Game history

The official backstory of the world of Shaiya: how the "continent of the gods" was born, why its creator perished, and what drove the Alliance of Light and the Union of Fury into eternal war.

The creation of the world. The coming of Etain the Creator

During the First Creation the gods left the dimension of Teos empty and lifeless – the border world was meant to serve as an unbreakable barrier between the inhabited spheres of the Veer and the Dead Strip, the domain of the Nameless One.

For millennia Teos remained cold and dead, and it would have stayed that way until the very end of time, had the Nameless One not intervened. Once before he had risen against the will of the gods, lost the battle and found himself imprisoned outside all existence — but he did not surrender. He hoarded rage and a thirst for revenge, and mastered forbidden knowledge. The new confrontation was not long in coming – the Nameless One challenged his victors.

This time the First Creators no longer held a decisive advantage, and so the terrible battle thunders on to this day without pause. The flesh of the Veer cracks, and Creation itself groans under blows of unimaginable power. Many of the younger gods fell in battle, while the elder ones — those unaccustomed to ruling over destruction and death — began to weary of the endless war.

Etain, Creator of worlds, left the arena of total annihilation, shaken by thousands of senseless deaths. A long journey through ruined worlds brought her to an old, abandoned borderland: the empty dimension of Teos. Exhaustion would let Etain go no farther, but the desire to create – the purpose and calling of the goddess – proved far stronger than the wounds the war had dealt her.

Somewhere in the Dead Strip thousands of living beings were dying every minute in the endless confrontation, and the Creator resolved to restore the balance: to give the Veer one more world and breathe life into Teos. With a skilled hand she made a new world, filled it with water and raised dry land from the depths. The first inhabitants would name the promised land Teos (Teos Epeiros – "continent of the gods"), a giant island shaped like hacked chainmail, washed by a boundless ocean.

Sadly, Etain did not yet know that she had brought to Teos not only life, but also the terrible curse of the Nameless One. The lord of the Dead Strip is capable of any treachery, and he never shied away from finishing off the wounded or striking from behind.

The death of the goddess

Etain filled her new world with creatures of every kind; forests, steppes, mountains and rivers brimmed with the irrepressible joy of being. The sentient races appeared on Teos last – the noble Telaiosis elves, whose name means "the perfect ones", the goddess's beloved children who resembled her even in appearance, and the brave, proud humans of the Duminas line.

Having lived through hundreds of bloody battles, the Creator wished for nothing more than a quiet, measured life for herself and her children. The goddess's peace of mind and inner harmony shielded Teos from countless misfortunes and gave the firstborn races of Teos happiness and prosperity.

But the curse of the Nameless One, lying in wait, finally found its hour – and together with Etain's grace, innumerable calamities rained down upon the unsuspecting world. Hordes of monsters besieged the city walls, stones and ash fell from the sky, volcanoes awoke, and devastating hurricanes swept over the fertile fields. Incurable plagues spread across Teos faster than a forest fire.

The attitude toward Etain, so recently the object of blind worship, slowly soured. Tormented by chaos, epidemics and catastrophes, the goddess's creations could not understand why their adored Creator was punishing her people. Discontent grew across Teos. The noble elves grumbled quietly, too ashamed to voice their grievances, but the Duminas openly prepared to rise against the goddess.

And when it became impossible to endure any longer, the humans marched on Etain's Heavenly Home, and even the Telaiosis joined them. Only a few remained loyal to the goddess and tried to resist the rebellion, but the furious wave of attackers swept them away like spring floodwaters sweeping away a fishing village on the shore.

There is no more terrible enemy than a recent fervent admirer suddenly disillusioned with his idol. Etain's faithful servants fell to the last during the seven-day siege. Having drenched the once-sacred steps in blood, the rebels burst into the Creator's chambers. The goddess looked weary; her pure radiance had faded and dimmed – her strength was spent in the fruitless struggle against the curse. The stunned people of Teos, who had revered Etain not least for her fabled, unearthly beauty, suddenly saw before them a hideous old woman – or so it seemed to them. Someone cried out that the goddess had been replaced, that a repulsive monster had taken the place of their former deity. And then hundreds of blades pierced the Creator's body.

Thus the last, secret part of the curse came true: one day Etain's children, her creations, the flesh and blood of her designs, would destroy their maker. And where the goddess perished, a gigantic crater now gapes – the Source of Seven Woes, out of which crowds of bloodthirsty monsters still pour, showering long-suffering Teos with terrible calamities.

The parting of the races. The Alliance of Light and the Union of Fury

With the goddess's death, the chaos on Teos did not end. A blast of incredible force tore apart Etain's Heavenly Home, burying thousands of the recent rebels beneath it. It is said their souls are cursed forever, and in the raging furnace of the Source of Seven Woes they were turned into deadly beasts. From that same source, new cataclysms crashed down upon the "continent of the gods". The ocean advanced onto the land, and ruinous storms swept away everything in their path. The terrified people of Teos prayed to Etain for protection, but, alas, there was no one to hear their pleas. The Creator's body had dissolved, and her spirit, cast out of the Veer, drifted far away from her dying creation.

