Origin of the four factions by Artonas Lindain of the silver tower:
During the "Age of Chaos" that came about as a result of the creation of the mana shield, small groups of mages were formed.
These groups shared their knowledge amongst themselves in order to compete with opposing groups for power and resources.
One such group was the druids.
The druids used a special form of magic, in which they changed their physical form to resemble certain animals.
The idea behind it was, that by using mana to increase the strength of a gorilla or the speed of a Cheetah, one would achieve greater results than using mana to improve the same traits in humans.
In combat, they would transform their muscles, bones and internal organs to suit their needs, thus gaining a boost to strength, speed, agility, endurance and so on, depending on what suited the situation the most.
The druids, who were originally a relatively weak group, experienced a massive increase in their might when one of their members came out with an idea.
Grolof Agant, one of the druid elders, devised a ritual that would create a permanent new form for the druids to assume.This form would be faster, stronger, and more durable than the human body many times over.
The druids gathered tens of thousands of non-mages, as well as every mage they managed to capture, in order to use their mana as fuel for the ritual.
Every single one of the men who were sacrificed for the ritual died in agony, and so did most of the druids, who failed to endure the process, thus turning into giant hulks of pulsating flesh, rather than transforming into their intended form.
Only eight druids, Grolof among them, completed the ritual successfuly, and turned into a new race of terrifying and endlessly powerful beings.
Winged, scaled, fire breathing and capable of lifting mountains with their lizard-like heads, they were the very first of the dragons.
Using their newfound powers, they easily conquered the world, and brought forth an age of tyrannical rule known as the "Age of Dragons".
The dragons, who believed that there is nothing in the world that could possibly threaten them, became slothful, which greatly influenced their rule.
Management of the mages under their rule transferred to appointed individuals with varying degrees of loyalty towards the dragons, who had abandoned not only their duties as rulers, but also any attempt at increasing their personal might.
This stagnation led to the formation of a new faction right under the dragon's snouts.
The Council of Archmages.
Led by seven powerful and research-obsessed mages, this faction gathered knowledge and strength through research and recruitment, until finally, they decided to rebel.
The ensuing war engulfed the entire world, killing millions in the process.
It led to the death of five of the dragons and four of the Archmages, and ended with the dragons surrendering. Both Sides signed a treaty, splitting the world's territory among them, with the council gaining around 70% as the victors of the war.
In the next two decades, the fragile balance that the two great factions maintained after the war was slowly tilting towards the council with each clash between the two, which led the dragons to adopt a new strategy.
The dragons forged alliances with archmages who cared more about claiming the resources of their allies at the council than they did about getting rid of the draconic threat. This strategy of exploiting the greed and ambition of the different council leaders led not only to the survival of the dragons, but also to the rise to power of the third faction.
The liches.
A group of council members, who devised a ritual in which they bind their essence to an item they dubbed a "phalactary", and fueled it with external mana (mainly from unwilling humans). Using this method, they lost their original body, but the phalactary would construct a new body for them as long as it remained sufficiently charged.
Most Archmages were extremely opposed to this method, not because of the morality of the matter, but because it wasted many resources (human lives included) and didn't create results fitting that waste in their eyes.
The reason that faction even managed to survive was because of the dragons' support in both resources and military intervention in case the council came to attack the liches.
The council then realized that in order to gain the upper hand in the conflict against the dragons, they must create a counter weight to the liches, since they believed that nothing short of a cataclysmic event would cause them to unite for one goal long enough to defeat the dragons without such a weight.
Fortunately for them, an opportunity to weaken the newly formed third faction soon came.
In order to fuel their phalactaries, the liches required a constant supply of humans, preferably mages, to act as that fuel, and much like the ritual that transformed the druids into the dragons, it too killed every participant.
The dragons, eager to support their newfound allies, gladly supplied as many people as the liches required as long as they remained servile to them.
One of the many individuals sent to die by the dragons was a young boy named Lorvis, now known as Lorvis Silverglow, the first leader of the paladins.
His ability, that awakened while he was forcefully marched from his home to the liches citadel, was threefold.
He could heal others, to the level of easily restoring organs and limbs, He could summon blinding light that scorched anything he saw as an enemy, and most importantly, he could give others the first two abilities, even if they weren't originally mages.
The third ability, though limited in use, created a new faction that hated the liches to its very core. A faction that the Council Of Archmages rushed to support.
The fourth and final faction.
The paladins led by the Silverglow family.