There are many who believe that the prime material plane was created as a battleground for proxy war between the gods. During its conception, the gods had agreed to leave the plane magic-less, but it wasn’t long before the gods of darkness and evil conspired to give their worshippers the upper hand. The Goddess, Shavash, granted favor and power to the world’s first warlock. He used this power to conquer the continents of Carime and Selea and to research the illusive immortality of the gods.

As old age came upon the warlock, and death threatened to steal everything he had worked for, he put his research to use. In a dark ritual, he used the power of his own spilt blood to bind his soul within a crystal reliquary. He awoke several days later as the Lich King Malex.

The Lich King’s power flooded the lands and even threatened the good gods themselves.

So Mythstral, Goddess of magic, formulated a plan to stop him. She sought the aid of the ancient Fey Lord Archron, a master of the arcane, for while she could open the gates and allow the weave of magic to spill into the prime material plane, she could not teach the mortals to wield it.

The Fey lord agreed to help Mythstral and traveled to the prime material plane. He traveled the land, teaching people of races to harness the gift Mythstral had given them. The first six mortals he taught became known as The Pupils, and they helped him spread knowledge of the arcane weave to the farthest and darkest corners of the world.

After some time, they were finally ready to confront Malex and put an end to his bloody kingdom. The Fey lord and The Pupils, along with King Parzival the first and the army of Ahazura met Malex on the Fields of Eirinor and it was there they were defeated. The Lich King’s army crushed the defenders and Malex slew the lord and his pupils. It seemed all was lost, and the prime material plane would forever belong to the gods of evil.

But one Pupil survived. It is said he awoke amongst the dead the morning after their defeat to find a titanic, beautiful, ash tree had grown from the field where his master had died. (The very tree of which The Sacred Hall was built around) Some survivors of the battle watched as the pupil reached his hand into the heart of the tree and pulled out a staff of silver, ashen wood.

The Pupil healed the injured King Parzival, rallied the stragglers and the survivors, and they took off on a suicidal dash toward the army that had destroyed them. Wielding his new staff, Uradlevue as it would come to be known, the Pupil charged down the Lich King and his army and blew them away with magic the likes of which had never been seen or have ever been seen since. He killed the Lich King in single combat and the surviving Ahazurans helped scatter the remains of his army.

After the battle was won and the world was safe, it is said that the pupil took Uradlevue into the Dragonscale mountains and was never seen again.

Our world was once a magic-less plane until Mythstral opened a tear and let in her weave during the War of the Lich King.

The Weave was considered many things, including Mythstral’s body, the source of magic, all the studies of casters, arcane and divine alike, and the many energies and forces that existed around the planes. Many saw it as a “fabric” on which magic was “drawn”, and damaging the fabric caused magic to go awry. Some textbooks deliberately falsified the nature of the Weave, as an attempt to limit the knowledge associated with spellcasting. To most scholars, casting a spell is equivalent to telling the weave to rearrange itself to create an effect.

During the year 3954 Arcanlux (A.L.) , The Goddess Mythstral was assassinated by Balzor, the dark God of destruction. This caused what was known as The Rupture, a wild explosion of magic that tore the fabric of reality between planes. For 20 years, these tears allowed beings of all kinds free reign of the multiverse. Demons and devils, elementals and beasts never before seen, rampaged across our world. For 20 years, all magic use on our plane became unpredictable, as likely to not work at all as too work much too powerfully.

In what would become year 0 of our current age, Post Rupture (P.R.), King Parzival the fifth rallied the kingdoms of Vorel much as his namesake did during the War of the Lich King. They beat back and banished the invading evil, but there despite all their efforts, they could not seal the tears.

Until his daughter, Sopheria, found the answers in her prayers. Sopheria was considered a prodigy of the arcane arts and a devout student and worshipper of Mythstral. In her meditation a whisper of Mythstral, left behind by the murdered Goddess, revealed itself to her. It told her that Mythstral knew of the assassination but allowed it to happen, for her weave had been becoming twisted and knotted and it was time for an ending and renewal. It gave her a spell and told her what she must do.

So, she went to her father who called upon the armies, and they sailed for Baldock, the continent where the first and largest of the tears appeared. For three months, they warred across the continent, fighting their way through the demons and devils who had made this place their home. Finally, they made it to the Prime Tear. In the heat of the battle, Sopheria and her men broke through the demon line and approached. She spoke the spell Mythstral had taught her and threw herself into the tear.

A cacophony of magic tore across the battlefield and a blinding flash of light sealed the tears. The King watched as his daughter’s body was lifted to air and dissolved into threads of light. Sopheria had sacrificed herself to stabilize the planes and for her efforts, she was granted apotheosis. She became the successor to Mythstral, Goddess of Magic and Knowledge and Caretaker of the Weave. Magic stabilized and the people of the world got to work.

Over the next several years, the creatures who had moved in were killed or banished back to their realms. Some few beings of great power or cunning are said to have remained behind, even to this day.

Just outside the city of New Anima, there lived a half-elven painter. He was renowned throughout the world as a cutting-edge artist. The raw emotion of his pieces touched the lives of all who saw them and propelled him to the status of a living legend.

One day, while attending an unveiling of his addition to Seekerhold’s Hall of Kings, a grand portrait of King Gerinald the 2nd, bandits raided his home. He returned to find the blossoms of flame curling around the structure and the broken, lifeless bodies of his wife and children within. It was too late. There was nothing he could do but stand and watch his life turn to ash on the wind.

Despondency gripped the painter, and in one final act of creation, he used the ashes of the fire to concoct a paint of the deepest black. With it, he set to work on his masterpiece. A landscape of black and grays, and a story of a shattered soul.

The painting was shown to a small group of friends at the funeral for the painter’s family. All 20 people who saw the painting are said to have died by suicide and mysterious circumstances in the coming days. This included the painter, who leaned his throat against the point of his family’s longsword until he collapsed to the hilt.

His blood is said to have left a stain of the deepest, purest black along the blade. The sword was taken from the scene by the painter’s brother, but he was found dead, and the sword was gone only a few days later.

From there, reports of the weapon have cropped up across the continent of Ahazura. Whether by the strange machinations of man, or the rumored power of the blade, it seems to be continually wandering, restless. Searching for the peace its owner was not able to find in his final days.