-translation by Dessa McVain

The first race were known to themselves as the An’Dar, The People. They spread across the world and claimed it as their own. As a people they represented strong will and fierce beauty. Four things their race held dear. These were beauty, cunning, intelligence, and strength. After many generations their society stratified into two castes. The An’Dar and their servants the An’Dar’Vi.

Even today An’Dar ruins and sculpture litter the surface of Phantera, demonstrating the pervasive nature of their rule. Their structures have an alien beauty, a sense of loss and emptiness that no structure since has held. In places the strange metal ribs of these buildings still stretch skyward in great rectangles that have survived the death of their creators by millennia.

The literature and art we have been able to find of the An’Dar people was focused around power and politics. Each family seems to have striven for supremacy, battling all others in games of intrigue and wit to rise ever higher in station. How the most powerful separated themselves from their underlings or how these games were even played remains a mystery to even the most talented of archivists and translators. It is known however that the An’Dar people possessed talents and artifacts whose power was beyond that of our comprehension.

In the end it was the infighting common to the An’Dar that brought about the war and tragedy which doomed their race to dissolution. They became so stratified that they treated all laborers as slaves. The An’Dar’Vi became the menial labor force of the people, and the An’Dar, thinking themselves vastly superior never dreamed that those they abused might someday rise to challenge their superiority. For generations they toiled under the domination of the An’Dar, unable to organize any resistance to the power of their superiors. Then from within their ranks a brave few emerged, recorded only among An’Dar records as ‘The Five Traitors’ who lead uprisings in five cities which soon spread to engulf the An’Dar nation.

This conflict was a civil war which raged in every city of the world. The stricken An’Dar were at first shocked, then roused to anger by the effrontery of their underlings. The strange part of this war was the unbelievable strength the An’Dar really did possess. Though outnumbered more than ten to one by their An’Dar’Vi laborforce, and even though both sides had control over vast powers of mind and body, the An’Dar were quickly able to turn the tide in this war. Block by block they swept through their cities, exterminating all who stood against them.

After centuries of oppression the An’Dar’Vi had rebelled against their noble overlords, but suffered a terrible and brutal defeat. Those who fled the vengeance of the An’Dar were cut-off from the great cities of the ancient world forever. The remaining families of An’Dar’Vi were pushed out into the wilderness of swamps and mountains that the An’Dar considered too worthless to claim.

Near this time an ancient race of travelers appeared from the ether, looking for new realms to make their own and reshape to their will. This proud and ancient race called themselves Fae, and the An’Dar knew them as the An’Fa’Dar; the unchanging people. For they never seemed to age, or die.

The Fae sought to reshape the world of the An’Dar to their will, but found that the will of the An’Dar matched their own, and were unable to reshape this world’s reality. Giving up their goal of conquest the two people’s lived together for a time. Some Fae also visited with the An’Dar’Vi in the mountains and swamps, but most found their company boorish.

During this time of inter-racial mingling the An’Dar and the Fae interbred and formed the off-shoot race that would later become Elves. These children were first frowned upon, then praised; for they held some of the greatest strengths of both races.

From the few conjunctions among An’Dar’Vi and Fae the first of the gnomes were born. These creatures were outcasts and put upon for a great time, living as shadows among other societies. They learned from these societies, but were unable to form a place of their own.

After many years of separation the An’Dar’Vi grew in numbers and in strength. They met with another race in the swamps and a third hidden high in the mountain tops. These races were the Ga’Vin (beast men) and the Av’Ian’Dar, the people of the sky. The Ga’Vin explained that they had once been An’Dar’Vi but were changed and strengthened by their travels and the knew resolve they had found. The Av’Ian’Dar had no explanation to offer for their sudden appearance in a world that the An’Dar’Vi thought they knew well. Av’Ian’Dar simply claimed to have always been present, merely ignored by the ground dwellers beneath them.

The An’Dar’Vi forged alliances with these two peoples and a pact was made between them to concur the rest of the world and drive out the An’Dar and their Fae Allies.

At first the conquest went well and many of the An’Dar were killed in the initial surprise of the attack. However the An’Dar regrouped in small numbers to fight a defensive. Seeing that they had almost won the An’Dar’Vi pressed the attack, but they were betrayed by the Ga’Vin who struck from behind in the last moments of battle, seeking to take the possessions of both sides for their own. The Av’Ian’Dar fled the battle to preserve their own lives and left the An’Dar’Vi to face alone the might of the angered An’Dar. This betrayal routed the An’Dar’Vi and drove them deep into the mountains where they had long hidden. The An’Dar’Vi swore vengeance against those who had betrayed them and never forgot.

Once the An’Dar’Vi had quit the field the An’Dar were able to defeat the Ga’Vin quite quickly. The defeated races fled to their homelands and nursed their wounds for several centuries. The An’Dar would never recover from the grievous losses they received however, and in the end died a slow racial death. They were replaced by the Elven race who had stayed out of the war between their progenitors.