This war has been going on as long as you remember though tales exist of earlier, more peaceful times. The glens and sylvan forests of your world were once full of sprites and other magical creatures, shape shifters, both good and bad existed, though were not as common as your stories made it seem.
Your people served as caretakers of the world, your powerful runes covered the face of the land, and it was not uncommon to walk through the woods and find a clearing with a stone in the center marking the place as a sacred grove or enhanced by magic to provide fruit all year round or keep the waters that flowed nearby pure. Over the past forty years such preserving magic have been set aside, replaced by a more practical art for these times. Perhaps fortunately a particularly ambitious rune caster would periodically attempt to escape the rules of the council and create his own kingdom so the rune casters of your world would have occasional use to study battle magic’s. Regardless the council was not prepared for what came.
Your people have since learned they call themselves the Jorgano, but you still call them by the first name they gave them, the Demon Horde. Immune to magic even the greatest of your people’s runes don’t affect them. Their hordes marched across your world destroying everything in their path. The council was desperate and knew of nothing on this world that could stop the demons so they planned to send someone off of their world to seek help.
About one out of every thousand of your people are born with the ability to see the spirits that used to inhabit your world and are becoming more sparse every day. Over two hundred years ago a young boy with this gift disappeared from the highland village he was born in. His family, and the members of the village, searched frantically for him and finally found him almost a week later, apparently tended by the spirits and standing outside a tower only he saw. Well that is not quite correct, other members of your people who had the gift to see the spirit world also saw the grey fog enshrouded tower. Walking through its ethereal walls, as there was no door, they found a simple room inside with eight archways. No marks gave any indication who had built the tower or what it was for so after careful, and fruitless, study one of the most respected of your people, a hero named Kiras Tor stepped through one of the archways and immediately fell dead. Before anyone could react his eyelids fluttered and the hero awoke, telling strange tales. According to Kiras he had awoken in another body, that of a dwarf laying on his funeral stone. He spent over eight years in the dwarf’s life, collecting information about his world, a violent place full of beasts larger than the homes of your world that and a seemingly endless host of creatures that hunted men. Despite that Kiras enjoyed the time he spent with the resilient dwarves even if it had only seemed a few minutes to the people of your world. Obviously time didn’t flow the same between the two worlds and Kiros’s tales scared your council so they placed runes of warding on the tower in fear that some horrible creature would come through.
That was 200 years ago but now the need was dire so the council turned to what they had since named the Soul Gate to provide a rescue from the menace of the Demons. The council spent long weeks undoing the powerful runes that prevented anyone from using the tower and when it was finally done the councils leader, a woman named Pheden Mara, passed through the same gate Kiros went through over eight generations before. Her body fell to the ground just as Kiros’s, but she never rose. After the first day her body was placed on a piece of cut granite near the tower and after a week the people gave up hope of seeing their leader return. Then those vigilant enough to keep watch at the tower were rewarded in seeing her for the barest glimpse. A woman appeared in the tower, though the body was not Pheden and in that flash of appearing light her body aged and decomposed before those lucky, or perhaps unlucky, enough to have been watching. A young rune caster with the gift to see the spirits who had been waiting by the tower saw Pheden’s soul arise out of the shattered body and trace a rune in the air before disappearing to death, and had been so intent on the spirit he had failed to notice the fourty nine men who were walking out of the tower. These were the Bannor. Guardians of another world they had come in responce to Peen’s call. Over the next few months they would offer some of what the coucil had hoped for, only they had the skill in battle to attempt to stand up to the demons, and they had even begun to train some of the young men of your world how to fight without magic and meet the demons in combat.
Each Bannor was assigned a runecaster to guard and they were to split up and mobilize an army capable of fighting against the oncoming horde. The young runecaster who saw the spirit of Pheden had endeavored to understand the rune he had seen and together with the council came to believe the rune served to help control the effect of time upon the vessel it enchanted. The leader of the Bannor, a man Sabathiel, said he did see Pheden inscribe the rune on her own body before attempting to transport her body through the gate, it obviously didn’t protect her as she expected. The rune would however serve to mark a point in time, its glow showing the relative passage of time between its vessel and the world it is keyed to. Strangely enough such a rune inscribed on any of the Bannor causes the rune to glow brightly, signaling that the world travels much more swiftly through time than the Bannor does, even though the Bannor stands in that world. An odd occurrence made stranger by the fact that the Bannor attest to have had guarded an empty city called the Nexas forever, these same forty nine Bannor, though if even Sabathiel knows why he hasn’t said, and if the Bannor are ever young, they seem mortal as six to this point have died in combat.
The war continues, the demons continue to advance even though at a slower pace than before and now they are suffering losses, though not at all equal to the many deaths of your people. The time came to send another into the Soul Gate, this time the young rune caster who had seen Pheden’s spirit was selected, and one of the Bannor was assigned the task of guarding him. That is you. Sabathiel had spoken with Pheden and was teaching you what Pheden had told him, about a land much different then the one Kiros described, a feudal land ruled by mages whose power rivaled those of the council members of your world. He taught you about the dwarves, elves and other inhabitants of that world, preparing you to enter it. Unfortunately your training was cut short and a flood of demons attacked the hill the gate of souls stood upon. In a rush you were heralded through, instructions being shouted at you as you walked into the gate, to go through, create the time rune and find a way to defeat the demons, at least through the gate you would have time to spend. Your people would guard your body and await your return, so in your went, followed closely by the Bannor.
sorry Magister. The "m" name threw me off. Fix'd.}
