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Description
In the time before time, within the Outer Realm on a world an infinity of infinities away from ours, there existed a super-continent vast in size and possessing many different environments; due to the landmass's numerous attributes, it stands in its world's history as “Terra Magna.” Many different creatures and societies arose in this land, but two tribes rose far above the rest; sharing a forgotten common ancestor but opposing each other both physically and mentally, each civilization had conquered their neighbors and waged war with their rival. Yet in the end, both societies were brought to their knees when, as they each sought to bring an end to their opponent, both came to an end through two brave girls and a power greater than all.

One of the two tribes, the Kronicite warrior clan, held on to the old ways and worshiped the eight spirits of the Aether: the Guiding Light, the Living Shadow, and the six Elements; their strength and endurance were feared and respected by all, and their leader, Chief Pakoran, held the safety and honor of his people above all else. The other tribe, the Moraujak inventor clan, rejected the ancient traditions and reveled instead in their creations and achievements; their power laid in their then-advanced technology, and their leader, Emperor Pirixoth, was notorious for his ruthlessness and lust for power. Each clan gained dominance over part of Terra Magna, growing in might and splendor, and when finally the two civilizations could expand no further and were equally matched, war ensued and raged for many moons.

Nonetheless, even in the midst of such chaos, there was an oasis of tranquility at the center of the super-continent; as the original home of the common ancestors of the two clans, the “Heartland” of Terra Magna was considered neutral ground during the war and remained free of either army for many moons. Also, members of either tribe came and went regularly in those days, and a good number from both even settled in the region, especially in the central city. However, even more important than the city's heritage or population was the old “Temple of the Serpent's Fang” at the center of the metropolis, and the great, mysterious treasure it possessed.

You see, the Temple was a pyramid built in a style that would seem to fuse elements used by ancient civilizations of our world; it had a set of steps going up the center of each of the four sides like the Mayan pyramids, but the sides themselves were smooth like those made by the Egyptians. It had no interior chambers, just a plateau at the top; in the center of this plateau was a pedestal, and on this pedestal was a large, glowing, teardrop-shaped crystal resting wide end down. This crystal was the Outer Realm's legendary Mother Stone, but it was called “the Eternity Beacon” by the Moraujaks and “the Serpent's Fang” by the Kronicites. The Stone bore great and terrible powers, said to be capable of altering the very fabric of existence itself; it even had an aura that shone a beam into the sky at all hours which could be seen from miles away (hence the name “Eternity Beacon”).

Due to the sheer power of the Stone, the Temple was walled off from the rest of the city and guarded at all hours by a mysterious being with enchanted armor and weapons who only called himself a “Sentinel.” No one knew who this Sentinel was or whether he was somehow affiliated with the two tribes or their ancestors (he wasn't related to any of them, you see); in fact, the most that any could guess was that, due to the unending glow from his armor and weapons, he might have been a Solarian, a member of a legendary race said to originate from the sun itself. Few dared to converse with “the Armored One,” and all who attempted to learn more about him got the same answer from him: “It's inconsequential.”

In fact, the only being with whom the Sentinel spoke about anything (anything other than himself, that is) was Chief Pakoran's daughter, Tia-Ca. Trained as an archer but privately disapproving of violence, she spent much of her adolescence in the Heartland's city studying the religion of her people and the ways of the healers; so great was her interest in these subjects, the Sentinel often called her “Student of the Light” as the Guiding Light was regarded by the Kronicites as the deity of peace and healing. Pakoran was greatly displeased with his daughter's studies, and he was also suspicious of her frequent conversations with the Sentinel; however, the Armored One never threatened anyone who entered or settled in the city peacefully, so the chieftain left them alone and kept his opinions to himself (for the time being, at least).

Meanwhile, within the Moraujak tribe, another important being came into adolescence during Pakoran and Pirixoth's war. Trained in all manners of combat known in the Outer Realm at the time with an emphasis on those involving stealth, Shara had little in common with Tia-Ca; unlike the Chief's daughter, Shara held no qualms about the war and willingly fought in it. Skilled with all weapons that existed then and a master of both the crossbow and the knife, she rose quickly in the ranks and came to be Pirixoth's primary assassin; the Emperor had at that time learned from his spies of Tia-Ca's frequent visits to the Heartland's capital, and Shara seemed the perfect choice for eliminating this apparent successor to Pakoran, a certain way to throw him and his armies into chaos and thus defeat them.

However, before the assassin could complete her mission, Pirixoth's real plan was soon revealed to both Shara and Tia-Ca; the Emperor had already sent other assassins into the Heartland to prepare for when his armies invaded to claim his true target: the Eternity Beacon. Tia-Ca sought to get everyone to safety while the Sentinel fought against the assassins on one side of the Temple and, unbeknownst to both, Shara aided by sniping on the other side; the alarm was sounded, and both tribes charged into the valley. All pretenses were gone and the Heartland burned as the two clans fought their way to the Temple; all knew that whoever reached the top first would decide the fate of Terra Magna.

