story_spoiler.txt

Efraim de Ceise was born in the town of Ogira, where he learned the art of fencing. When he was in his twenties, a group of orcs attacked. Shocked into action, as he witnessed the city's leader, Lord Redain, keeping his soldiers in town to safeguard himself and sending peasants to fight the invading orcs, Efraim joined the scrum. The town was defended successfully with Efraim's valuable aid, but too many lives were wasted in that battle, too many a peasant cut down by orcish malice. This was his first contact with an unknown rage lurking within him, for in an act of vengeance and righteous anger he slew Lord Redain. Even though his crime was that of spilling noble blood, his life was spared. Necessity dictated as much. He was merely banished under the condition of defeating the orcs that threatened the town and the lands - success in this task had been promised the reward of a full pardon. Such was the fear orcs instilled in the hearts of men.

Accompanied by his friend, the rogue Delly, he travelled through the woods to the south, where they found an elvish town named Amaranth besieged by orcs. After helping to break the siege, he befriended the town's leader, an elvish sorceress named Lethalia. Love struck at first sight, a love that would prove to endure even after death. He led his battalion of fencers alongside the elves to the mountains west of Amaranth, where they looked to kill the orc who united the orcish tribes. His death broke the chain tying them together and the tribes resumed their usual squabbling amongst themselves. Defeating the rest of them was made easy.

With a fresh set of dreams filling his heart, of a new life and new-found love, Efraim and Lethalia began their march back home, expecting a victorious reception and a happy life. Fate dealt them the heaviest blow yet, however, as bandits captured and imprisoned them in the depths of a dark cave. Left to decay within that cave prison, they soon learned that they were not alone there, discovering foul creatures as their company, creeping on them in the darkness.

Their ties to life were at their strongest now. Realizing that the only way to survive and escape the unknown dangers of the caves lied in the lore of necromancy, they worked together experimenting on the Dark Arts with cave rats as subjects. After a year they learned how to break the wall and make their escape. They defeated many horrendous creatures in their endeavour, on the way to being surprised by meeting up with friends who had set out looking for them but were now also caught within as fellow prisoners in that forsaken cave. Having attained more answers to the riddles of necromancy by themselves than the average adept, they understood that survival would only be possible if they underwent the transformation. They would become liches, but preserved liches, liches that do not rot, liches that take on the appearance of natural humans. This was no easy task, but they successfully became liches, which allowed them to accumulate immense power.

In their new condition, leaving the caves was finally possible. Thrown into the surface realm once more, the hand of destiny brought them another fateful turn of events. An expanding kingdom had been spreading its evil domain in their forced absence and suddenly they reappeared right in its path. They helped to protect a town from its overreaching clutches and proceeded to  destroy the evil kingdom. In exchange, they found rest and were granted an oath of secrecy regarding their necromancy. After a year spent there they felt compelled to travel back to Ogira, where they found that the orcs had reunited under a new ruler and were preparing to conquer it once more. Efraim and Lethalia, now endowed with even greater power, managed to save the town and permitted themselves a celebration.

After the second rescue of Ogira, Efraim and Lethalia withdrew from the limelight and built a quiet town in the nearby Forest of Eternity, east of Lintanir Forest, along with their accompanying army of veterans. The town became prosperous as trade with humans flourished. They lived there peacefully for many years... but fate has its cold grip on their souls and makes sure that every good time of theirs comes to a violent end...

Umbra, which means 'shadow' in an ancient language, was an idealistic elf. He dreamt of a world without war. He bought the belief that the ultimate path to prevent all future wars was to drive away from the Great Continent all other races but his elvish one. That would be to him the war to end all wars. Many elves fell for the same temptation and began unwarily worshipping an evil demon, Lilith, that had proclaimed herself falsely as a goddess. With the powers Lilith gave them as a reward for their faith, they built huge armies of undead to accompany immensely empowered elves to set out on their conquest of the entire continent.

Umbra attempted to persuade Lethalia to join their cause, but she found the wickedness of their plan and refused. Umbra attacked. They killed him along with his army and found then the evil intent of Lilith commanding them. With the help of another preserved lich, Argan, they killed Umbra again, whom had been resurrected as The Chosen One. Then they slipped through an immense army of undead to attack the Temple of Lilith in their well protected and heavily corrupted city of Arach, the centre of elvish corruption.

When they defeated the main priests of Lilith's cult, Umbra was resurrected yet again and possessed by Lilith, creating a creature of unimaginable power. To help them, a being who called himself Stormrider appeared, at the same time as Efraim's old friend Delly, now old but still quite able to fight. Together, they defeated Lilith and when her avatar was killed and faith in her was shattered, she had to retreat into the spirit world. Stormrider told them that he was a hero whose mission it was to protect the world. Fearing a future return of Lilith, Lethalia magically formulated a prophecy that bound any future demonic corruption could only come to pass if two suns shone in the sky - something no evil creature would desire.

