Grathier History (Orion Supplement)
| World of Orion |
|---|
| Player Info |
| World Reference |
|
| DM Info |
|
Overall History
Creation
As all time was created, so were the worlds. As time grew, so too did the worlds with it. Grathier was the creation of the great god Dragonis. He, along with the help of his four sons Grathier, Kelther, Gorgion, and Foriem designed the great world of Grathier. The world was named after Dragonis's favourite son, Grathier, who was his first born and most like minded with him. They created the world massive, to oppose the other worlds and show its dominance over them. Following suite, Dragonis created the dominant species in the immage he himself chose. He created the creature large enough to be to scale with the world. Naming them after himself, the massive Dragons were the first intelligent beings to be made upon the world. Soon after, each son created a lesser species to place on the world. Grathier being the oldest and strongest of the brothers chose first. Grathier created the Minotaur, making them much smaller than the impressive dragons. However more prone to group dynamics and making it a higher priority to reproduce, Grathier attempted to keep up the façade of having designed a weaker race, inferior to the awesome might of the dragons, and in this way honoring Dragonis. However using these abilities he hoped that his Minotaurs would actually triumph over the dragons in the end. Kelther and Gorgion both came together to create the Ogre. They created such a creature in an attempt to bring down the might of the Minotaurs however still humble to the dragons and allow Dragonis to keep his world, his. Foriem did not create a single race, but upon permission from his father designed the entire natural world we now see today in the world. To accomplish this great task Foriem teamed up with his daughter and soon to be wife who created the forces of nature and their spirits, designing the nymph in her immage. Through the combined effort of each of these gods, Grathier was created and stood for many more millenia.
First Rise
The first rise of Grathier was a complicated one. The dragons, enheriting their creators arrogant nature, believed themselves easily superior to the other races, and therefore did not fear their rise. So the dragons sat content with the world and not paying much attention to its happenings, knowing in the end they would rise dominant. However as the dragons lay dormant the Ogres and Minotaurs waged for dominance. While the natural world stuck to itself, observing the nature of each other civilization and race, knowing from a distance the outcome, and knowing too that it did not concern them or their affairs. As Ogres were much stronger than Minotaurs they quickly rose to dominance. Both races slowly formed into miniature tribes and groups, roaming the wild aimlessly in search of each other with the intent to destroy the other, all the while vying for dominance. However the Minotaurs were quickly falling as the ogres were much stronger than they were, a single ogre being able to bring down two or more minotaurs if they were strong. The minotaurs, realizing that their struggle against such foes was pointless, slowly retreated into dark caverns and underground passageways. Each minotaur or tribe moving individually, over the course of the next century neerly all the minotaurs had migrated to their new home. However, all of the minotaurs being tightly placed together like that they began to become more social and reproduce ever more quickly. Soon they had developed reasonable civilizations underground many years before the ogres and dragons had even thought of the idea. The minotaurs quickly became as common as mice, however they never once showed themselves yet, allowing the ogres to think they had been defeated they continued growing, and waiting for their chance to strike.
War of the First Magics
As the Ogres rose in dominance and became slowly more and more powerful, so to did the dragons suspicion and aggression grow with it. The Ogres, still having not formed into larger groups and realms, however gathering in greater and greater numbers. They also became more agressive, beginning to attack the great dragons. It took many ogres to bring down a single one of the immense beasts, but the dragons living alone, they too slowly began to fall. The dragons quickly grew angry. However not truly enjoying each others company and each one believing himself stronger than the last and prepared to take down an ogre hord be himself, they stayed seperate. However they did become more and more offensive, striking the ogres often, and sometimes winning. The size of both races began to shrink and the war could go either way.
However all the while this was happening, the now well formed and advanced minotaurs saw their chance to reclaim the world and return to the surface. However the minotaurs had developed a new and powerful way to combat their opponents. They had descorvered powerful forces that existed around and inside each of them, they named these forces 'The energies of life', however many abreviated it as life or energy. These energies were what we may call magic. The Minotaurs now weilding these powerful abilities rose to the surface and began to wreak havoc upon the surface. With the ogres deep in war with the dragons they never expected an attack from behind by the long forgotten minotaurs. The minotaurs too targeted the ogres, knowing that they were the ones who in the end drove them into such terrible lives that they lived for so many years.
As the minotaurs marched across the world they slowly flanked the ogres and the minotaurs and the dragons crushed them between the hammer and the anvil. However as the ogres began to retreat back into the dark recesses of the world, the minotaurs grew greedy of their new power. They thought that with abilities such as these that they possesed over other beings of the world that they were invincible, that they could destroy even the dragons. So, they began to march upon them. However the dragons, seeing the magic had something triggered within themselves. As the minotaurs descovered later through further study, the dragons possesed powerful energies, beyond the natural forces of life even a creature of their size could wield. As the dragons began to realize these new found powers, they began to use them.
Rise of Dominance
The dragons, now realizing their power, too began to grow greedy and lust for more. Just as the minotaurs were begining to take hold of the world, the dragons began striking back, hard. They learned quickly from the minotaurs, within the first year of war they began to form into groups and copy minotaur tactics, then begin to counter them. The minotaurs faught hard using magic and the natural strength they posessed, however it was not enough. The dragons began to take back the world that the ogres and minotaurs long faught over. Before long, the minotaurs were once again forced back into the dark caverns and underground passageways and cities they had developed. With the ogres deep in hiding and the minotaurs rtreated underground, the dragons rose to dominance. They slowly filled across the world and took control of it.