The Sentinel was nowhere to be found when the two leaders got through the heavily-damaged walls surrounding the Temple's base, but his work as well as Shara's was plain to see on both sides. In addition, the Armored One had booby-trapped all four stairways leading up to the Serpent's Fang, so only the toughest and most skilled soldiers of both armies were able to follow their leaders to the summit. Both girls attempted to stop their respective tribes just short of the plateau, with Tia-Ca appealing to her father with reason and logic on one side while Shara confronted the Emperor for his treachery on the other with her crossbow loaded and knife drawn; alas, neither could stop the advance: Shara was thrown down the side of the Temple by Pirixoth himself for “obstructing progress” while Pakoran ignored his daughter's pleas, calling them “dishonorable” and stating that taking the Serpent's Fang before the Moraujaks did was necessary for their survival.

With no options remaining, Tia-Ca finally did what the Sentinel begged her to do before he disappeared: she took the Great Bow of Light he gave her when the invasion started, whispered an ancient Aetherian incantation, and fired an energy arrow at the Mother Stone. The elemental energy in the shot destabilized the crystal, causing it to break into four pieces: the spheroid Aether Pearl (which bore the powers of the eight Aetherian Spirits) and the three Sentinel Shards (each of which bearing a unique power based on one of the three virtues of wisdom, strength, and courage). The four fragments then were taken up into the air above the temple by an invisible entity who spoke like thunder in an incomprehensible tongue and aimed the fragments as the eight Spirits themselves charged the rocks further with their power; the Moraujaks, who had completely forgotten the religion of their ancestors, watched the spectacle in awe while the Kronicites, who worshiped and feared the Spirits of the Aether, ran in a desperate attempt to escape the coming doom. The unseen entity uttered a curse in the incomprehensible language of the Aether and unleashed a beam of pure, focused elemental energy from the shards upon the Temple.

The resulting explosion drove the city deep under the surface of the Overworld, completely destroyed the rest of the Heartland, and split what remained of Terra Magna into two nearly identical teardrop-shaped continents; the Kronicite territory became Terra Magus and brought forth beings strong in the light and dark arcane arts, while the Moraujak empire became Terra Metrus and brought forth beings able to manipulate any of the elements. In addition, the two new continents were driven away from each other until they stopped at opposite ends of the globe, each continent was oriented so that its narrower end pointed to one of the poles, and the former location of the Heartland became the center of a new ocean that separated the coasts that used to form the mountainous borders of that doomed region. As for the two clans, those two brave girls mysteriously vanished like the Sentinel just before the explosion; all that remained of the invasion of the Heartland was whatever the tribes left behind in their respective territories, along with five rocks slightly endowed with the powers used in the blast (three for the Sentinel Shards, one for the six Elements, and one for both the Light and Shadow) and the few Heartland-dwelling Kronicites that were lucky enough to survive the event.

These Kronicites awoke to find themselves stranded on Terra Metrus, the land that had turned away from and forgotten the Aether; all that they knew and loved was gone, and they were soon divided amongst themselves about what to do next. Half of them, led by an eccentric technophile named Diego, wanted to seek out the four fragments (which had been scattered to other realms) to put the Mother Stone back together and rebuild the tribe to its former glory and beyond; however, the other half of the survivors, lead by a former guard of the old city named Enriqué, opposed this, fearing that the Aetherians wanted the Stone to remain broken so that such a crisis wouldn't happen again. Thus split, Diego's followers took the three stones representing the Sentinel Shards and formed the technocratic Legion of Shadows, while Enriqué's supporters took the two stones representing the Aether Pearl and founded the Fraternity of Guardians; the Fraternity trained and protected the Elementalists of Terra Metrus while the Legion hunted for the Mother Stone's pieces, and the two factions had been fighting over ideologies, and their five little rocks, ever since.

While Terra Metrus continued to advance in a fashion similar to our world, Terra Magus remained in a comparably primitive state, progressing no further than the equivalent of our Middle Ages. With the Kronicites decimated and banished, and with the Sentinel gone, new Solarians filled the void and laid Terra Magus's foundations by training its greatest warriors and teaching its first white mages; both light and dark nexuses arose there, and people, families, towns, and kingdoms alike spent fortunes and shed much blood for control of these links to the Aether's power. Yet through it all, no being ever arose in Terra Metrus with supreme mastery over all of the elements; nor in Terra Magus did a being arise in that could manipulate both the light and dark essences of the Aether equally.

That is, until the Great Schism...