After defeating Lilith, Stormrider, Efraim and Lethalia helped Delly to rejuvenate and be reborn as a preserved lich like themselves. Stormrider accepted this only by their promise to assist him in his world saving quests. So it was promised, so it was done. Thus they began what they thought would finally be the rest of a quiet eternity... but after spending several years in the Forest of Eternity, a growing sense of boredom overtook them and they left once more, seeking an adventurous journey...

Their decision was once again not their own, but destiny's - they had travelled only a few miles, when they met Stormrider, Delly and Argan again. They explained to them that they needed their help to close an opening between our world and the world of the dead. This threat was not to be taken lightly, as the spirits of the dead were lurking about to convert all this world's population into undeath.

This quest took them to the southern deserts, where they found and closed the passage, but also found a tribe of evil humans, who had apparently been involved in the passage's opening. After a perilous journey through the depths of a cave world, they discovered an underground city, whose dark cultists had been responsible for weakening the barrier between the worlds. They successfully put an end to the evil city, but alas! Their leader, facing death, was able to summon an ancient and cunning dragon.

The dragon escaped in search of more of his kind. Soon he met more dragons whom he submitted easily to his own rule. He forced drake nations to join them and together they began destroying the land. In an attempt to make sure that Efraim and Lethalia would put an end to their enmity, the dragons pronounced a prophecy stating that after their own defeat, Wesnoth's civilisation would blossom to create a second sun to banish the night. This would in turn trigger Lethalia's prophecy, causing a new corruption of the elves. Lethalia thought to counter this by renaming Wesnoth; this would attempt to delay the golden era to a very distant future, delaying with it also the creation of the second sun. Therefore, they fearlessly defeated the dragons, and helped a young pretended named Asheviere to capture the throne, in exchange for giving Wesnoth a new name.

But things did not go as they had planned. Before Asheviere's power grew strong enough to rename Wesnoth, a foolish wizard named Delfador, ignorant of the events that had happened behind the scenes, managed to end Asheviere's tyranny. Wesnoth grew strong under king Konrad's reign. Liches were backed to grow in power, to create massive undead armies and invade Wesnoth, but all attempts to invade the country or infiltrate the royal palace ended in failure.

They could only watch in despair as the Wesnothian kingdom grew in power, stronger and stronger. A final attempt was made, as they helped their old foes the orcs to unite, trying to break down Wesnoth's power to bring about its downfall. This didn't work either, so they decided to set out looking for artefacts of power all over the world, hoping to find a relic strong enough to cause a potent cataclysm that would destroy Wesnoth and prevent the future corruption.

After more than a millennium, Argan failed to keep his oath and succumbed to the temptation of fulfilling the purpose of his revival as a Death Knight, and murdered Delly thanks to a massive scheme of evil. And then, another bad thing happened. The terrible prophecy begun to fulfil. One wizard found a way to do something like that. In order to stop it before someone decides to use that theory to create the second sun, Efraim, Lethalia, Stormrider, Mal Keshar and other heroes united and marched against the Wesnothian empire in a desperate attempt to prevent the terrible prophecy from fulfilling.

But by the borders of Weldyn, their army was shattered by the mages, who grew extremely powerful during the centuries of development of magical theories. To make sure that an undead invasion will never cause so much havoc to them, it was decided that a new sun will be raised. Our heroes managed to usurp the throne and steal all of their important magical books by stealth to make sure it won't happen. But the mages wanted to raise a symbol of their power. Something that would commemorate their art forever. And so, they decided to create the second sun despite the strict orders of Efraim, now a king.

Nothing could be done but a military attack at the Academy of Weldyn. But it failed. Before they could reach its entry, the second sun was raised, condemning the whole planet into a permanent cataclysm.

"Fortunately, the thing the mages created was just an imitation of the sun. It shone, but did not emit too much heat. Maybe they took the warning into consideration, maybe they just were too lazy to make it shine like the sun through the whole spectrum. Anyway, the heating effects of the visible light it emitted like the regular sun were still strong enough to change the climate. Northlands became much more fertile. The central land started to wither. Thunderstorms raged way too frequently near the shores. Southern lands were overgrown by thick jungles, full of dangerous creatures.

