The world was filled with a variety of creatures. Goblins that love gold, dragons that love gold, dwarves that mastered their crafts for gold. Creatures, monsters, and amongst them, were humans.
Humans are weak creatures, powerless to fight most of these creatures. The last time there was a dragon extermination, a total of 213 men were killed, 102 were injured, and 25 were missing. The only humans capable of doing anything were those born gifted, rather, mages. Almost like compensation from god, a select few humans were capable of wielding magic.
Still, most die before they reach their peaks, and those that are successful become overworked. Humans were unable to live in the wild, so they built walls, put up defences, and they made sure they were safe.
At some point in time, there existed seven communities of humans, each with their own kings, each with their own mages.
The world was relatively peaceful between humans and the beasts, but trouble was brewing between humans themselves. They assembled their mages, they assembled their knights, and they sharpened their weapons to go to war.
With themselves.
The Great War is recorded in human history. The world has never seen such bloodshed, the thousands of men who died. All the while, even the leaders themselves were unsure of what exactly they were fighting for. Peace between the lands was sought after with violence, the monsters were a no bigger threat than humans were to each other. Humans were killed in cold blood, and mages sent spells after spells, annihilating enemies in batches.
The war lasted seven years.
The Great War showed the world, not just humans, the sheer idiocy of humanity.
The war was initially fought by seven factions, having almost the entirety of humanity involved. The atrocities committed, the amount of blood spilt still stained the earth to this day.
It brought up the question.
'Just what exactly do we live for?'
Now, humanity had consolidated its power. They created a single country, so vast that it was impossible to have everything in sight. Buildings, humans, products. Everything was controlled by the upper class of humans, Nobles and Royalty. They named their new home 'Ether'.
Life was prosperous in human society. Trade flowed, and hardly anyone was poor, they were safe, protected by the strongest of mages. There, the only thing a human needed to be afraid of was other humans.
At least, that was how it was in the centre of Ether.
At the borders of Ether, resided the beasts. Goblins, orcs, dragons and giant serpents just to name a few. The humans remained holed inside their land while the monsters roared outside, almost as if making sure the humans stayed where they were.
Few bothered trying to venture outside Ether, few wanted to risk it. However, there was a common belief and rumour, a belief that somewhere out there, in the far distance, existed something humans had longed for. Somewhere far out there, there was going to be meaning to their existence.