Description
In the time before time, within the Outer Realm on a world an infinity of infinities away from ours, there existed a super-continent vast in size and possessing many different environments; due to the landmass's numerous attributes, it stands in its world's history as “Terra Magna.” Many different creatures and societies arose in this land, but two tribes rose far above the rest; sharing a forgotten common ancestor but opposing each other both physically and mentally, each civilization had conquered their neighbors and waged war with their rival. Yet in the end, both societies were brought to their knees when, as they each sought to bring an end to their opponent, both came to an end through two brave girls and a power greater than all.

One of the two tribes, the Kronicite warrior clan, held on to the old ways and worshiped the eight spirits of the Aether: the Guiding Light, the Living Shadow, and the six Elements; their strength and endurance were feared and respected by all, and their leader, Chief Pakoran, held the safety and honor of his people above all else. The other tribe, the Moraujak inventor clan, rejected the ancient traditions and reveled instead in their creations and achievements; their power laid in their then-advanced technology, and their leader, Emperor Pirixoth, was notorious for his ruthlessness and lust for power. Each clan gained dominance over part of Terra Magna, growing in might and splendor, and when finally the two civilizations could expand no further and were equally matched, war ensued and raged for many moons.

Nonetheless, even in the midst of such chaos, there was an oasis of tranquility at the center of the super-continent; as the original home of the common ancestors of the two clans, the “Heartland” of Terra Magna was considered neutral ground during the war and remained free of either army for many moons. Also, members of either tribe came and went regularly in those days, and a good number from both even settled in the region, especially in the central city. However, even more important than the city's heritage or population was the old “Temple of the Serpent's Fang” at the center of the metropolis, and the great, mysterious treasure it possessed.

You see, the Temple was a pyramid built in a style that would seem to fuse elements used by ancient civilizations of our world; it had a set of steps going up the center of each of the four sides like the Mayan pyramids, but the sides themselves were smooth like those made by the Egyptians. It had no interior chambers, just a plateau at the top; in the center of this plateau was a pedestal, and on this pedestal was a large, glowing, teardrop-shaped crystal resting wide end down. This crystal was the Outer Realm's legendary Mother Stone, but it was called “the Eternity Beacon” by the Moraujaks and “the Serpent's Fang” by the Kronicites. The Stone bore great and terrible powers, said to be capable of altering the very fabric of existence itself; it even had an aura that shone a beam into the sky at all hours which could be seen from miles away (hence the name “Eternity Beacon”).

Due to the sheer power of the Stone, the Temple was walled off from the rest of the city and guarded at all hours by a mysterious being with enchanted armor and weapons who only called himself a “Sentinel.” No one knew who this Sentinel was or whether he was somehow affiliated with the two tribes or their ancestors (he wasn't related to any of them, you see); in fact, the most that any could guess was that, due to the unending glow from his armor and weapons, he might have been a Solarian, a member of a legendary race said to originate from the sun itself. Few dared to converse with “the Armored One,” and all who attempted to learn more about him got the same answer from him: “It's inconsequential.”

In fact, the only being with whom the Sentinel spoke about anything (anything other than himself, that is) was Chief Pakoran's daughter, Tia-Ca. Trained as an archer but privately disapproving of violence, she spent much of her adolescence in the Heartland's city studying the religion of her people and the ways of the healers; so great was her interest in these subjects, the Sentinel often called her “Student of the Light” as the Guiding Light was regarded by the Kronicites as the deity of peace and healing. Pakoran was greatly displeased with his daughter's studies, and he was also suspicious of her frequent conversations with the Sentinel; however, the Armored One never threatened anyone who entered or settled in the city peacefully, so the chieftain left them alone and kept his opinions to himself (for the time being, at least).

Meanwhile, within the Moraujak tribe, another important being came into adolescence during Pakoran and Pirixoth's war. Trained in all manners of combat known in the Outer Realm at the time with an emphasis on those involving stealth, Shara had little in common with Tia-Ca; unlike the Chief's daughter, Shara held no qualms about the war and willingly fought in it. Skilled with all weapons that existed then and a master of both the crossbow and the knife, she rose quickly in the ranks and came to be Pirixoth's primary assassin; the Emperor had at that time learned from his spies of Tia-Ca's frequent visits to the Heartland's capital, and Shara seemed the perfect choice for eliminating this apparent successor to Pakoran, a certain way to throw him and his armies into chaos and thus defeat them.

However, before the assassin could complete her mission, Pirixoth's real plan was soon revealed to both Shara and Tia-Ca; the Emperor had already sent other assassins into the Heartland to prepare for when his armies invaded to claim his true target: the Eternity Beacon. Tia-Ca sought to get everyone to safety while the Sentinel fought against the assassins on one side of the Temple and, unbeknownst to both, Shara aided by sniping on the other side; the alarm was sounded, and both tribes charged into the valley. All pretenses were gone and the Heartland burned as the two clans fought their way to the Temple; all knew that whoever reached the top first would decide the fate of Terra Magna.