King Efraim I and Queen Lethalia I took their roles seriously. They forced the people to construct a net of irrigation to prevent the land from withering, draining water from the jungle, transforming it into an inhabitable land. The country had dealt with the problem, and with the prolonged days and shortened nights, the land was prosperous. After several centuries of rule, people started to disagree with their king. They blamed them for every bad thing that happened, and everyone suspected them from keeping a dark secret, allowing them to live much longer than they were supposed to live.

In order to avoid a bloodshed, they abdicated. They chose their successors and left. The choice of successors was good, and the country continued to prosper. Of course, it did not last forever, and a usual dynasty of spinelessly plotting nobles came to rule after several centuries. Efraim and Lethalia were keeping an eye on all elvish communities, to make sure they won't start to worship a demon like the first prophecy predicted. Before noticing something, a sequence of dark events started to happen.

The king died of a mysterious poisoning. The main suspect was the heir to the throne. He was coronated as the new king, but he did not have the support of the nobility, a group of hyenas that grew in power again. After several vain attempts to stabilise his rule, he decided that a new sun will have to be raised. This could not be foreseen. There was no real reason to do it, no invasions could be remembered by any living mortal and the climatic impacts of it would be impossible to counter. Efraim and Lethalia still had a considerable authority, and managed to arrange a meeting in an academy of magic on the isle of Alduin.

The mages assured the king that there was nothing bad about the idea to create another sun, and the only one who verbally supported Efraim and Lethalia was one of the mages, Akula. Lethalia recklessly tried to assassinate the king, but she failed and had to flee the island together with Efraim and Akula. They went on a mission to investigate how could the mages learn how was the second sun raised, their undead army wreaking havoc everywhere where they passed. The empire was much weaker than before and it could be easier to destroy it before they raise the third sun than to stop the mages.

They found that the person behind it was Akula, who was in fact a semi-mechanical lich-like monster. Her kin had no problems with sunlight, even in excessive amounts. She was hoping to let Efraim and Lethalia cause as much damage to the country as possible before they rise the third sun, realise their mistake and make a last stand against her kin. The king was informed and agreed not to raise the third sun if they defeat Akula and her monstrous army.

After many tough fights in Akula's lair, Akula fell, but the plan to raise the third sun was still running. The mages' pride was exploited and they decided to show how strong they still are and take the challenge to raise the third sun anyway, despite the king's order. Efraim and Lethalia came there in the last moments when the sun was already shining above the town and being raised higher. When it became clear that they didn't care about their words, Lethalia recklessly released a surge of power that killed everyone in the town. The sun fell on them, burying them deep in its ashes and destroying most of the country.

Efraim and Lethalia awoke in a dark tomb after eons of slumber. With their memories lost and minds corrupted with the darkness of undeath, they started preparing plans to dominate the world. However, the methods each of them preferred were quite different, so they walked different ways, and fought like enemies when met. In desperate search to annihilate each other, they obtained the ashes of a phoenix, that made them become more powerful - and resurrected them from undeath, bringing back their memories in the process - that put an end to their war.

After returning back to life, Efraim and Lethalia fled from places where they were known as wicked necromancers to start a new life. Far north from the deserted wastelands that remained from once powerful Wesnoth, they found a small town where they chose to settle. The townsfolk appreciated them both for their accumulated wisdom and for their skill in magic that did great amounts of work that would otherwise have to be done manually. Also the training they offered to the town's guards was raising their reputation. But after a decade, problems started.

Armies of various monsters, from undead to drakes possessed by evil spirits, begun to roam the northern lands, seeking to conquer, kill or possess everything, blindly following an unknown entity named the Queen of Darkness. Efraim, Lethalia and their followers eluded their major divisions and after a long and perilous journey, they entered the tower where their arch enemy dwelt, only to learn that she was some kind of twin of Lethalia. She explained that when Lethalia became a god, all the evil from her was released and it formed an entity that was an evil clone of Lethalia.

They quickly learned how hard it is to defeat a preserved lich, first they threw her down from the tower, shattering the faith of her armies, but she simply took another body and continued to fight. They figured out a method to defeat her, pulled almost all the absorbed souls from within her into the world of the dead, but the rest of them appeared and decided to protect their mistress, giving her time to flee. After defeating the last of her loyals, they found her and gave her no chance to flee. They were shocked to see that she created a baby, a strange hybrid with appearance and intelligence of an elf and malice and dexterity of snakes, and planned to possess it to have a living body. After a battle, they defeated her and decided to adopt the child, as Lethalia was pregnant and they had to stop adventuring anyway.

After leaving the northlands, they traveled south and found a beautiful place to live. They decided to bring up the children outside large cities, because it was expectable that their son and the baby girl created by Queen of Darkness would be much stronger than other kids, and the risk of becoming bullies was present. They moved their army into several nearby fortresses to protect them, spread spells inhibiting the aging process, and their son was born. They named him Krux, after his grandfather. The little girl had no name, so Lethalia named her Vritra. Lethalia never explained why she gave her that name, only kept saying that it is a riddle for everyone.