It was not long before the dragons began to seek out the remaining minotaurs and ogres. They began to enslave them and kill them, erraticating them from the world and domesticating those that they kept alive. They used ogres for their strength and minotaurs for their great tactics and many advances they had made durring their long stay underground. The dragons formed cities and leaders, developing the first true nations and realms to cover the world. Dragons now becoming the only true and free race left upon the world other than the races of the wilds and the animals that lived in them.
Dragon Wars
As the dragons began to form civilizations, they too began to form leaders and polotics. They began to make advancements, supplemented by mass using their incredible magical powers and great strength, as well as the use of slaves for hard labor and intelligence, military and otherwise they quickly grew to immense power. However, with many diferent leaders and many different nations, with that power that came, so too did the lust for more arrise. At first the dragons began to turn inwards upon their own nations in races to create the greatest new advancement, or to figure out the next step in progressing to greater heights using their magics. However this did not last. Soon, the dragons began to war.
They were relentless in their efforts, never stopping on raids once untill a nation was taken. Combining powerful magical abilities with incredible strength, intelligence, dexterity, and tactics with their flying abilities to do battle in the most impressive of fashions. Lands changed hands constantly and the war was bloody and brutal, seemingly growing more and more so with each passing day rather than recovering. The dragons waged such a brutal and bloody war, untill either they died or their enemies did, in the end, it was almost both that came true. Upon the conclusion of the dragon wars, only twelve dragons remained. They remained in an empty world, the animals killed from the fire in their bellies and the planet killed from the magics in their souls, the world was truly empty apart from these twelve dragons.
Finally, they realized their folly, and they wept. They wept and wept and awaited their bitter demise. However they were not granted such a pleasent fate, they were forced to pay bitterly for their wrongs, and so they did.
Dark Wars
As the remaining dragons came together they began once more to form a group. All twelve lived together in peace, hoping to never again bring down such terrible war upon the world. Each dragon grew older and older. Having an infinite life span, they existed for many more years, feading themselves with the forces of life around them and eating what remained of anything in the world. The dragons knew that they should not reproduce, for their offspring could end up as they once did, and the world would end up again as it is now, if some how it could recover. However, even knowing this, they reproduced anyways. A single couple of dragons had six children and raised them in secret for fear that the other dragons would kill them. Once they were old enough they sent the dragons away into another area of the massive world, far from where they were and were they would ever be.
However, even in peace, trouble found them. One day, the very sun was blotched out and the sky covered with a dark haze. The dragons having lived through many eclipses knew that this was different, something was out their causing these dark mists to cover the sun. The next day, they knew. As dawn broke the next morning, or what would have been dawn had the sun been still shining they were revealed as to what was out their. Some of their ancestors had told stories about terrible creatures, awesome in their might existed on a plane far from this world. They were called dark bringers, and it was prophicised that one day, one would come to destroy them all. The dragons knew they faught a battle they would loose, but they faught it. The dark bringer appeared to them, and began to fight them, began to do what it had always known, all that it could do. Even the might of such great and ancient dragons could not do enough harm to this creature of blackness. They sent magics at it, they sent such powerful magics that their very souls were torn apart at the drain of using them, but still they could only delay the dark bringer, never completely stopping it, only wounding it. Slowly, the dragons began to fall. Finally, all twelve of the great and ancient dragons were defeated. However the dark creature was wounded and retreated back to the plane from which it came, no longer able to resist the call of the binding magic in his weakened state he left.
However not all dragons were killed, six more still remained. The six young dragons who had been sent away, only to come back to see their parents and all other dragons existing in the world, dead.
Fall and Destruction
These six dragons began, as their ancestors had, to form a group. They came together and began to live once more off each other, embracing the world and their fate. However one day, a dragon stumbled upon something that could very well change all that they had known. Deep one day, lost in her studies, the dragon by the name of S'ielka found a way to channel her magic that had not been discovered before. It was a form of long range teleportation, however upon further research she realized that, their were other worlds to teleport to. So, with this knowledge she came before the rest of the dragons and presented it. Delighted, they pooled their magic and used it to whisk themselves away from the desolate world they existed on to another planet entirely Through their studies they learned that there were five planets in total, and traveled in turn to each one, sharing their knowledge on how to transport to other worlds. finally, with much supplies and a few seeds and animals they returned, ready to start life anew upon their home world.
As they had hoped, life was once again started anew on their world. The lands flourished and with magical aid from the dragons and travelers to the world, they prospered. The dragons mated with each other to create offspring and soon their were a great many dragons roaming the world once again. However once again, greed and their lust for power doomed them. As the saying goes, those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
The dragons had learned to from their studies that entire other dimensions existed outside of their own. So, they began to study their magics and attempted to develop means to travel between these dimensions. However nobody knows what quite went wrong, but when the dragons had finally thought they figured it out they attempted it. The six eldest dragons, the original six who first discovered how to travel between worlds were casting the spells. Each race upon the world waited in anticipation from the long lived dragons to the immigrated charons, they waited for the results. Then it happened. The magics that were being cast became to strong for the dragons to control, and they were lost. Power flowing freely among the planet, not controlled or fastened to anything wrecked destruction on the world. these powers running free and unchecked destroyed the very planet itself. However the six dragons casting the spell were transported randomly to another place. Each dragon still alive today, and still remembering the terrible error that there species made again, and again, and the same error that doomed the same world twice.
They now knew to never repeat it as long as they lived.
Back to Main Page → 3.5e Homebrew → Campaign Settings → Orion