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The Dark Tragedy of Eternus and The Great Purge of Magick
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"The vast Empire of Eternus encompasses nearly all the known lands of the world, reaching out to rule over every known town or city within its sights. Regardless of how small or limited in resources these civilizations may be, the Empire makes it a top priority that everyone within its realm is taken care of; taken care of and watched. The lands are filled with all kinds of beasts and magickal creatures, some intelligent enough to live in a functioning society, such as the elves and humans, while the rest are savage and take refuge within the wilds of nature. These creatures take any opportunity they can get to attack those who live in modern civilization, like the terrifying barghests lurking within the darkest of forests, or the goblins, who form their own clans and societies and hide within the tallest of mountains. Then there are those who simply choose not to live or are unable to live within the modernized societies of Eternus, retaining their lifestyle in the wilds with their own brethren, such as the faeries or merfolk.
The Empire has always been known as a fair and decent place to dwell. Poverty was low, employment and occupation was high and steady, taxes were reasonable, and society was peaceful. The only problem its denizens had struggled with was the monstrosities that infested the wilds, those very same savage beings that hungered for the flesh of the civilized. Traveling alone from city to city would prove dangerous to the inexperienced warrior, but even with this complication, the Empire has always offered its hand in protecting its travelers with escorts and entourages.
The figurehead of the Empire is, of course, the Emperor. The will of the Emperor is absolute; none dare challenge the finality of their ruler in any decision or thought that leaves his lips. The members of his council are his close advisers and the ones who elect him to the position. These councilmen are widely varied by race and from where they hail, so decision making in the Empire often reflects the concerns of all its people, rather than a biased selection. An Emperor or Empress can only be chosen by one of two methods: if there is a current Emperor still living, the Emperor must be killed in a battle set by his own terms; the alternative is that his councilmen decide to replace him with another of their choosing if his duty has run its course or if he passes on through natural death. Killing the Emperor is most often the more difficult of choices since he chooses the method of battle and sets the rules for the fight. The second choice may prove to be just as difficult, however, as a person must win the favor of all councilmen unanimously. This means that the candidate must pull the counsel’s favor away from the current Emperor, as he would have their support as their prior chosen to begin with.
The Empire is mostly compromised of humans, and originally so was its political office, but others of different ethnicity had eventually integrated themselves with the humans and rose through the ranks of their administration. Elves were commonly found in higher political positions, as were a handful of dwarves, gnomes, and when they chose to leave their sacred wild lands, faeries. There weren’t restrictions on who or what could rise in rank within the Empire, but there was a rule that governed who could actually become the Emperor of Eternus, a tiny detail that would eventually lead to the undoing of the current Emperor himself. The rule was that only those of a human descent could be Emperor. Though not many people really believed there was a reason for a new Emperor, since it was he who had maintained the land’s peace for so long, this restriction had planted a dark seed of hatred and jealousy within a group of non-humans that would lead to one of the darkest eras in all of Eternus' history. There was one in this group whose sole desire was to become Emperor, but he knew that he would never be accepted as Emperor unless he was a human.
This man shot through the rankings of the Empire very quickly, rising far above all of his peers and even befriending the Emperor himself. As time passed and their friendship grew, this man had begun to weave a spell of the most darkest of magicks to consume the Emperor. This spell would bind him in the mind and put his every action under the command of the caster of the spell. The hatred that fueled this man's ambition was strong, and he would have his revenge on the world for not giving him a chance, not allowing him to show that he could be just as good, if not better, than a human leader. Humans, the weak and magickl incaptable beings that claimed this world as their own, would pay for the unjust Empire they forced unto the world. No one suspected what was going on; no one batted an eye at the changes the Emperor was going through, not until it was too late. He announced that a bright, new future was being planned for his Empire, and that this new era would be the grounding point for a future worth living for, a future that would embrace magick as the tool of innovation. Shortly after his announcement, each human holding a position in his counsel was murdered in cold blood, accused of treason for attempting to overthrow the throne. The controversy exploded within the capital. Humans had feared for their lives as the magick folk around them begun to look upon them with judgmental and accusing eyes. The seed would further sprout. The plan was all too well played out, and any and all faults were carefully constructed to fall upon the humans of the city, rather than the manipulator behind the Emperor.
From there, every other human being that played a part in the running of the Empire was annihilated. Their families next, and it continued until the entire capital of Eternus was cleared of the human filth that writhed within it. Enslavement, torture, and genocidal camps were among the worst atrocities that had begun under the “new rule” of the Emperor.
This friend of the Emperor was drowning in the pleasure of his tyranny, a little too obviously for his own good. The one flaw that this plan had was that the Emperor himself was a human being. The other humans started to pick up on the strange relationship between the Emperor and his friend: how they were always secretly communication in hushed tones, how they would shut the world out for extended amounts of time, how they both would laugh at the terror he was creating for human life. The laugh, it was so similar between them; it was as if the laugh was the same, the exact same. The humans had become suspicious, beginning to believe that dark magicks were involved, that a malevolent force of evil had taken their Emperor from them. While they still had a small bit of hope left in them, they banded together. They fought back against the oppression and rescued many from the clutches of the unjust ruler. A guild was formed, the liberators of mankind, The Legion of Empyrean. They marched through the country and recruited any human willing to fight, until their numbers had overpowered the numbers of the Emperor’s now non-human army. They marched faster than word could travel, until they found themselves standing on the doorstep of the Emperor himself. In only one night, one swift raid, the Emperor’s manipulator was run through by more than just one blade. Everyone wanted their bit of revenge on the maniac that killed so many of their kind. After the last drop of blood fell from his body, the dark haze in the Emperor’s mind had diminished, and he returned to his normal self. Everyone thought that they would fall into peaceful times once again, now that the tyranny of the manipulator had ended. This was far from the truth.
After hearing the story of how he was controlled by a non-human, he instantly set in place a new regimen of ruling. First, he knighted the entirety of the new guild and called them heroes. He bound them by a blood pact to the duty of the eternal protection of his existence. They now are his personal guardsmen, protectors of his towns, and soldiers of his armies. You can’t go more than a hundred feet without seeing one in any city or on any main road. Second, a ban on Magick was put into place. Anyone performing even the slightest bit of sorcery would be killed without question. And finally, his last regulation, the worst of all, was that all non-humans were to be excommunicated from human society, and that those who were not of pure human blood still living in his lands would be extinguished. This was the start of what later would be called The Great Purge of Magick. Creatures of all races, genders, and ages were killed. Humans were the only ones safe in Eternus anymore, a complete flip compared to previous events. The Emperor stopped at nothing to snuff any inhuman creature from his realm: burning through his forests to set ablaze any elf or faerie body he could find, collapsing the entrances to the caves of the mountain dwarves and leaving them to starve trapped in their holes and homes, and even sending his best hunters and fishers to catch any merfolk too close to the surface of the ocean, to use them as food for his people and sport their heads as war trophies.
The world had become a different place. The Purge still goes on, but the races of the world are thinned and few. It’s seldom that you see anyone other than humans anymore, and those who aren't human must conceal themselves to avoid the risk of drawing any attention from the members of Legion, who are actively carrying out The Purge as the word and law of the Emperor himself. Magick has been declared an abomination that has no place in the Empire of Eternus or its future, magick or magick folk."
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