After that their children grew up, a new threat arose. A group of disguised demons started invading the lands, corrupting or conquering whatever place they found. Efraim and Lethalia had to flee their forest home to join their army and many important people who assembled there. The expectations were grim: the number of experiments the demonologists performed caused the barrier that was keeping creatures of Inferno locked up to crack and the demons built a portal away from there. The demons were extremely strong, and pouring from Inferno extremely fast, so it was necessary to close the portal before too many of them arrived. That would cause events described as Götterdämmerung, or Twilight of the Gods, resulting in a transformation of this world into something that would fit the demons more. Lethalia pretended to use a quickly spreading spell to prevent the demons from sucking the souls of their victims into Inferno for eternal torture, but she lied and in fact used a spell to absorb all souls of demons' victims, still saving them but for her own gain.

They started a campaign against this new evil, but very soon, Vritra was kidnapped by outlaws paid by demons, who needed her as a gladiatrix for some perverted games. After destroying the outlaws, they headed south through the desert to rescue her, but before they fought through the defences of an empire corrupted by demons, Vritra had to fight countless monsters in their arenas, just for the pleasure of citizens following the demons. After that she was told that the next arena combat will be against her own comrades, she fled, killing their demonic emperor on the way. She reunited with her parents, and together, they marched towards the portal. They fought their way through thick jungles and barren plains, until they reached the portal. Efraim, Lethalia and some of their soldiers entered the portal.

Inside, an isolated group of demons understood that they cannot survive their attack and closed the portal to avenge their quickly approaching death. The world of men was saved, but Efraim and Lethalia were marooned in Inferno. There was no obvious way out, but they didn't want to lay down without trying to get out. It became clear that the forces that invaded their world were commanded by a horribly powerful demon named Uria, but they were in war with a rebellion against them. Efraim and Lethalia fought their way through Inferno independently from the rebels, slowly approaching the main stronghold of Uria's forces, Pandemonium.

One of Uria's servants was Lilith, an old enemy, a veteran villain, who hated serving Uria but adored the power that came for it. Efraim and Lethalia defeated her and Uria refused Lilith's demands to save her. Almost dead, Lilith fled. When Efraim and Lethalia entered Pandemonium, a powerful projection of Uria appeared, wreaked havoc to their forces and seemed invulnerable. When the situation looked desperate, Lilith appeared claiming that she had nowhere to go and that Efraim and Lethalia were the only ones that could accept her. She also showed a spell that heavily weakened Uria and allowed them to defeat her. Efraim reluctantly allowed Lilith to join them. Then they entered Uria's castle.

Inside the labyrinthine castle, they found their way to Uria and using Lilith's spell, they destroyed Uria. But all the event was suspicious and Efraim eventually realised that they had been deceived. There was no Uria, just a very elaborate idol that channelled the powers of demons' prayers. Lilith was behind all of it, she had the powers that seemed to be owned by Uria and she needed to trick Efraim to cast her spell that transferred his special soul-draining abilities to her. Because Lilith was now even stronger than before, they could not fight her, so they decided to kill the thing that granted her the currently most powerful of her abilities. He was however terribly powerful and managed to kill one of the heroes, but as the fallen hero left Inferno, the power of the millions of souls Lethalia drained kicked in, regenerated the body, allowed defeating their foe with a magnificent weapon of his own creation and the remains of the surge allowed a safe return back to their world.

Meanwhile, Krux and Vritra had their own problems. Armies of demons were roaming everywhere, those humans who weren't slain were worshipping demons as gods and the endless ashen clouds blocked the sun and caused a terrible winter. They banded with a pack of orcs, converted the princess of one of the corrupted empires from the demonic faith and realised that she was in fact Delly reborn with almost no memories of her previous life. Together, they penetrated into the empire's inner demonic temple. They found themselves terribly surrounded, but then their parents killed the Uria idol and the demons weakened so much that they became an easy prey. The vengeful demons unleashed an army of black souls to make sure that their enemies will not survive neither.

Fleeing from the army of black souls into the remains of their world, they found themselves surrounded with little supplies. Then, Efraim and Lethalia returned from Inferno, but they could not heal the world neither. They decided to create a new world instead. To convert the world inside their minds into a replica of the world they knew before it was doomed by the two suns. After a preparation while suicidally protected by their allies, they managed to finish the spell and save everyone except themselves, because they could not live inside their minds without changing everything with mere thoughts. The life continues inside them while they forever walk the remains of their old world.