The story of the Atlarcton continent began a thousand of years ago, when a large group of warriors arrived on its shores. Having just won a bloody war against a distant magical country where many of them perished in the battlefield, these warriors judged their newest discovery as another blessing from the god they accepted on their previous enemy’s territory, Alxer, and decided to live on this new land, wishing for a new beginning.

Humans, elves and dark elves soon overpowered the few orcs they found there and split the new land into seven pieces, six settlements and a portion dedicated to the worship of Alxer, which they called The Holy Lands. As the years passed, these settlements grew and became kingdoms. The humans founded Kinwald, Arcans, Falbrein and Sandhaun. The elves banded together and built Anglurea. Humans and dark elves who didn’t believe in a superior power, namely the god Alxer, built Duskath on a nearby island.

Hundreds of years passed, habits were formed and stronger bonds were forged. Duskath slowly grew apart from the religious kingdoms, except for Falbrein. The elves in Anglurea eventually became recluse behind the chain of mountains where their lands were located. Kinwald and Arcans flourished with fertile lands and making business with each other and the remaining kingdoms. Sandhaun also relied heavily on the trade with those two kingdoms, since it was located in a sandy region and there were no fertile lands, despite having plenty of access to the ocean.

During the year 833 after the discovery of the continent, a group of humans, elves and dark elves founded the Banfaul Academy in the mountains between Kinwald and Anglurea, an institution destined to tutor people who wanted to learn magic to harness those powers. They eventually became specialized in teaching defensive white magic and offensive black magic.

On the 940th year, two key events happened. Kinwald, Arcans and Sandhaun cut ties with Duskath, refusing to associate themselves with a godless nation, and around the same time, Falbrein started researching magic-fueled technology. The ties between Duskath and Falbrein grew even closer in the following years, a fact that made the two nations become partners in the developing of new technologies and grow together economically by trading with other continents, the dark elves of Duskath giving a huge contribution on Falbrein’s research on the use of magic for powering technology. The other nations frowned upon that, believing it was against the teachings of Alxer.

Forty years after Duskath and Falbrein came together and started progressing, the Alxer Triad, an alliance between the kingdoms of Kinwald, Arcans and Sandhaun couldn’t take the blatant blasphemy anymore. Believing some sort of demonic influence was in play, they declared war on Duskath and Falbrein. It started as an even fight, Duskath and Falbrein had the magic of the dark elves and technology on their side, but Kinwald and Sandhaun were two nations focused on war and military. Their well-trained armies outnumbered the other side greatly. The elven kingdom of Anglurea opted to stay out of the conflict.

The war went on for three years, with the Triad clearly winning. However, they would go on to find a way to tip the battle completely in their favor. In a masterful stroke, the general of the Kinwald army invaded Falbrein and took the king and the queen as prisoners. The new regent, who was the deposed king’s younger brother, was on the Triad’s side, and ordered his army to turn on Duskath.

With the might of four armies upon them, Duskath was completely destroyed in a week, and when the royal couple and their children were killed, their enemies celebrated the fall of the godless nation. The island where the kingdom had been built got declared as cursed land by the Temple of Alxer, a reminder of what happened when people rebelled against the One God. A small number of the people of Duskath, humans and dark elves, survived and scattered across the continent, in a bid to move on with their lives. The regent of Falbrein destroyed all their technology and ceased all ongoing research, as a requirement to join the alliance with Kinwald, Arcans and Sandhaun. The former king and queen were shipped to Sandhaun and Arcans, respectively, as prisoners of war.

The war had a serious collateral damage upon the continent. With the exception of Anglurea, who didn’t participate, the other kingdoms had channeled a very large part of their resources on the conflict, a fact that took a toll on their economy. The next few years saw them trying to recover, something that didn’t come easily. Kinwald had to regrown their crops and rebuild farms, while Arcans had to reestablish its port, the largest in all Atlarcton. Sandhaun struggled hard, since the sandy soil wasn’t appropriate to plant anything, and their port was too small and far from the capital; their only good products being clothes, rugs and ornaments. Falbrein had to reinvent itself; they weren’t good with anything other than technological research, a fact that the regent blamed on his deposed older brother; the solution he found was to hire workers from neighboring nations to teach Falbrein’s citizens how to be farmers and blacksmiths, amongst other jobs, a program that worked relatively well. The elves in Anglurea kept themselves recluse, and their land, despite being mountainous and not as fertile as the other nations’, didn’t suffer the loss of resources that the others endured, and their port saw a significant increase in activity when Arcans’ port closed down for the war; therefore, they could maintain a healthy economy after the conflict.

Twelve years after the war, the population of the Arcans Kingdom entered a civil war that ended with the execution of their king before the royal palace. The citizens never forgave the former monarch for using all the nation’s resources in the war against Duskath, even if it was in the name of Alxer. The Arcans Republic was born then, with the first president being elected. Sometime after that, an accident during a magic demonstration organized by the Banfaul Academy severed Arcans from the continent, the republic being now an island. That made the Temple of Alxer and its following nations ban the Academy from teaching offensive black magic, forcing the institution to restrict itself to the study of white magic. Those who wanted to learn black magic had to risk reaching for illegal tutors outside of the Academy.

Five more years went on and Atlarcton entered its thousandth year after the discovery. Four kingdoms and one republic were doing relatively well. Anglurea was thriving, while Kinwald, Arcans, Sandhaun and Falbrein never fully recovered, but were starting to show signs of retaking the road of progress, each one on its own pace.

Note #1: This is only the introduction, to better situate potential writers and readers on the history of Atlarcton, its present and potential future. I guess you can write this as you want, telling the story of a family, a single character, even of the whole continent if you want. I strongly recommend both writers and readers to read the information page, there you will find detailed info about the kingdoms, important characters in each of them, a map of Atlarcton, etc. You can either write one of the characters I listed there or, as I said, create your own or go bigger and tackle a whole family or all of Atlarcton. If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them, either in the comment section or by private message, and I’ll be creating a thread in the forum as well. Hope you like the story!

Note #2: Unless specifically stated by the author, the stories below don't run next to each other and are pretty much alternate universes using this same introduction and mythology as a basis.