The History of Renatus

There once was a land known as Atlas. A peaceful and prosperous kingdom, its citizens thrived under the rule of a line of Kings located in the capital city of Sevarna. As the culture grew more advanced, they grew a successful mining and lumber industry, under the protection of the Kings and their Guild of Guardians.

In the last years of the golden era, King Alloysius, twenty-first King of the royal bloodline, grew bored with the unchanging nature of his kingdom ordered the construction of a royal Navy to begin expansion of his territory. Ship construction began, and the Kingdom of Atlas was on the verge of expanding out to new lands. But visitors from another world changed everything.

First glimpsed in small groups in the fringes of the Drakefang Mountains, these beings were spotted more frequently every day, usually carrying chunks of earth and stone. They stood a full two heads higher than the average man, and their skin was the color of the night sky. They spoke only in garbled noises, and seemed to move with supernatural speed, darting around the landscape in the blink of an eye. They possessed strange abilities, and were able to harness a magical energy that had previously been unseen in the history of Atlas.

The Guild of Guardians, attempting to ascertain where these strange creatures were coming from, journeyed to the site where they were first seen. There, they discovered a fissure deep within Mt. Titanus, the Super-Volcano in the Drakefang Mountains. One of the Guild, a brave young man named Arthur, attempted to enter the fissure. He reemerged almost immediately, but had lived several decades in the instant he had spent on the other side.

He spoke of another dimension, home to these strange visitors, ruled by a creature known only as S’harath “The Ender.” The visitors who worshipped this dragon-like being were thereafter referred to as The Ender’s Men, which became shortened to Endermen.

What happened next has been clouded over by the chaos, but what is known is that the Endermen suddenly declared war on the people of Atlas. King Alloysius fled, abandoning his people to the leadership of the Guardians. The strange magical energy of the Endermen pulled the cherished dead of Sevarna from the very ground they had been buried in, rising in various states of decomposition to walk the Earth as undead, some even decomposed down to their bones to rise as living skeletons.

Perhaps more terrifying was the sudden appearance of the creeping acolytes of the Endermen, horrific green plant-like creatures as silent as the grave save only when they were in proximity to a person, at which point they would hiss with an unnatural sound and detonate with deadly force.

The magic corrupted some of Atlas’ wild life as well, giving rise to giant mutated spiders and pigs that seemed to evolve into demonic humanoid form, and even the slime mold that had commonly grown deep within the mines became sentient and began massing together to form giant living slime cubes.

Before the Guardians could mount a proper defense, an army of Creepers besieged the city of Sevarna. Countless lives were lost in one terrible night as wave upon wave of the evil creatures swarmed and detonated, destroying the city’s defenses. The Endermen then summoned their lord, the Ender Dragon S’harath, who was set free to destroy the world.

The Guardians attempted to build a device to contain the evil Endermen, constructing a large ring-shaped energy collector around the cone of Mt. Titanus in the hopes that it would draw in the Ender-Dragon and trap it back within the rift.

Refugees from all over the world flocked to Atlas to petition the Guardians for protection, unaware that they were heading directly into the Danger Zone. Using the most advanced science they had at their disposal, the Guardians created a portal to an unknown world in a neighboring star system, where the people could survive should Atlas be completely destroyed. All but a score of Guardians left Atlas through the portal.

Arthur, meanwhile, growing ever more disturbed by the strange voices in his head, sought refuge in the catacombs beneath the city of Sevarna. Stumbling into a vast ravine, he discovered an ancient stronghold buried beneath the desert. Within, he found a library filled with ancient tomes from before the line of Kings. It told of magical energy that could be wielded by the wisest of men, but could be destructive if used in correctly.

As the Guardians mounted a final attack against S’harath, Arthur emerged from the stronghold's archives and cast the Spell of a Dozen Lights, a spell that would shield Sevarna, seize the Ender-Dragon and return it to its own dimension. However, in his haste, Arthur failed to realize that the dozen lights needed to activate the spell were souls, and the spell began to grow chaotic. Committed to saving their world, a dozen Guardians volunteered to give their life to send S'harath back to its own dimension. As the Guardians allowed the spell to consume them, their life forces were combined and solidified into a massive crystal in the cone of Mt. Titanus, which channeled the Ender-Dragon and fired it back into the rift.

The resultant release of energy annihilated Mt. Titanus, leaving only the energy ring and the Guardian crystal, which keeps S'harath at bay. The explosion of Mt. Titanus was so forceful that it actually rocked the entire planet in its orbit, shifting it further away from the sun. As a result, Atlas had fallen into a perpetual winter. Only the shield that the spell created over Sevarna kept the snow from covering the now ruined city. They had repelled S’harath, but at a terrible cost.

Scattered and exhausted, the remaining Guardians abandoned their world to the embrace of the perpetual frost that would eventually freeze it solid, and entered the portal to rejoin their people. What they discovered was that the energy released in the final confrontation had warped the portal, and took them into the not-too-distant past of this strange new world. These last Guardians were not alone; the same evil forces that had plagued Atlas in its last days inhabited this world. And it would only be a matter of time before the people they had sworn to protect arrived through the portal and were placed in imminent danger.

The Guardians decided that to survive, they must rebuild. They must create settlements for the people as they arrive to protect them from the Endermen and their forces. Their civilization must be reborn and arise anew, like Renatus, the phoenix of myth. They named this new world Renatus, and they build, waiting for their people to arrive.

And as they rebuild, they study the magical energy, hoping to master it, and when they do, they will re-open the portal to the dimension where S’harath the Ender Dragon waits… and have their revenge.