The Korvak War
The Korvak War
The Korvak War was one of the greatest conflicts in the history of the world and the event that fundamentally changed the course of civilization. It was the first great confrontation between the people of this world and the Korvaks, an alien race from another dimension.
The Korvaks had already conquered their home dimension before invading this one. Their objective was straightforward: establish a foothold, then expand their territory until this world was conquered as well.
The Korvak Invasion
When the Korvaks first arrived, the peoples of this world had no effective means of stopping them.
Neither the magic nor the technology of the time had advanced far enough to stand against the Korvak invasion. The Korvaks were extraordinarily powerful and warlike, and their armies advanced with little meaningful resistance. Civilization was pushed to the brink of destruction, and the survival of the world's peoples was in doubt.
It was this desperate situation that finally caused Demmazon to reveal himself openly to the world.
Until this point, Demmazon had remained largely unknown to the mortals of the world. With the Korvaks threatening to destroy everything, he revealed himself as the world's god and taught mortals how to fully control the magical forces around them. Mastery of magic would take time, however, and the immediate threat was too great to wait for the world to develop naturally.
Demmazon therefore created the Five Gifts.
The Gifts
The Five Gifts were artifacts of tremendous power, created using power embedded within the world itself. They were given to champions who would wield them against the Korvaks.
The Gift Bearers were:
- Vestal Stone — White Gift
- Kjeldin — Red Gift
- Salendaius Moonstrike — Blue Gift
- Alantarin the Wise — Yellow Gift
- Thorn Runehammer — Green Gift
The Gifts gave the defenders of the world the power necessary to finally fight the Korvaks on something approaching equal terms.
This did not immediately turn the war in the defenders' favor.
Even after Demmazon's intervention and the creation of the Gifts, the Korvaks continued to win overall. The defenders could now resist them and achieve victories that had previously been impossible, but the Korvaks remained an overwhelming threat.
The war continued until the defenders finally achieved a major breakthrough.
Salendaius Moonstrike
One of the most important battles of the war occurred when the Korvaks' last undefeated army swept out of the mountains and into the valley where Demonmount would later stand.
A city lay ahead of the army, but most of its soldiers had been drawn away by a Korvak feint from the east, leaving it relatively undefended.
The Korvak leader accompanied the army.
Standing between the advancing Korvaks and the city was Salendaius Moonstrike, wielder of the Blue Gift.
Salendaius stood alone against the army, supported only by the enormous forces she was able to summon through the Gift. The Korvak leader and his followers engaged her in a tremendous magical battle.
During the battle, the Korvaks opened a rift that allowed demons to begin pouring into the world. Had Salendaius not intervened, the rift might have unleashed thousands of demons.
The Blue Gift's power was based upon conjuration and summoning, but Salendaius realized that the same power could be used to prevent the summoning. She used the Gift to seal the rift and then created the volcano known as Demonmount around it, preventing the gate from being reopened.
Salendaius was eventually killed in the battle.
Her sacrifice nevertheless broke the might of the Korvak army. The battle bought the citizens of the city enough time to flee before the army could reach them.
The Blue Gift disappeared when Salendaius died.
The First Great Defeat
Salendaius's death was a turning point in the war.
The defenders had fought the Korvaks for some time after Demmazon's intervention, but the Korvaks were still winning overall. Salendaius's stand was the first truly significant defeat inflicted upon one of their armies.
More importantly, it demonstrated that the Korvaks could actually lose.
Until then, the Korvaks had advanced with the confidence of a race that had already conquered an entire dimension and had encountered little that could seriously threaten them. Their defeat at Demonmount proved that their armies were not invincible.
The defenders now had something they had not possessed before: proof that victory was possible.
The Fall of the Korvak Leader
The Korvak leader remained an almost insurmountable threat. His power was so great that even the remaining Gift Bearers could not simply destroy him through direct confrontation.
Instead, the Gift Bearers devised a trap.
The plan required Vestal Stone to sacrifice himself to lure the Korvak leader into the trap. Vestal insisted upon taking this role, despite the other Gift Bearers believing that, given more time, another solution might have been possible.
The plan succeeded.
Vestal Stone died in the final confrontation, but his sacrifice allowed the remaining Gift Bearers to capture the Korvak leader and imprison him in a magical prison beyond the world, where he would remain for all eternity.
With their leader defeated and imprisoned, the Korvak invasion was finally broken.
Most of the remaining Korvaks were killed. Others survived by hiding, but the invasion force had been decisively defeated.
After the War
The surviving Gift Bearers eventually came to believe that the Gifts were too powerful to remain permanently in mortal hands.
Thorn Runehammer hid the Green Gift.
Kjeldin eventually surrendered the Red Gift to Alantarin the Wise.
Alantarin withdrew to a hidden temple in the mountains, where he guarded both the Red and Yellow Gifts.
The use of the Gifts had also changed their bearers. The surviving Gift Bearers were granted unnaturally long lives, allowing them to remain alive long after the war itself had ended.
The knowledge and magical mastery Demmazon had given the people of the world continued to spread. In the generations that followed, the various civilizations eventually became masters of magic and technology, ultimately leading to the rise of the Age of Wonders.
The Korvak War was therefore more than a war against an invading species. It was the event that ended the old world, revealed Demmazon to mortals, brought forth the Five Gifts, and began the long transformation that would eventually produce the Age of Wonders.