The Sentinel was nowhere to be found when the two leaders got through the heavily-damaged walls surrounding the Temple's base, but his work as well as Shara's was plain to see on both sides. In addition, the Armored One had booby-trapped all four stairways leading up to the Serpent's Fang, so only the toughest and most skilled soldiers of both armies were able to follow their leaders to the summit. Both girls attempted to stop their respective tribes just short of the plateau, with Tia-Ca appealing to her father with reason and logic on one side while Shara confronted the Emperor for his treachery on the other with her crossbow loaded and knife drawn; alas, neither could stop the advance: Shara was thrown down the side of the Temple by Pirixoth himself for “obstructing progress” while Pakoran ignored his daughter's pleas, calling them “dishonorable” and stating that taking the Serpent's Fang before the Moraujaks did was necessary for their survival.

With no options remaining, Tia-Ca finally did what the Sentinel begged her to do before he disappeared: she took the Great Bow of Light he gave her when the invasion started, whispered an ancient Aetherian incantation, and fired an energy arrow at the Mother Stone. The elemental energy in the shot destabilized the crystal, causing it to break into four pieces: the spheroid Aether Pearl (which bore the powers of the eight Aetherian Spirits) and the three Sentinel Shards (each of which bearing a unique power based on one of the three virtues of wisdom, strength, and courage). The four fragments then were taken up into the air above the temple by an invisible entity who spoke like thunder in an incomprehensible tongue and aimed the fragments as the eight Spirits themselves charged the rocks further with their power; the Moraujaks, who had completely forgotten the religion of their ancestors, watched the spectacle in awe while the Kronicites, who worshiped and feared the Spirits of the Aether, ran in a desperate attempt to escape the coming doom. The unseen entity uttered a curse in the incomprehensible language of the Aether and unleashed a beam of pure, focused elemental energy from the shards upon the Temple.

The resulting explosion drove the city deep under the surface of the Overworld, completely destroyed the rest of the Heartland, and split what remained of Terra Magna into two nearly identical teardrop-shaped continents; the Kronicite territory became Terra Magus and brought forth beings strong in the light and dark arcane arts, while the Moraujak empire became Terra Metrus and brought forth beings able to manipulate any of the elements. In addition, the two new continents were driven away from each other until they stopped at opposite ends of the globe, each continent was oriented so that its narrower end pointed to one of the poles, and the former location of the Heartland became the center of a new ocean that separated the coasts that used to form the mountainous borders of that doomed region. As for the two clans, those two brave girls mysteriously vanished like the Sentinel just before the explosion; all that remained of the invasion of the Heartland was whatever the tribes left behind in their respective territories, along with five rocks slightly endowed with the powers used in the blast (three for the Sentinel Shards, one for the six Elements, and one for both the Light and Shadow) and the few Heartland-dwelling Kronicites that were lucky enough to survive the event.

These Kronicites awoke to find themselves stranded on Terra Metrus, the land that had turned away from and forgotten the Aether; all that they knew and loved was gone, and they were soon divided amongst themselves about what to do next. Half of them, led by an eccentric technophile named Diego, wanted to seek out the four fragments (which had been scattered to other realms) to put the Mother Stone back together and rebuild the tribe to its former glory and beyond; however, the other half of the survivors, lead by a former guard of the old city named Enriqué, opposed this, fearing that the Aetherians wanted the Stone to remain broken so that such a crisis wouldn't happen again. Thus split, Diego's followers took the three stones representing the Sentinel Shards and formed the technocratic Legion of Shadows, while Enriqué's supporters took the two stones representing the Aether Pearl and founded the Fraternity of Guardians; the Fraternity trained and protected the Elementalists of Terra Metrus while the Legion hunted for the Mother Stone's pieces, and the two factions had been fighting over ideologies, and their five little rocks, ever since.

While Terra Metrus continued to advance in a fashion similar to our world, Terra Magus remained in a comparably primitive state, progressing no further than the equivalent of our Middle Ages. With the Kronicites decimated and banished, and with the Sentinel gone, new Solarians filled the void and laid Terra Magus's foundations by training its greatest warriors and teaching its first white mages; both light and dark nexuses arose there, and people, families, towns, and kingdoms alike spent fortunes and shed much blood for control of these links to the Aether's power. Yet through it all, no being ever arose in Terra Metrus with supreme mastery over all of the elements; nor in Terra Magus did a being arise in that could manipulate both the light and dark essences of the Aether equally.

That is, until the Great Schism...