Greetings, reader. Before we proceed, allow me to pose a question.
What comes to mind when you hear the word "legacy"?
Coffers of gold? Renown? Your name inscribed in the annals of history?
What I shall reveal will transform your understanding completely.
For the legacy of the great war against the demon hordes was not monuments or victory processions. Nay, it was something far more enduring.
A realm completely transformed. Transmuted. Forever altered.
I speak of the "Children of Chaos."
This is no mere digression. This IS the chronicle. You cannot comprehend the present without knowing how we arrived here.
The infernal invasions didn't merely raze strongholds and fell warriors. That was but the surface. The TRUE transformation occurred gradually... imperceptibly... while the commonfolk were occupied with mere survival.
The day was bitter cold, though strangely blessed with sunshine.
The Council of Scholars gathered in their chamber in the citadel of Lyris, resplendent in their ceremonial robes and wearing expressions of grave concern.
"Let us discuss these... anomalies," the High Scholar pronounced, stroking his beard thoughtfully.
Anomalies. What a woefully inadequate term.
These "anomalies" were babes born with arcane markings. Miners who suddenly possessed sight in the blackest depths. Mages who ceased to age.
"Naught to fear," they assured the realm with practiced composure. "Merely lingering effects of the war. They shall stabilize. In time."
They were gravely mistaken.
The corruption of the netherworld is no trifling ailment to be remedied with poultices and prayers. It is a venom. It spreads. It transforms. It rewrites the very fabric of creation.
And thus began our tale.
The mages were the first to change.
Those learned practitioners who bent the arcane energies to battle the infernal legions began their transformation. Their ears grew pointed. Their visages became sharp and angular. And their eyes began to glow with an unsettling, otherworldly light.
Yet this was but a harbinger of what was to come.
The true revelation manifested when their offspring entered the world.
We name them elves now. They were of beauty beyond mortal comprehension. Every movement they made resembled a courtly dance. Every utterance sounded like the finest minstrelsy.
These children were born with an innate connection to the arcane. They understood magic instinctively in ways that even the most learned human sages could never fathom.
Yet there was cruelty in their rarity - for every hundred human babes born, perhaps ONE elf would draw first breath. And their ethereal perfection served only as a constant reminder of how far the realm had strayed from its former humanity.
A memento mori of our changing world.
While the elves ascended to arcane heights, an equally remarkable transformation occurred in the deepest mines of Kalthar.
The miners - those who had toiled for generations in the bowels of the earth - underwent their own metamorphosis.
Their eyes adapted wholly to darkness. They perceived all even in the most absolute blackness. Their forms became stout and unyielding, as if hewn from the very stone they worked.
Then came what they called the "song of stone."
Initially, all dismissed the young delver who claimed he could hear the mountain "whispering" guidance to veins of precious ore.
"Madness," the guildmasters declared.
But soon other miners began to hear it too - this profound, mysterious echo that seemed to speak directly to their very souls.
Thus were born the dwarves. The wardens of the mountains, bound to the earth with a connection no others could comprehend.
Not all transformations were so noble.
In the lands most befouled by infernal taint, the Damned emerged. These unfortunate souls bore the most visible marks of corruption.
Horns sprouting from their brows. Scales adorning their flesh. Eyes burning like forge-fire.
And the night terrors... merciful heavens, the night terrors. Visions of the infernal realm haunted them ceaselessly, plaguing them even in waking hours.
A curse most foul. Yet from this malediction came power most strange.
The fiends of the netherworld were not content with these haphazard mutations.
In their final, desperate alchemical workings, they wrought vampires and lycanthropes. Two faces of the same accursed coin.
Vampires: Creatures of blood and unholy allure. Eternally youthful. Deathless. Bound to an unquenchable thirst.
Lycanthropes: Perfect warriors. Beast and man merged into one fell creation, changing with the cycles of the moon.
Both were forged to be weapons of conquest. Yet they rebelled against their ordained purpose and discovered means to endure... and indeed to flourish.
The realm transformed utterly. Citadels and villages adapted to these new peoples. Ancient edicts crumbled like parchment in flame.
How might one govern a realm where some folk live for centuries while others perish after mere decades? Where beings can command shadows and defy the very laws of mortality?
The truth is stark: one cannot.
Hostilities arose. Conflicts ignited. It was as inevitable as winter following autumn.
Today, walking through the streets of Lyris reveals our strange new reality.
It is not perfect harmony - it never shall be - but we have endured. And considering how profoundly we have changed, that alone is a marvel worthy of the bards' songs.
Yet do not grow complacent. The mutations have not ceased. With each passing season, there come whispers of children born with powers never before witnessed...