This article is a memory from the old wiki.
This article was deleted and has been restored solely for historical reasons. its contents are in no way relevant to The Mana World lore.
Deleted File Description
Desgination: First Lore
Reason for archive: First proposal of a backstory for TMW, dated from 2005 or before.
First Author: Bjorn, 23 May 2005
Last Author: Hartalex, 17 May 2006
Moved from: Backstory, Archive:World_backstory_proposal_1
The history of The Mana World
This article may be inconsistent with the History and is from an older Rewrite
This means the content on this page no longer reflects the reality.
This label is usually applied when an article tries to describe events from older rewrites in the way they were seen during said rewrites, and therefore, are historically inaccurate.
DO NOT use it for reference purposes!
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Age of Gods
Little is known about the Age of Gods. It is known that the Gods have existed since the dawn of time, but a lot of the knowledge has passed into oblivion. The information about the main events of the Age of Gods that has survived the test of time and found its way into the legends of Mankind are mostly made up by historians and religious leaders. The Age of Gods consisted mainly of internal power struggle between the Gods and does not contain any information that would be of any interest. The only significant part of it, from the viewing point of Mankind, is the start of the Age of the Playground of the Gods.
Age of the Playground of the Gods
At the dawn of the Age of the Playground of the Gods the Gods dominant at the moment enforced a peace between Gods. Those who opposed were uncreated, banished into oblivion. They created the so called "Playground of the Gods" for those Gods who were "childish enough to have desires of aggression and destruction". So came to pass the realm known later as
- The Mana World
This realm of war for Gods was not a realm where Gods could go directly against each other. Instead it was an independent world on which they could influence, sort of a chess game for Gods. Mankind acted as the pawns of this divine form of entertainment. Mankind was created for the amusement and pleasure of the Gods and at first lived only for one purpose: war. But because Mankind was created as the image of the Gods, they soon developed other desires than war. At this point the peaceful Gods were very proud of their work. Inspired by Mankind the warhungry part of the Gods started to use dirty tactics in their own little war games on the Playgrounds. Spawning monsters to support their armies, manifesting themselves as greater monsters and supplying Mankind information about divine matters. Somewhere before the beginning of Age of Demons the Gods were divided into two groups that slowly began to hate each other. The Elder Gods (as they then started to call themselves) named the warhungry ones Demons and started to slowly forget their peaceful nature. As the Demons continued their games of war on their playground, they began a war against the Elder Gods. The war lasted for aeons. The Elder Gods were greater in number and more powerful, but the Demons were more skilled in warfare. So the amount of Gods started to decrease. The keen interest in mankind that the Demons had developed during their war games led to the turning of the tides of the divine war. The more divine information the Demons fed to Mankind, the more apparent it came that Mankind is truly the image of the Gods. It was soon discovered that as the Elder Gods had created Mankind in their image, they had not only given them free will, they had also given them the ability to reshape mana, the force which defined their world. This mana gave the Demons the needed advantage to win the war and to banish all of the Elder Gods into oblivion.
Age of Demons
So began the Age of Demons, but the war had not gone by without taking it's toll: the number of the Demons had decreased into a pitiful six Demons and the Realm of Gods had been banished into oblivion by the last of Elder Gods. From the viewing point of Mankind, this was truly a Age of Demons, but from the viewing point of the Demons, this was a pitiful state of being, as they could only exist as their physical manifestations on the Mana World for they had bound their divine self into the world itself in order to avoid the banishing and actually done it succesfully. Some claim that some of the Elder Gods or other Demons would've bound their beings into the Mana World too, but not succesfully enough to manifest theirselves directly. Some believe that these manifest themselves as twists of fate. The remnaining Demons were the strongest ones of their kind, but one of them was above all. The Demon later know as Azerel, Demon of death. Azerel's realm consisted of the entire northern hemisphere, basically all that seemed pure: mountains, glaciers and eternally frozen oceans. Grenxen, the desert rat, dug deep into the desert beneath the city of Amzeroth and trusted in stealth and deceit. Hra-zul, the thinker Demon, rooted itself in the deep forest zones of the Mana world, infested them with his army of elite ranger marksmen. Vixiel, the only female Demon to survive, found it's home in the remote islands, acting as a mother God for the great sailors in the islands. Balgerieth found refuge in the deep mines beneath the southern mountains, trusting in a army of sturdy men who above all else hold physical strenght in value. Xendah, the studier, formed a small community on the outskirts of the Mana World, gathering only the men strongest in mana. Eventually, true to their nature, the Demons started to emerge their old grudges against each other again. War rose it's ugly face once again in it's full horrendous glory. But this time the outcome surprised all. From the initiative of Hra-zul and Grenxen, the five lesser Demons formed a secred coalition against Azerel and in a great battle, Azerel was banished into oblivion. The war went on and on between the five remaining equal Demons. Somewhere during this seemingly endless war the Demons lost their perspective of things and became ignorant to the fact that Mankind truely was made as the image of the Gods. This opened a chance for Mankind that it eagerly used. As it had grown enough in strenght, it allied against it's masters' wishes and then began the great war of Freedom.
Age of Mankind
As mankind did not have enough power to banish the gods into oblivion without destroying the Mana World with the Demons, they enslaved the Demons. At first this resulted in a time of peace that lasted for a millennia. Then again the basic nature of Mankind manifested itself and the Demons were once again roaming the Mana World, this time as the ultimate weapons of the five Greater Kingdoms.
The 9 Spirits of Mana
During the age of the gods, when the new world was first created, the gods agreed that they would not use their powers to affect the world directly, and only influence the inhabitants. Since they needed some power to maintain the world, they created 9 spirits to saturate the world with mana and impose the rules of the game they had devised. Later, after the age of the gods and age of demons had passed, the 9 spirits continued to do their appointed tasks of managing the balance in the mana world. Their favorites among humans they named sages, and employed them to try and teach humans about the morals of balance though magic. Though the gods and their glory have long since fallen away, the constant work of the spirits keeps the Mana World in existance, as it has for thousands of years hence.
Mana
When the gods created the Mana World, they created a new kind of energy within it to sustain the new sort of life they had made. They named this energy Mana. Also known as life force, mana is a different sort of power than that which sustains the gods. Mana defined the physical Mana World, and kept balance, creating, recreating, and recycling the force of life.
Because mana is a force distant and diametrically opposed to the gods' power, neither demons nor gods could use it in their struggles. However, this didn't stop demons from teaching the beings created from mana to use it for their benefit...
With the knowledge given to them by demons, humans learned to harness mana for destructive purposes, and overthrew the gods. They called this harnessing of mana, "Magic". Because of the phenomenal powers humans could wield, they almost destroyed the mana world during this time. After this era and into the following ages, the 9 great spirits sealed away mana from humans, only allowing them a tiny fraction of the power they knew before, in an attempt to keep balance in the world.
The Sages
To those humans they believed understood the principles of balance best, the spirits delegated the task of entrusting the flow of mana to worthy human hands. These humans became the 9 sages, and lived to serve the spirits in preserving balance throughout the world. To these individuals the spirits grant the full powers allowed to ancient man, as well as immortality.
The Present
The gods final order to the spirits, who enforce the rules of their game: "The last god standing may wield mana." and thus reshape the world into his new personal realm. With only 5 real contenders for this title, the 5 demons now wage their secretive political warfare throughout the realm, in an attempt to be the last of their kind. This struggle for supremacy continues even today...
