The Age of Chaos
However, Uman's and Fardos's joint efforts did not remain entirely without consequence, for during the unsuccessful attempt to separate the double god a small part broke away from it. This tiny shard grew and expanded until it took shape and eventually became a sentient creature of its own. This was the hour Kirok the Mad was born. Owing to his peculiar ancestry this strange god has a twisted or, as some say, a schizophrenic nature. He inherited Uman's creative mind and his inquisitive nature, so that he eventually became the patron god of all those who follow the path of science and research. However, the one trait Kirok is really famous for is his twisted sense of humour. He adores bad taste and ingenious pranks, and this peculiar characteristic makes him the favourite of bards, jesters and of all other kinds of suspicious people.
While Fardos and Uman were working hard on their spell, Zathroth's minions went on to lay waste to the elder gods' precious creation, and the devastation continued without pause. It seemed as though the whole world was doomed to perish. However, some of the lesser gods who were tired of just standing by while their beloved Tibia was ravaged. They decided to put up resistance against the reckless hordes. Bastesh the Mistress of the Sea created huge, mysterious creatures that were both elegant and fierce, and she populated her beloved ocean with them to make sure Zathroth's minions would never defile its pure waters. However, there was little she could do to help her cousins who lived on the dry land. Of all her creatures the only ones to survive on land were the dextrous and venomous snakes. Crunor and Nornur, too, created creatures to fight against Brog's and Zathroth's hordes: Crunor the Lord of the Trees created fierce wolves, while Nornur equipped his beloved spiders with deadly poison to make them more powerful.
However, for all their efforts, the gods could not create creatures that were a match for the ruthless, well-organised hordes that roamed the land. The wolves' hides and the spiders chitinous exoskeletons could not resist the steel of the orcish blades, and for every troll that was brought down by poison two others came to take his place. In the end gods' children withdrew to areas that were easy to defend: The wolves fled into the depths of the forests, while the spiders hid deep in caves. There they continued their fights, defending their realms against the onslaught of the superior enemy. These little pockets of resistance were the only sanctuaries in a world that sank deeper and deeper into chaos. And the worst was yet to come, for now the dragons felt the time had come to take what was theirs by right!
For centuries they had propagated and expanded in silence, largely unnoticed by all other creatures. But now that Garsharak, the very first and strongest of their race, sent them into the world they knew neither restraint nor mercy. The orcish armies were routed by the relentless flames of magical dragon fire, and soon that proud though barbaric race, who until then had not known the meaning of the word defeat, was driven into the shelter of subterranean settlements. Their allies, the mighty cyclopses, fared no better. Although they won a number of notable victories using their powerful weapons and armour, they, too, had to yield to the superior power of the dreaded dragons. They joined their former allies, the orcs, and their weak cousins, the trolls, in their subterranean exile. Their proud cities that had been built in the course of centuries were burnt down to the ground, and their renowned forges were lost forever.
Thus the dragons had taken over the rule of the land, but the war was by no means over. Their bitter enemies, cyclopses and orcs, resented what they felt was an imprisonment in the bowels of the earth, and they continued the fight from their subterranean hideouts. And in fact the dragons, who had already been weakened in the course of the previous battles, suffered serious losses. But now war also erupted among the former allies, as cyclopses and orcs competed for food and space in their subterranean abodes. And even though no side was strong enough to overcome the others the war went on with undiminished force, and all of the races suffered greatly in the epic struggle. The land was scattered with bodies, and while it seemed that life itself would be wiped from the face of Tibia the losses of all races that were involved daily grew in number. It was as if the living would drown in the bodies of the slain.
