Prehistory of Incantre

Before the Urathear created the world of Incantre, they created the elements to serve as the building blocks of all they had yet to create. From these they created the elementals, but these were merely mindless workers to aide the deities in the production their divine creations. Before the Urathear created souls for the lives they had begun to dream into existence, they created the spectrum of what mortals comprehend as ethics, morals,and emotions. From these, they created the Primarchs, who though they lacked free will and souls embodied these concepts and all variations on what is now known as good and evil.

When their universe was ready and the world of Incantre constructed, the Urathear desired to now use these many ingredients of creation to once again make something new. They desired to form a race of beings that unlike the Primarchs and the elementals could hold the combined traits of many of these Foundling creatures. It was as the Urathear began this task that the Primarchs and elementals first truly became races unto themselves, loosed from their positions as assistants to live upon the plane of existence as they would while the focus of the Urathear was upon their newborn dragons.

As the first race crafted by the Urathear of many elements and attributes, the dragons earned their place as one of the four Foundling races, those who came before all others and who were first gifted with true life. Differentiating them from the other Foundling races, dragons also received the gift of a soul; it was this that allowed them to exist while consisting of elements which without the binding of a soul would oppose one another and be unable to maintain life.

When the Primarchs and the elementals were seen to be harming the world they had been granted the freedom to roam, the Urathear created other planes of existence so that they might live and yet not destroy the work of the deities through their constant conflicts. Viewing themselves as the chosen favorite children of the Urathear, the dragons inherited Incantre. And for a time, indeed, they were favored.

In order to bear the presence of their older sibling Foundlings, the dragons had been given both great endurance and strength, and an innate ability to use the elements contained within them for their own defense. And as there were many diverse elementals, and many diverse Primarchs, so too are their many diverse dragons which represent strong affiliations for particular aspects of the elements, of morals, and other aspects of existence. In the endless ages of the Urathear, time had often been of little consequence to them. As a result, the lifespans given to dragons is much longer than that which was later granted any other mortal race on the primary plane of existence. With their great ages, the dragons developed great intellect through their centuries of life. Through generations, they honed their abilities with the innate talents the deities had gifted them with and began to discover how to wield the naturally occurring and divine energies we know as magic. They passed this to their hatchlings, and so over the eons before recorded history they as a race became wise.

During this same time, the Urathear did not cease their creation of other living things. From all their efforts, the world came to be populated by countless new races. Many of these races were granted gifts similar to what had been given the dragons: souls, free will, and all the diverse abilities gained from combining the essences of creation within a single body. Beside the mighty dragons, these races often seemed small and frail, and so a final gift was given to dragon kind: the ability to shift into a form which would allow them to better interract with those who now shared what they had come to view as their domain. With the world of Incantre thriving, blessed by the attentions of the Urathear, the deities ceased their work and left their now many children to the world they had built for them.

For millennia these races lived upon the world, developing their societies beneath the eyes of dragon kind. So focused were they on the Primary Plane of existence, the dragons paid little heed to the homes of their rarely thought of Foundling cousins. But they were not ignored in turn. The Primarchs had by their very nature a desire to influence living things towards one pattern of behavior or another. Through the time since which they had been send to their own plane, the Primarchs had begun to separate and polarize, those whose attributes favored one another forming their own groupings. As they came into conflict with those who favored opposing attributes, battles sprung up across the expanse of their plane, fracturing the land as well as their kind. Two distinct sides formed: Celestials, who embody what we so simply describe as light and good; and Fiends, who embrace and encourage the dark and evil. Always now are they at war, seeking to tip the scales into the favor of their own side and thus gain further access to our Primary Plane. It is only the constant struggle of both that keeps them all but locked away from our world now. But Incantre is ever their goal.

Unable to touch the lands of Incantre directly, both forces were always seeking ways to spread their influence among the dwellers of the Primary Plane. It was after a particularly devastating defeat of the Celestials that a powerful group of Fiends was able to extend their powers across the void which separates them from the mortal world and grasp the heart of a dragon. This dragon, ancient and a leader of his kind, had been long seeking a way to curb the expanding growth of the other races, viewed now as lesser beings and pests by most of his kind. They were seen to be polluting and destroying the gift that was Incantre, built for them by the Urathear. Feeling the dark touch on his soul, the dragon turned towards this pull. The Fiends spoke to him falsely in the names of some of the Urathear, stating it was the desire of the gods that the dragons cleanse the world and retake it for themselves. They shamed the dragon, for having let these tiny races, races like humans and elves, orcs and goblins, behave as if they were the favored ones. And the dragon was swayed. He spoke of being commanded by the Urathear. He spoke of feeling the power of their return. He spoke of the death of the unworthy. And the dragons were swayed, and thus began the time known and the Draconic Encroachment.