Dakor

History

Formed over 1750 years ago, the Empire of Dakor is the largest and longest lived human empire in history. The empire grew into existence during the Elf War when the numerous human kingdoms of the region had encroached onto elven lands and provoked militant factions among the elves to remove the risk of humanity from the world. For the first time the entire elven military mobilized and moved into human lands, not with the goal of conquest or rule, but to exterminate the vermin. Humanity was woefully unprepared to face the elves, and kingdom after kingdom was destroyed utterly without quarter. While some slaves were taken, the vast majority of the defeated kingdoms were burned to the ground on the bones of its women and children. Elves are incredibly gifted with magecraft, and the traditional elven magic was strong enough to defeat what skilled practitioners among humanity took the field against them, but this paled in comparison to their High Magic. High Magic may only be wielded by rituals controlled by multiple master mages, or Ascended immortals, and the elves had both of these available to them. Their court High Mages took the field intending to end the human plague quickly. Powerful illusions, enchantments, imbued weapons, and waves of insanity decimated the human forces until one man united the remaining kingdoms against the elves. Tyrian Dakor was a professed battle mage, a master of elemental magic beyond what the world had yet seen.

Tyrian united the kingdoms and enlisted all of the remaining human mages into a cadre trained personally by him. He taught the most gifted among these mages secrets to elemental High Magic, a dangerous and volatile form of High Magic even the elves had not mastered. With these formidable powers humanity unleashed a holy fury against the elves in retaliation for the attempted genocide. Battle after battle waged Tyrian and his cadre against scores of elven high mages and tens of thousands of elven soldiers… each time, ruin fell upon the elves as their protective magics failed, and waves of fire, ice, lightning, and stone tore them apart. The world itself groaned from the force of the magic unleashed during these battles. These battles were costly for Tyrian however, and his cadre died at an alarming rate, as much from the powers they channelled as from enemy attacks. His soldiers waited for the titanic magics to finish crashing, and fought their own desperate battles against the elven soldiers. Each side was clinging to life, but among the elven court it was voiced by the arch-magi that the humans would destroy the entire planet with their newfound magic if the war continued. Desperation would drive them to pushing the power out of control, and all races would die. The elven king acceded to his advisors and offered a truce to the new human empire of Dakor. Tyrian recognizing this as the best chance to save his race, accepted and a neutral zone between the races was established. Tyrian spent many years building an empire around the surviving cadre from the war, offering any mages who served the empire an unprecedented level of freedom and power in the realm after their time of service. This lead to the dissolution of many of the kingdoms mage guilds, and the creation of the Imperial Mages and Cadre Mages. Tyrian also set the foundation for imperial intelligence, planting spies on the borders of the elven kingdom, knowing one day they would look to open their borders again.

Over the next 40 years Dakor expanded rapidly, first gobbling up kingdoms destroyed by the elves or famine and drawing the grateful citizens into the imperial embrace with food, supplies, and brutal efforts to stamp out crime.