The elder gods watched as the cataclysmic battle went on. They felt no pity for those that were slain because they cared little for Zathroth's creatures, but they knew that something was missing, that somebody was needed to take care of the bodies and souls of those who ceased to live. They began to look for a solution, and finally Uman proposed that a new god should be created, a god who should see to it that the dead would be taken care of. They decided that earth, which in a way was the giver of life, should have a part in taking it back, and that Uman should be the newly created god's father. But alas! The elder gods were not as cautious as they should have been, and so Zathroth the Destroyer learnt about their plans all too soon. He was fascinated by the idea of death from the start, because he saw in it a new chance to bring further havoc and destruction into the world. Soon he had devised a vicious plan. He posed as his good half Uman to fool earth, and with it he sired another god: Urgith the Master of the Undead. This hideous deity was devoted to death just like the god Uman and Fardos had in mind, but he was not the benign guardian of the dead they had envisioned. Instead, Urgith was a cruel god who strove to infuse the bodies of the dead with unholy energy, dooming them to a state that was neither life nor death. Thus, the hour of Urgith's birth marked the beginning of undeath.
Soon enough innumerable undead roamed the world. After all, Tibia was still covered by countless bodies of slain orcs, cyclopses and other creatures - the legacy of the many years of ceaseless war. These cadavers provided Urgith with the ideal recruitment pool, and he eagerly transformed all carcasses he could lay his hands into his gruesome servants. The gods watched in horror as a new scourge ravaged their beloved creation. They hurried to finally put their own initial plan into practice, and Uman united with earth in order to sire Toth the Warden of the Souls. It was to be his mission to safely guide the souls of the dead to the otherworld, where they would safely rest in the peace of an eternal dreamless slumber, while the worms, his faithful servants, swarmed out to devour their bodies that scattered the face of Tibia. But the damage had been done, and even though Toth and his servants did the best they could Urgith's ghastly creations continued to roam the land. All the other creatures, who were already greatly weakened by their endless wars, could put up little resistance to the new enemy who increased in strength with every loss they suffered. It looked as if Tibia was forever doomed to be a world that was inhabited by the living dead.
The elder gods looked at what had happened to their world, and their hearts filled with sorrow and resentment. They knew that if they did not act now Tibia would be destined to become a grave, and so they started looking for a solution. Eventually they agreed to try to create a sentient race of their own, a race that would be strong enough to take up the fight against the hordes that ravaged their beloved world. And so they created a race and sent it into Tibia. But alas! Urgith's minions were too strong. Their race was defeated within a generation, and it was wiped from the face of Tibia. So Uman and Fardos created race after race, and race after race was overwhelmed by the vicious abominations that Urgith had released into the world. Most of these tibia bot disappeared from the face of Tibia forever, leaving little but melancholy legends and mysterious ruins. Today, this sad era which is commonly known as the Corpse War is largely shrouded in mystery, and the unfortunate races that were destroyed in it are now referred to as the ancients.
However, not all of the ancients were eradicated in the fierce struggle. At least two of the races created by the elder gods in the course of this epic struggle somehow managed to escape destruction and to survive until today. One of them was the elves, delicate creatures who could handle bows and musical instruments with equal skill. The other was the dwarfs, a stout race of gifted miners and smiths. Both of these races fought bravely, but both of them had to yield to the vicious power of their enemies, and it was only by fleeing into safe places of refuge that they managed to survive. The elves after many hardships sought shelter in the unfathomable depths of the forests, while the dwarfs barricaded themselves in their impenetrable fortresses deep in Tibia's mountains. There, these races waited for better times, bitterly deploring the cruel fate that had sent them into this dreadful world. But at least they had survived. All the other ancient races were seemingly sentenced to oblivion, although it is occasionally claimed that there are other survivors.
For all their strength, these races had one important flaw in common: They lacked flexibility. And this proved to be fatal in the war against the relentless enemy they were facing. Those who were not annihilated succumbed to Zathroth's temptations. More than one of the ancients fell for Zathroth's cunning promises of power and knowledge, and legend has it that the wrathful elder gods brutally punished many of them for their treachery. There is even a persistent theory that some of these ancients later on were formed by the devious Zathroth into the very first demons. Be that as it may, all the ancients failed to live up to their creators' expectations: One by one they were overwhelmed by the enemy, and still the hordes walked the world. But the elder gods had learnt from their mistakes. Their next creation was to be well suited for the task. And they called them the humans.
| Chapter IV: The First Creatures |  | Chapter VI: The Creation of the Humans |
