Chapter 1

PROLOGUE Long ago, there raged a great and terrible war. A grueling, interminable, and truly bloody conflict. The entire continent of Vastonia became a battleground, swallowed up by the seemingly endless mires of combat. None could recall what had originally sparked the fighting. According to elven legend, the cause of it all had been when the prince of demons had kidnapped the princess of the kingdom of humans. The dwarves, however, told a different tale. They said it all began when the human king had the village of the demons ransacked and destroyed. Putting the various legends together, it was easy enough to guess that the conflict began between humans and demons. But today, there were none still alive to tell the tale of who struck the first blow. History tells us that the war lasted for more than five thousand years. The continent of Vastonia was home to no less than twelve distinct races, and all were swept up in the conflict. All believed the fighting would last forever. Children were born in war. Their parents were born in war. Their grandparents were born in war. And so on. It was the same for everyone. There were no memories of peacetime. Even the elves, who could live for five hundred years, were no different in this respect. All grew up believing their destiny lay in becoming soldiers. And all believed their children and grandchildren would be born to a similar fate, to battle on forevermore. They were all stuck fighting a war that they could see no way to bring to an end, for causes none could recall, and for reasons no one even thought to question. But then one day, without warning, the war ended. No one could recall how it began, but all would remember what brought the great war to its conclusion. It was the Demon Lord Geddigs. When he appeared, the tides of war suddenly shifted. He was a truly remarkable figure. He was overflowing with charisma, certainly far more than any other Demon Lord in ages past. In his hundred-year reign as ruler, he established an alliance spearheaded by the demons, which banded them together with six other races: the ogres, the fairies, the harpies, the succubi, the lizardmen, and the orcs. Known as the Coalition of Seven, it was the first time these races had worked together, and with a new sense of battle doctrine alive within them, they managed to dominate the remaining four human-led tribes, expanding their sphere of influence over a wider terrain than ever before. It was a terrible tragedy for the human-led faction, known as the Alliance of Four Races. Never before had those seven other races formed a united front against them. The harpies would speedily airlift the ogres, who were innately slow due to their hulking size. The succubi would spread their peach-hued, fog-like charm mist across the marshlands, and then the lizardmen, who were immune to this magical effect, would charge across the marsh to press the attack. Such coordination had never occurred before among those races, except by happenstance. The Alliance of Four, which had long been cooperating, was utterly powerless to resist. But at the same time, an opportunity presented itself. The army brought together by the Demon Lord Geddigs and formed of seven united races was like an impenetrable slab of stone. Yet despite the vast strength and sparkling charisma he possessed, Geddigs himself represented a huge weak point. This vulnerability possessed by Geddigs the demon—rather than Geddigs the king—was unknown to the Alliance of Four, of course. But they could more easily predict what fate would await them—their complete and total annihilation—unless, of course, the figurehead Geddigs could be toppled. And so the Demon Lord became their target. During the battle of Remium Plateau, a suicide squad led by four main players infiltrated deep into the demon army and attacked Geddigs. The four leaders consisted of the Human Prince Nazar, the Elf Archmage Thunder Sonia, the Dwarf Battlelord Dradoradobanga, and the Beastkin Champion Rett. There were many casualties. Battlelord Dradoradobanga and Beastkin Champion Rett lost their lives in the final fight against Geddigs, and over half of the suicide squad did not survive. Though Geddigs was slain, Human Prince Nazar also incurred heavy injuries during the battle and was forced to withdraw. There was a dramatic change following the death of Geddigs. With his loss, the Coalition of Seven had lost their leader. With astonishing rapidity, their union began to fall apart. There was no one in place to succeed Geddigs. Without anyone in charge to even issue the most basic of orders, the coalition’s chain of command collapsed in the face of heavy attacks. And with the seven races scrambling, waiting for orders that would never come, the four races of the human faction easily moved in and mopped up. If the leaders of each race hadn’t finally stepped in and begun to take charge of their own factions, several of the races may have gone completely extinct during the ensuing conflict. The Coalition of Seven disbanded, rejecting demon law and returning to fighting as separate, hostile armies, as they had done before Geddigs had united them all. For tactical reasons, the seven had primarily paired off—ogres with harpies, succubi with lizardmen, and orcs with fairies. But without leadership, these mini-factions could no longer operate effectively in tandem and were cut down at every turn. Five years passed after the death of Geddigs. And in those five years, the seven races had lost control of all their territory. Every piece of land they had obtained over the past hundred years, lost. The Coalition of Seven expected to be completely overthrown, their demise a foregone conclusion. Such was the power of the remaining four races. But then peace talks were suggested. Human Prince Nazar was the one to bring up this option during a meeting of the Alliance of Four. “Why not give them a second chance?” he asked. “Why not offer peace?” The people also echoed this sentiment. It had been a long war. The last hundred years in particular had been especially brutal and bloody. They were all tired of fighting. The truth of it was that the Alliance of Four was long past its limits. In the past hundred years of Geddigs’s rule, the four races had all suffered heavy reductions in population. The humans, elves, dwarves, and beastkin were dwindling in number. Life expectancy rates had taken a nosedive, and there was no longer any faith that they would be able to raise the next generation of children to adulthood. Everyone wanted to rest. They’d all had enough. What would happen if the seven races somehow struggled free of the corner they were trapped in, banded together once more, and launched another attack? Could the human faction win a second time? What would happen next? Perhaps this war would only lead to mutually assured destruction if it was allowed to continue. In this brief pocket of opportunity, where the human faction had the right to speak, their message had to be one of peace. So said Nazar. The higher-ups of the three other races of the human faction were said to have their doubts. “They’ll never abide by the rules of peace,” they remarked darkly. But when peace talks were actually offered, a strange thing happened. The other races all fell in line. Even the ogres, whose ability to process language was always in doubt, and the orcs, who relished nothing more in life than the opportunity to fight, pillage, and steal enemy women, accepted the conditions that put them at a disadvantage and agreed to peace. And so the war ended. At long last, the conflict was over. Three years passed. Our tale now brings us to the third year of what has been dubbed the Age of Peace. After a brief period during which everyone was stunned to find that the long war was truly over, they began to rebuild. The towns that had been ravaged by war began to return to life. Merchants began to trade with the different races, babies were born, and there were signs that the population was beginning to increase again. Gradually, all began to open their eyes to peace and to embark upon new challenges. Education, the arts, trade, entertainment…all the things that had been cast aside and disregarded during wartime were suddenly exalted, and the societies of the different races began to undergo rapid change. The Age of Peace had passed through its first act, and now the stage was set for what would come next. Our story begins during this moment in time, in a country that is home to one of the defeated races of war: The country of the orcs.