The greatest discovery of the old empire, the one which launched all others, was the discovery of essentia.

Essentia is magic in a pure form, occurring quite rarely in nature, but able to be extracted from certain sources. During the old empire, it was found in concentrated form in crystals, which were so plentiful as to seem limitless.

With such a ready source of energy, it was all too easy for enterprising experimenters to develop new technological wonders. The collected technologies which harness essentia in this manner are known as Artifice.

It is now known that essentia is simply another form of magical energy, the same energy used by mages, alchemists, dragons, and perhaps even gods. It is also understood that essentia is not simply "dumb" energy, to be used without care or concern.

In the early days of Artifice, dragons warned of the dangers inherent in the energy, though not specifying why. Elves found it distasteful, and preferred their complex weave of land-magic. Dwarves and humans, however, found it fascinating, and developed the science far faster than the elder races could keep up with.

Wonderful things soon followed: engines which could do the work of animals or men tirelessly, automata which could handle menial chores, and, inevitably, weapons of war to rival the greatest magic.

Artifice soon became the dominant force, surpassing arcane and divine magic, and making older, more primal magics seem like myths. It was so convenient, so reproducible, so reliable, and, crucially, so quintessentially Oathkeep. Humans and dwarves waxed in power, while the sylvan and dragon races waned. Naturally, this only exacerbated racial tensions.

There came a time when a long study reached a terrible conclusion: essentia crystals, so plentiful and yet so vital, were found to be byproducts of the passing of great Dragons, the mythical creatures of a long-past age, ancestors of the modern dragon race.

This produced a furor in the Court of the Oath, with dragons and elves calling for the sudden and permanent ban of all essentia harvesting, and the subsequent destruction of the industry of Artifice. This was an unlikely request, as the science had become essential to every facet of modern life, and rolling back would simply be impossible.

In protest, the dragon race withdrew from the court, the first of original races of the Oath to do so. The elves did not, but they drastically decreased their presence in Oathkeep, and imposed harsh restrictions on any access to their land. This was crucial, as without dragon or elven land, the remaining supply of essentia was vastly strained, and would certainly be depleted soon.

Some elves did not agree with the Queen's verdict, and opened their lands to mining. They though a softer hand would be needed, and wisely believed that it would be suicide for the race of Elf and Dragon to take such a confrontational stance with mighty Oathkeep.

Sadly, those same elves would bear the worst of the consequences for the folly of essentia; not long after, a cataclysm occurred, proving true a prophecy delivered by the Dragon ambassador upon his final address to the court: in short, "it will all end in fire."

The End in Fire did indeed come, though it didn't come overnight. The cataclysm was unleashed by new dwarven mining methods, which extracted essentia from deep in the ground into specially-prepared receptacles. Their machines did the job, but not perfectly, and some loose energy dispersed. This energy spawned strange things: minor annoyances at first--wizard weather, strange sounds in the night--but soon far worse things.

The beasts of the forest became monsters, and far worse things emerged from the eddies of magical current. The mining sites themselves were the epicenter, and when they were successfully seiged, and the vast amounts of essentia in the collectors released...all hell broke loose.

The resulting cataclysm destroyed nearly the entire homeland of what are now known as the Mist Elves, and spewed monsters into the northern reaches of the empire.

The resulting war was bloody, though the empire did prevail in the end. They learned that essentia can become far more than a pure energy, and bears a primal rage when not carefully controlled. They learned they could capture the essence of defeated monsters, harnessing their magical power as essentia.

The sheer magical power unleashed in the cataclysm reshaped the entire known world. Though it was obviously most extreme closer to the epicenter, its effects were noticeable even in the most distant lands. It was as if the land itself became hostile. Creatures long lost to myth emerged from the darkness, monsters spoken of to Dragon and Giant youths in the bedtime stories of the age before civilization.

Though Artifice was to blame, it was one of the only forces that could stem the tide. Of the lands of Man, only the imperial heartland survived mostly unscathed. The Elves of the High Forest repelled the worst of invasion with their grand, epic spells, and the dwarves weathered the storm in their impenetrable fortresses, though many were never again opened, having been overtaken from below.

The Dragon race became much more warlike, entering a rage that could be quenched only with blood. They invaded the human lands, as they had not done since the Great War before the Oath. It is noteworthy that, despite their admittedly very good reasons, they were still the first race to break the Oath, and the first to reignite the wars of old.

