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About 1000 years in the past, there was a great war on the other side of the world that had been raging for centuries. It enveloped the whole of the land and no man, woman or child was immune to its savagery.

A small group of representatives from the different races gathered in secret to decide what should be done. They weren't nobles or people of any social stature. Just a group of those concerned for their lives and the lives of their families. Not even the eldest of them could remember what the war was about, but they all decided that it wasn't going to stop as violence only breeds more violence. They all agreed that the only thing to do was flee those lands and seek another where they could live in peace.

For the next several months they gathered supplies and built ships. Word quietly spread about their intentions and more showed up to help. After six months a group of several hundred had come together and built 14 ships. These ships were loaded and the group set sail for a better place.

The voyage took several months, during which three of the ships were lost along with their passengers. One morning, land was sighted off in the distance. As the ships approached they saw towering mountains off in the distance, but closer to the shore they could see spires and colored roofs. They had found an inhabited land.

The ships sent a scouting party to the new land to gauge the feeling of the local inhabitants. The party landed on the shore and walked up to the sprawling city's gates. As they walked through the gates, there was an eerie silence. No one was to be found in the entire city. Everything was in its place: furniture sat in rooms, shops were stocked with goods, but no one walked the streets. The scouting party searched the city, but could find no trace of anyone, or any clue as to where the native inhabitants might be.

They returned to the ships with word of their discovery. The people landed on the shore and set up camp on the beach where they stayed for several weeks. Every day scouts would go up into the city to try and find some trace of where everyone had gone. After a few weeks of turning up nothing, some decided to move their families into the vacant city. Others soon followed, and within a matter of months the city was functioning again and named New Landing.  No sign of the original inhabitants was ever found.

Within a few years the High Council of New Landing was formed with a representative seat for each of the different races. They set up government, laws and policies for the new colony. They also dubbed the new land Arcanum and started a new measurement of reckoning time called New Beginning (NB). All races lived in peace and harmony, many intermingling and creating new, distinct half-races. Over the next 300 years, the people lived in relative tranquility, and many left New Landing and colonized other parts of the land. Whereever they went, they found empty cities, towns, fortresses and temples, all with no sign of where their owners had gone.