Perched on the north western horn of Elarion was Amani, the so-called Kingdom of Gold and Opportunity. A poetic name, sure, but to the rest of the world, it was just a gleaming, obnoxious monument to excess. The kind of place that inspired both envy and nausea, depending on how many coins jingled in your pocket. Governed by the merchants' guild, it was a city built not on bedrock but on greed, each gilded tower clawing desperately at the heavens as if to demand the gods' attention.
They didn't build just one city, oh no. They had to go for three: Amara, Haligon, and Mertiv. Each sprawling for miles, each housing millions, all feeding off one lifeline—dungeons. Six of them, to be precise. Amani wasn't blessed with fertile fields or booming factories. No, its wealth came from the dark, quite literally.
Dungeons: the pits of despair that birthed Amani's fleeting legacy. Every coin in that kingdom was dredged up from those cursed holes by merchants with vaults to fill and mercenaries too stubborn—or stupid—to quit while they were ahead. The pits lured them all, from bright-eyed fools looking for their first treasure to grizzled veterans hoping this dive wouldn't be their last. And for every corpse that came back up, there were ten more fools ready to take its place, chasing gold, glory, or both in one bloody breath.
And what did the merchants do with this blood-soaked wealth? Why, they twisted it into an empire of curiosities, of course. Each city became a living carnival, a marketplace where anything and everything was for sale—if you had the coin. Love potions? Sure. Elixirs of youth? Absolutely. Cursed relics that would definitely kill you before you finished saying "what a bargain"? They were on aisle five. In Amani, if you couldn't find what you were looking for, it probably didn't exist. Or it wasn't profitable enough to bother with.
The merchant guild ran the kingdom like a machine, each citizen just another cog grinding out profit. And they were very good at grinding. Their secret? Currency. Not gold—oh no, that was for the upper districts. For the masses, they minted their own coins, shiny little promises of value backed by absolutely nothing but the guild's reputation. It worked because, in a kingdom overflowing with resources, no one stopped to ask what those promises were worth.
The upper districts, though, were a different story. Up there, it wasn't promises but gold that mattered. Real gold. The kind that jingled with authority and bought entry into the gilded heavens above. And while the common folk scrambled for their worthless coins, the guild quietly hoarded the true treasures. Precious stones, rare metals, potions of unimaginable power—all of it packed onto caravans and sent to far-off lands, traded for gold. The real wealth of Amani, locked away behind vault doors thicker than a dragon's hide.
The people saw the spires, the bazaars, the decadence, and called it prosperity. I saw it for what it was—a carnival with a trapdoor, ready to swallow anyone who looked too closely. In Amani, everything was for sale, but if you weren't careful, you'd end up on the shelves.
The Zahlani were once scattered tribes of the north—barbarians, really. The kind that drank from skulls and believed wolves whispered prophecies to them. They spent their days fighting each other for scraps and their nights praying they wouldn't freeze to death. Picturesque, isn't it? But five years ago, they became something more. Something terrifying.
Under the banner of the Boro dynasty, they forged an empire, and not the kind built on treaties or gold. No, theirs was an empire of fire, blood, and unshakable belief. Their emperor, Kal Boro the Divine, claimed he wasn't just a man. He insisted, with all the humility of a dragon on a gold hoard, that he was a god made flesh. His people? They lapped it up like starving dogs. Every word he spoke was gospel; every decree, a holy writ. And every city they burned to the ground was just another offering to his bottomless ego.
Their armies didn't march like invaders; they swarmed like zealots. You couldn't even call it war—it was extermination wrapped in divine rhetoric. To them, conquest wasn't just politics. It was salvation. Each toppled banner, each charred ruin, was a hymn to their emperor's insatiable will.
And then there was Amara. Poor, defiant Amara. Our little city didn't fall because of strategy or necessity. No, we were doomed because of a particularly shiny piece of architecture. That's right—an insult. It all started when Kal decided to take his dragon for a joyride. I imagine it was his way of "surveying his dominion," which is a fancy way of saying he liked to fly around and feel superior to everyone below.
So there he was, soaring through the skies, probably composing a soliloquy about his greatness, when he saw it: Amani's golden spire. Our pride and joy. A tower so radiant, so bright, it practically screamed, Look at me!
Now, I've seen that spire. It's… fine. It's tall, it's gold, it sparkles in the sun. But to Kal, it wasn't just a tower. It was an affront. A challenge. A giant middle finger to his self-proclaimed divinity. Apparently, even his dragon thought so—legend has it, the creature flinched, nearly throwing him off.
"Do you see that kingdom over there, Laceron?" Kal supposedly said, his voice calm, but you just know he was seething inside.
"Yes, my lord," replied Laceron, who I assume was the most exhausted man in the empire, tasked with translating vague threats into actionable genocide.
"I don't want to see it," Kal said. And just like that, a death sentence was signed for thousands of people. That's the thing about egos the size of mountains—they tend to crush anything in their shadow.
What followed was classic Zahlani efficiency. A few murmured orders, a thunderous crack in the sky, and suddenly, our lives were upended by legions of rune-etched soldiers, smoke-belching war machines, and monsters so twisted they probably crawled out of someone's nightmares. The air reeked of burning incense and blood, and the hum of dark magic vibrated through the ground like a heartbeat.
Amara was the first to fall.