The Elven Queen forbade any intervention in the war, in a very controversial decision which severed millennia of ties between their races, not to mention effected the final shattering of the alliance between Elf and Man, making them the second race to break the Oath. It is widely seen to have been a wise move, as the power of the empire was far too great for the High Forest to weather. By extension, her decision spared any of the other elves, not that the Mist Elves would have joined any battle either way, but it certainly reflected well on the dark elves of the empire, who, despite a long history of integration into Oathkeep, were still looked on with suspicion in these dark times.

The King of the Sword at the time was Orendil the 1st, an old man who had seen the great rise and fall of Artifice, and the greatest wonders and tragedies any King of the Sword had ever seen. It was he who kept the empire together, and who would step forth, one last time, to try to keep it that way.

Sadly, Orendil was slain on the field of battle. He died valiantly, battling a great dragon from his machine armor, in the Battle of Sundered Hill. The battle was the final major victory of the war, mostly because the dragons, upon realizing what they had done, lost much of the thunder that had propelled them thus far.

The magic of the dragons had torn the earth asunder, and when the king died, his sword, the Ruling Blade of the Dynast-King, fell into the depths. Though the site of the battle has long since been ransacked, and depths below plumbed by armies of dwarven miners, no trace of the sword has ever been found.

The death of the king and the loss of the sword meant that Oathkeep was without a ruler for the first time in history, and the line of the Dynast-Kings was broken.

A regency council kept order in the city, but the outlying lands, suffering ever worse pressure from monster invasions, and bereft of any aid from the other races, began to fracture off, with little the council could do to stop them.

A solution was found, too late to truly save the empire. The regency council created a position for a supreme executive ruler, a monarch in all but name, and named the first Potentate. This did little to instill confidence outside the Imperial Heartland, and when distant Saillone named itself the new, true capital of the empire, the few territories that had not already seceded were all too happy to swear allegiance to the rising power.

Oathkeep was no longer the capital of the empire. They soon acknowledged this, and declared themselves the realm of Orendil, and the inheritor of the Kingdom of the Sword, should it ever be reforged. The Ascadians in the east scoffed at the claim, and vowed to challenge it should ever the sword be found.

And so the empire collapsed. And it was not long before the men of the furthest territories, far from the enlightenment and protection of the heartlands, and hardened by their clashes with hordes of monsters, soon turned their ire and ambition on their once imperial overlords. Each of the seceded states fell in turn to the Kurnish invasion, until Oathkeep itself fell under the barbarians, the first breach of the walls ever, even despite the cataclysm.

It ended in fire.

And even though Artifice is largely to blame for all of it, it remains in use today, albeit in limited form. Much of the knowledge and theory of Artifice was lost in the sacking of Oathkeep, which was the center of the science. Many masters of the trade forswore its use, seeing the devastation it had caused.

But some kept the secrets alive, and as memory of the cataclysm faded, Artifice returned to those lands that would have it.

One of those lands is Ascadia, whose home islands had repelled the Kurnish invasion, and who now was in a commanding position to claim much of their long-forgotten glory. They eagerly accepted any power that would give them an advantage, and soon became a mecca for artificers. The Ascadian Empire remains today the most technologically advanced state in the world.

The conveniences and war machines of Ascadia look quaint in comparison to the relics of the old empire. Historians and adventurers have dug up astounding finds, from ancient craftsman machines that still churn out fine goods, to the husks of ancient battle titans, far greater in scope than the epic tales of machine soldiers ever suggested.

In this new age of Artifice, essentia is scarcer than before, and far more dangerous. It is quite rare to find a true blood crystal, as they are now called, since most are in forbidden lands. Most essentia are harvested from monsters, a dangerous proposition best left to well-paid adventurers. However, those who tire of paying exorbitant fees to sword-swinging mercenaries have come up with a far more efficient solution...one which threatens to lead to a far worse cataclysm than the last.

They have found ways of harnessing magical energy from the Outer World--the world of demons and celestials, of gods and forgotten elder evils.

Among those who remember the Folly of Artifice, the danger in such a method is all too apparent. In most lands, this method of harvesting essentia is banned, though not unpracticed. In greedy Ascadia, it is embraced, as the profits are too great to ignore.

Artifice is not in consistent or major use anywhere in the world except Ascadia, wherein it is relied upon as a pillar of society. Outside the Ascadian Isles, artifice is most useful to the adventurers who are its primary suppliers of essentia. Alongside the ancient and now resurging sciences of Alchemy and Enchanting, Artifice is a powerful and versatile skill that many adventurers choose to master.