BrianFreud/lore

At the height of the ancient gargoyle civilization, a pioneering scientist of the race, Key Naw, was developing improvements to the imbuing concepts had recently led his people of Ter Mur to great success against the scourge escaping from the Abyss. Having discovered that there were three sources for magical energy that individually formed the core of any successful artificing attempt, Key's latest research was focused on searching for a possible fourth source.

Crystalline blackrock looked promising as a potential source. However, the secondary effect of the substance - an increased permeability of reality itself - was unknown to him. Thus it was that the outcome of his attempting to combine the essence of Singularity, one hundred each of diamonds and tourmalines, and crystalline blackrock could not have been known in advance. It had been hoped that such a combination might increase the known Defence Chance Increase effect into something resembling a complete shield against damage. Unfortunately, such was not the case. Instead, the explosion that resulted was of such power that even those in the Royal City felt the shock. Key's lab was destroyed, and he himself killed. His attendants, however, were only slightly more lucky. Rather than being killed. those unfortunates were instead transported to the facet of Ilshenar.

They found themselves no longer in Key's coutry estate. Instead, they were in a large clearing surrounded by mountains, where the explosion had seemingly emptied out a large space of rock before the magic deposited the unwilling travelers. This is the clearing they later came to call Felte pá Kawnaw ("the error of Kaw Naw"), from which came the bastardized name we humans use, the Pass of Karnaugh. Making their way out of the clearing, the survivors began to explore their new world - for thus it was; it resembled nothing that they recognized, nor of which they had ever even heard.

They found it to be a a verdant world, populated by reclusive fey, and by the 'lesser' races - cyclopeans, lizardmen, ogres, ratmen, titans, and trolls. With no way to return home, they set about building their new world. This transplanted gargoyle civilization in Ilshenar eventually had grown quite prosperous. However, when the Stranger defeated Mondain, in the year 25, and the Gem of Immortality was shattered, for whatever reasons, Ilshenar experienced far more severe destruction than did the Trammel or Felucca facets.

“The world now fallen. All torn and undone until it is remade whole again but different. Where I was is no longer where I am yet I have not moved a step. Fate has swallowed the world and spat it out, gnawed, ruined, changed. We are lost in our own land.”

Those who survived the shattering came together. In roughly the year 29, "...from the remaining masses a leader emerged. Strong and confident, Ilshen took to organizing the people and restoring order. Ilshen began the rebuilding of civilization when she was only twenty-two years old... The people gathered in the northeast area of the world and..." over the course of fourty years, in year 69, established a [new] city on a mountainside calling it 'Montor', or 'Mountain Passion'. "It was, by all accounts, a paradise of city and mountain with waterfalls that cut between buildings and the mountainside. In the years that followed Ilshen and a council of scholars set up laws and government and peace reigned."

Tragically, in the year 89, only twenty years after its completion, Montor was destroyed by a volcanic explosion. As its peoples fled the city, they separated into four sects:

• The Anskitas, which loosely translates as 'Awakening Knowledge'. "To the west the mountains had been breached with a road. A keep was built as a halfway point and as a fortress to keep out what ever lay beyond. The northwest section of this world is a huge forest that melds into jungle as it heads south. In the center of this area is Terort Skitas, the Temple of Knowledge... It appears this place was being built long before the city would fall. It resembles what Montor must have looked like before it met its doom." It was to Terort Skitas, on the banks of the Termir Mistas, that the Anskitas fled.

• The Mistas, which translates as "Balance", were not suited for days of study and contemplation. A scroll found in Terort Skitas describes them as “…stoic and strong. Seeking the Balance of all things.” They went south-west to the other side of the facet, and built the city of Mistas on the edge of Nox Tereg, the lands of the lizardmen.

• The third group, the Lokanagrálem ("talk not fight") (referred to by the people of Mistas as the “lacking will”) went south to the grassy fields on the shores of Termir Ilshen, and there built the city they called Lakeshire, which the Anskitas called Mireg ("water-home").

• The fourth group went south-west to the mountains at the center of the land, and built the city of Ver Lor Reg.

Sixty-one years later, in the year 150, an Anskitas named Ulvol discovered how to make what the peoples of Ilshenar called a 'Vasgres' ("great exit"), similar to what Britannians call 'Moongates'. Ulvol's Vasgreses, however, were capable of crossing between a multitude of facets, many of which are still unknown today. However, at some point, Exodus, referred to by the peoples of Ilshenar only as 'Bal-lem' ("evil one") found its way through one of these Vasgres into Ilshenar. Exodus sought to take up where Mondain had left off. According to other scrolls from that time, "The bal-lem is in league with the Anorlor fiends. Together they seek our doom.” Anorlor are Dark Wisps.

The peoples of Ilshenar were able, with much sacrifice, to destroy all of the Vasgreses and to imprison Exodus, though not destroy him. However, Exodus had brought great misery and destruction to Ilshenar. For unknown reasons, most of the peoples of Ilshenar used the last Vasgres to flee the facet, though the peoples of Ver Lor Reg continued to be enslaved by Exodus, and could not leave. As Ter Mur was the original home to the gargoyle race, they determined that a permanent return home was safer than the risk that Exodus might one day escape.

Many years later, in the year 342, when Britannians first made their way to Ilshenar, Lord Blackthorn found and attempted to defeat Exodus inside of his lair. He failed, and was taken captive by Exodus. At the same time, a group of evil mages found their way from Britannia to Ilshenar, and finding Terort Skitas empty, they took up residence.

Exodus crafted a doppelganger of Lord Blackthorn, and with the assistance of this fake Blackthorn, Exodus altered the ancient timeline of Ilshenar. Searching through the history of the Ilshenar facet, millenia before the shattering of the Gem of Immortality, Exodus found the Juka. In that long ago time, the Juka were involved in an all-out war with the Meer. Exodus found a moment where the Juka had finally failed in their efforts, and were facing a near-certain loss. He offerred them the chance to escape, to come to the present day, to fight for him. Facing no other option, the Juka agreed. With the disappearance of the Juka, the Meer realized that they had moved to the future, and made the decision to put their entire race to sleep, to wait out the years until they could again catch up with the Juka.

Arriving in modern times, the Juka found the city of Mistas. They evicted the ogres, ratmen and lizardmen that had infested the empty city, and now call it home. Similarly, the Meer, having woken from their long sleep, found the city of Lakeshire, and having removed the gazers and elder gazers they found there, took over that city. Montor was found to already be in the control of daemonic forces, and in their similarly weakened states, neither the Juka nor the Meer attempted to contest the city. Additionally, the volcano is still erupting, making rebuilding of that city still impossible, which likely also affected each side's decision to leave Montor alone.

With doppelganger Blackthorn's help, Exodus managed to complete his escape from imprisonment. Each was eventually defeated by a determined group of humans from Britanniana, though Ver Lor Reg was destroyed. Even defeated, the corruption spread by Exodus is still visible in the various mechanical abominations that inhabit the central areas of Ilshenar.