For many years, Dereth was home to the Empyrean. Apparently human, but not, this race built a great civilization, centred around magic. For centuries they built to ever greater heights, until the Dark Time came.

A great wizard, Asheron by name, inadvertently opened gateways to another dimension and allowed the Olthoi to invade Dereth. The Olthoi are an insectile race, one devoted to their own expansion and the destruction of all other races. Despite their powers the Empyrean gradually lost Dereth to the Olthoi, and Asheron worked a great magic that swept his remaining people away to another world. Asheron stayed behind, and sequestered himself in his impregnable tower.

The power of Asheron’s spell was such that, even as the Empyrean were spirited away, intelligent beings of many races were snatched from their own. Drudges, Shreths, Lugians, Banderlings, Tumeroks and many more were thrown into the chaos that had enveloped Dereth. Among all these exiles were humans from another world, Ispar. At first all these dimensional exiles were from a land called Aluvia, which closely resembles our own Northern Europe during the Middle Ages. Deposited one at a time in a land where the Olthoi were supreme, these Aluvians were rapidly enslaved. A very few managed to escape from the Olthoi and, under the leadership of one Thorsten Cragstone, lived a hardscrabble existence in the corners and cracks of Dereth.

The true start of Aluvian society in Dereth is some time later, when a minor Aluvian noblewoman named Elysa Strathelar was swept from Ispar to Dereth. At first enslaved by the Olthoi, Elysa escaped and was rescued by Cragstone’s band of exiles from a hunting pack of Olthoi. Thorsten may have been content to live as he lived, but Elysa was not and the shock of changing worlds started to bring out talents in her that had had no chance to grow in Ispar.

Elysa’s found an old Empyrean manuscript which described the end of the Dark Time including Asheron and Asheron’s Tower. Elysa became determined to find the Tower and (if possible) Asheron himself, in the hope of finding a way to defeat the Olthoi. In the time since her rescue she and Thorsten had become lovers, and he decided to aid her in her quest.

After many great adventures, she and Thorsten found a tower off the coast of Dereth, a tower with no doors or windows. After calling for Asheron for hours, Elysa was spirited into the tower by magic from within. She eventually found Asheron sitting in the center of the tower – as he had since the fall of the Empyrean to the Olthoi. After listening for some time to Elysa’s arguments in favour of helping the people he had inadvertently brought to Dereth, Asheron gave her two things. First was an elixir that would enable a weapon to kill Olthoi. Second was a clue to defeating them: the Olthoi had a queen, and killing the queen would shatter their society.

It took many years, but Elysa and Thorsten gradually built an army of freed slaves, fought the Olthoi to a standstill, and then ultimately killed the Olthoi queen. Elysa’s own bow shot was responsible for the final victory, but Thorsten was killed by the queen. Elysa laid him to rest in the underground Empyrean city that had served as their base for so many years. (See the Historical Archive for more details.)

Ten years have passed since the Olthoi queen was killed. Asheron’s great spell is still not spent and still brings people from Aluvia to Dereth every day, as well as a continuing flow of evil beings from other worlds. Further, people from elsewhere in Ispar – Gharun’dim and Sho – have started to appear. Despite the immense dislocation of being deposited in a new world, all three peoples have begun to build new societies in Dereth, and small towns have started to appear here and there. Their situation is still tenuous, as the forces of evil still walk at will everywhere in Dereth. Even Elysa Strathelar has gone, simply disappearing one year ago, on the ninth anniversary of Thorsten’s death. Into this world comes your character.