The 35-Year War

    To elaborate, soul stealing used to be a staple custom in human society. While other magically inclined races are able to accomplish the feat with years of dedicated training, the practice comes very naturally to humans as they are not inclined to elemental magic. This inclination helped develop their way of life.

Before the war, human society organized itself under a monarchy. To keep order, only the and his court

of sages had the ranking to keep collected souls safe. They would decide, together, what the souls would be used to promote and when they would be distributed. Very similar rules applied to the Soul Well. It was guarded by high ranking clerics who were the only ones allowed to enter it. They used its waters for their sacred ceremonies. The ’s subjects had permission to collect souls from

animals alone, a process that provided less magical power than that of a human soul or the soul well.

    As young children, humans learned how to steal the souls of animals they hunted or raised for food. These souls allow their magic to replenish far more quickly than normal. However, if the soul of a human, or any other mortal race, is stolen, it will grant the consumer increased magical capabilities and longevity. Despite this, soul stealing is essentially murder. Those humans who stole souls for their own gain were considered criminals, but were not always caught and apprehended. Mostly, human soul stealing was used as punishment for criminals. The majority of criminals would simply spend time in jail, but if someone were to await execution, this came to completion through soul stealing. The then collected these souls to be added to the royal collection.

    A soul stolen from someone while their body is still living is much stronger than a soul collected after death. The soul of the deceased must also be collected quickly. If too much time passes, the soul will disappear and be rendered unusable. A stolen soul does not have to be absorbed right away; they can be bottled with a spell for use at a later time.

    At the same time that Humans learned to master soul stealing, Elves and Dwarves settled nearby Vridia and began their own populations. While the Dwarves, who did not have as much skill in magic, existed in seclusion, wary of the magic users, Elves became fairly close to the humans. As time went on and cities began to develop, trade initiated between them as goods moved around the two settlements. It was not uncommon for humans to live in Elven cities or vice versa.

    Even with their coexistence, the Soul Well was still restricted from everyone except the human clerics. This did not bother the subjects of the human , as this had been their way of life since the beginning, and it had worked for them. However, the Elves were extremely curious of this well of power. They wished to study this source of magic, and the stories they had heard about the water enveloped them with desire. The humans refused to let them come near the sacred pool, and the Elves quickly realized that if they wanted the Soul Well, they would need to take it for themselves, even if that meant taking it by force. With such power at stake, the Elves were willing to kill to get what they wanted.

    Even So, the Elves knew that beginning a war with the humans would be a losing battle. The more people that died, the more powerful the humans would become. While some Elves could soul steal, their numbers were not nearly comparable to a whole fleet of humans with the natural ability. They could not attack the humans head-on with their current resources, and so they built their strategy off this weakness.

    Turning to the Dwarves, the Elves readied their army in secret over a span of five years to march into the Dwarven territory without warning. They did this with a very specific plan. The Dwarves, though not as skilled in magic as the other races, possessed the noteworthy ability to form and work with difficult metals and elements, and to enchant their weapons and armor. Their settlement also existed on top of a massive and rare Krucalt deposit. This metal is well known for being temperamental to work, but, if found by the Dwarves, it has the potential to make some of the most durable, portable, and powerful weapons and armor known to mortals. The Elves wished to exploit the Dwarves’ magical abilities, and the mines the town resided upon. Knowing well that the humans could not possibly own any weapons or armor of this caliber, the Elves believed that this armor, if enchanted, could give them to protection they needed against the soul stealers.

    Thus, with the sheer power of their numbers compared to the Dwarves, the Elves forced their opposing race to surrender. The Dwarven metalsmiths immediately were put to work. The Elves, wrought with the concept of the Soul Well, cruelly forced the Dwarves to work day in and day out on outfitting the Elven army. It took another five years to re-outfit the Elves with their Krucalt armor and by this point, word had reached the humans about the Elves’ plans. Aware that they had very little time to format their own army before an attack, the allowed the collected souls to be given to his subjects for battle, diminishing their stash completely.

    The battles began, and carnage ensued. Both the Elven and Human armies fairly matched one another, and the battles spread out for over 20 years. Though the humans engorged themselves with magical strength, they did not have the brilliant weapons and armor of the elves. While the Human offense was strong, their scrapped together defense was lackluster and when the Elves won battles, it truly damaged the human’s resilience.

    Even though they held the advantage, the Elves’ grew weary of the length of the war. Both the Humans and the Elves were experiencing greatly diminished resources, and their soldiers began to lose moral as they wished for peace. In response to this, Elven ambassadors made haste to track down and meet with members of human groups who illegally collected and sold souls. By offering them handsome amounts of money, the ambassadors managed to get the black market members to pose as agents of the Human and cause controversy in their kingdom. These black market members killed citizens in the broad of day, pretending to do so by orders of the . They claimed the wished to collect more souls in an effort to replenish those that were lost to the war efforts. These criminals made the subjects believe that the wanted souls to increase production of weapons, armor, food, etc. This sparked fear in the human kingdom.

    In the midst of war, this appearing act of betrayal by their own shook the citizens. To be attacked by the leader circulated distress throughout their numbers as they felt they had no one and nowhere to turn to. Exhausted by war and livid with distrust, anarchy soon erupted in the Human kingdom. While their armies still struggled to keep up with the power of the Elves, the citizens of Vridia needed someone to blame, and overtook the throne to kill their once-beloved for his alleged treason. This left his court of Clerics to lead the kingdom and protect the Soul Well on their own.

    More Elven ambassadors made their way to the human Kingdom, and marched to the stronghold of the Clerics to strike them a deal. If the Clerics handed over the Kingdom, including the soul well, the Elves would end the war and restore balance to the land. Whatever their choice, the Clerics knew that they would lose the war without any true leadership, as they were already losing with the alive to help them. Under this logic and with heavy hearts, they agreed to hand over their sacred land to the Elves.

    Triumphantly, the Elves laid claim to the Kingdom of Vridia, and set their Dwarves to begin rebuilding the city and to make a new citadel for the leadership of an Elven governor. Without any mercy, the Elves round up the clerics and sages who helped lead the kingdom and protect the lake for slaughter. In doing this, they wished to send a message to their human subjects that their old way of life was over. To exercise the extent of their power, the Elves abolished the use of Soul Stealing, and sent their own clerics to the Soul Well to study its power. By this point, another five years had passed and the 35 year war came to a bitter end.

    After the surrender of humans, the Elves began to use the Dwarves’ metalworking and the energy from the crystal shard to create new technology and build a great city over the lake where the crystal sat. The Dwarves were sent to labor on construction of the city and toiling in the mines while the humans began working in the factories or tending to the farmland. The Elves reaped the benefits of controlling the land, and it’s residents. Many years passed and humans and dwarves slowly began to have more freedom, but the Elves still remained in leadership of the city, holding high ranking positions of power. They still offered protection and a “good” way of life to their citizens, as long as they remained under the Elven rule. Other races began to move into the city, hoping for protection and wealth, but it’s punishing to live in a world of oppression and disparity.