiplied over 300 years. Dranis, they called themself; all who had the blood of Maliris in their veins. Being an elf, Maliris tolerated the elves in his Dranate, but only Dranis were true citizens with rights and true freedom. Any other race and individual who was part of them and did not demonstrate great usefulness was promptly enslaved and assigned to carry out the activity that their drani master found most necessary. Through 3 centuries, countless descendants, and blood supremacy, Maliris made the Dranate the largest empire in Eredwyn. In the east, it was the domain of Golenat. One of the two Successors who were not born in Eredwyn. He was an Interegor, a being born from the essence and will of a god, in his case, the god Horblash, The Peacemaker and The Ruler. Horblash was not even a god of the planet Eredwyn, in fact being one of the Profane Universal Gods, with reach and influence throughout the universe. Golenat was brought to the planet by Maliris to help him against an enemy which the king of the drani was having great difficulty in overcoming. The Interegor and his allies were the leader of the Dranate, but not beyond that enemy. After the victory, Golenat took the newly conquered territory for himself, reaching a stalemate where Maliris or even Golenat himself were able to defeat each other without great losses. In this way, Golenat established itself in eastern Eredwyn as a profane kingdom where cruelty, malice and wickedness are more than valued, they are rewarded. This union of different beings, mortals and immortals, servants and devotees of malice and cruelty became known as the Unholy Alliance. In the northeast, there was Hanadon. Along with Golenat, Hanadon was not native to the planet, nor even to that Plane of Existence. Being a member of the spiritual race of the Oni, Hanadon warred against the natives of the isolated region of Desoria. Despite the number and strength of his race, born of the spirit Rekonitar, The Great Arm, the oni were the monsters hunted and massacred in the region; that is, until the arrival of the Winged Death. Gralgor turned the tables on Desoria, making the oni the dominant ones in the region, now hunting and enslaving the mortal races that lived there. Being the strongest of his kind at that time, the dragon placed him in command. Since then, the oni ruled Desoria with great strength and hatred for those who hunted them and who were now oppressed by them. Without the mortals of Desoria to contain the oni population, the day would come when these monsters could no longer fit in the isolated region alone. In the north, Voligar emerged. In the icy region of Joturn, the giant Voligar was not allowed to continue ruling by the dragon,