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Message: <blockquote data-quote="zoroaster100" data-source="post: 4311182" data-attributes="member: 8538">Intro and A Cryptic Prophesy of DoomThe World Needs HeroesThe World is no longer what it once was.  As little as a century ago, the mighty empire of Nerath held sway over all the known lands.  Eladrin oracles were welcomed by human sages in Nerath’s centers of learning.  Halfling wanderers were greeted with joy in every town.  Dwarven merchants from Hammerfast Hold were met with anticipation when they brought their mastercraft jewels and ornaments to market.  The elves were given autonomous guardianship of the woods and wild places.  The few remaining dragonborn clans bound themselves to serve the Nerathian Emperor, forming a holy order in service to the Platinum Dragon, their deity and creator.   The dragonborn Order of the East Wind swore to keep a watchful eye against the threat of evil dragonkind.   Indeed, those were glorious times.  But the empire of Nerath is no more.   Like the tiefling empire of Bael-Turath that came before it, Nerath collapsed after a decades-long struggle against its adversaries.   Now ruins of the once-great Nerathian empire lie like shipwrecks in the hills, grim reminders of Nerath’s shattered dream of peace and prosperity.  In more recent times, the elves have become largely isolationist, forbidding entry to their sacred groves and forests to all other races except their sundered brethren, the eladrin.  The eladrin have in turn largely withdrawn from the Middle World, consumed by their own problems in the Fey world.  The dragonborn are nearly extinct, and the remnants of their once-proud race now hire themselves out as mercenaries, while their leaders continue to keep an ever more hopeless guard against the growing influence of evil dragons.   Humans live in mostly small villages and towns, increasingly isolated from each other by the danger of all manner of bandits and brigands who prey on unwary travelers, including kobolds, goblins, orcs and worse monsters (and maybe the very worst of all, depraved humans who have embraced cruel and barbarous ways).  Civilization has been reduced to a few fading points of light in a growing sea of dark.  The World is in need of heroes to keep the last remaining points of light from being snuffed out.A Cryptic Prophecy of DoomIn these already dark times, a dark prophesy of doom was received by the eladrin.  Upon receiving a nightmare vision of the future too dreadful to speak of, the eladrin High Oracle, Beliritha the Chosen, screamed and screamed until she died of horror.  The eladrin Lesser Oracles consulted among themselves, and decided to ask the High Magus of the Starfire Court to send an agent to the Middle World to seek an explanation for the cryptic prophecy and to learn what trouble might be brewing amongst the mortal races of the World.  But the High Magus is apparently too consumed by his own machinations and plots within the eladrin Queen’s court.  Queen Mirian Starfire’s monarchy is threatened by a challenger within her own clan, and the eladrin are abuzz with competing plots to support her or to undermine her rule.  Still, the Oracles cannot be altogether ignored.  So the High Magus sent his Least Apprentice, Xandir Starmoon, into the dangerous Middle World, armed only with a beginner’s spellbook, a sword, and a scroll for a single divination ritual.   And to guide him, Xandir has only the Oracles’ vague warnings, and a cryptic prediction about half-elves whose fate is somehow bound up with a coming Darkness.</blockquote>

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