Split in two by the crater of Chaos, the peoples of Teos retreated, barely fending off their pursuers. In the north, by the banks of the Great River, the humans and elves managed to dig in, build a chain of border forts and halt the advance of the creatures of Darkness for centuries to come. The southern branch of the firstborn, tormented by endless hurricanes and stonefalls from the sky, took refuge in the caves and underground passages of the Karlam Range.

A people once united was divided.

The invasion of Chaos lasted for hundreds of years. Epochs changed, and so did the people of Teos. The elves and humans of the North united into the indomitable Alliance of Light – a counterweight to the advancing Darkness of the Nameless One. Generations came of age in the ceaseless war against the monster hordes, perfecting magic and inventing new weapons. And one day they managed to turn the invasion back – the allied regiments drove the monsters back toward the crater.

In the south the firstborn had to contend more with the elements than with living flesh. Long years of life underground changed them: the skin of the mountain elves grew pale, their eyes grew used to the dark. They appeared on the surface mostly at night, when the deadly whirlwinds and rains of fire briefly subsided. Now they called themselves the Vail, renouncing the former name of their race.

The humans of the South withdrew into the labyrinth of mountain spurs, and over years of seclusion lost most of their former knowledge. It is said that by the Day of Unification they did not even know iron, making weapons of stone and the shells of slain beasts. Yet in strength of spirit and body they far surpassed the firstborn and, to set themselves apart, they too took a new name – the Nordein.

The fury of Chaos was slowly dying down, and Vail scouts began to venture ever farther from their people's hidden caves. The first encounter with the Nordein ended in a bloody massacre, but skilled diplomacy later reunited the sundered peoples. The Vail gave their new allies weapons and taught them once more to work metal – and within a few years their combined warbands were already clearing the foothills of the creatures of Chaos.

Of course, the two poles of the tortured continent could not fail to collide one day. Mutual hatred flared up at the very first spark. The southern peoples called the Alliance of Light pampered weaklings who had sat out the war in their quiet river valley while their kin died by the hundreds in the mountains. The northerners, in turn, were convinced they faced cruel savages who had cast off the precepts of goodness and freedom. Rumors spread that, for lack of food, Vail children were fed not their mothers' milk but blood.

And it goes without saying that each side held the other guilty of the death of their beloved Etain. The Alliance of Light declared unlimited war. The Vail and the Nordein accepted the challenge, raising high the banner of the Union of Fury.

The spirit divided – Deidra and Riel. The goddess's Wishes. The Blessing for the Devoted

And yet Etain's spirit returned to Teos. Even after dying at the hands of her own children, the Creator never ceased to pity and love them. The goddess's bodiless soul came to Teos at the very height of the confrontation between the Alliance and the Union. Perhaps Etain's resurrection could have stopped the fratricidal war, but sadly it happened otherwise. Human and elven bodies proved too weak to hold the spirit of the Creator of Worlds alone. Striving to regain flesh as quickly as possible, the goddess unleashed the magic of the elements. And… miscalculated. Instead of a single being combining the power of Fire, Water, Earth and Sky, the elements — weakened by the nearness of Chaos — drew the goddess's spirit to themselves and split it in two.

Out of the mighty oak groves of the North came the White goddess Deidra, born of Earth and Water. The happy news of the Creator's return spread swiftly, and the Alliance of Light swore fealty to her. For her gentleness, kindness and love, the people named Deidra the goddess of Devotion and Love.

But at the same moment, out of the flames beneath the mountains, the Dark goddess Riel appeared to the Vail and the Nordein — daughter of Fire and Sky, wild and passionate. The Union of Fury swore its oath of loyalty to her, naming the second half of Etain's divided spirit the goddess of Fury and Passion.

At first Deidra and Riel did not count each other as enemies, and it is unlikely that either considered the other incarnation real – for each believed herself alone to be the embodiment of the Great goddess's spirit. But that spirit remained incomplete, for, like any mortal woman, Etain possessed Devotion and Fury, Passion and Love alike. Both goddesses dreamed of embodying the Creator's soul in full. But achieving that ideal required power, and the power of gods is drawn only from the worship of hundreds of thousands of believers. All of Teos had long since split into two warring camps, and there was nowhere to win new followers except from the enemy's ranks. Deidra and Riel quickly understood that they were striving for one and the same goal — which meant that on the path to embodying a united Etain, each would have to face an opponent of equal strength. And either destroy her, or perish herself. The goddesses had learned the face of their enemy.

And so they proclaimed their Wishes to their worshippers – to defend their own power and faith, and to destroy the devoted of the other side for the sake of the great victory: the return of Etain the Creator. The war between the Alliance of Light and the Union of Fury flared up with new strength; even those who had long stood apart from the conflict took up arms. Both camps tried to present the new confrontation as a battle of Light against Darkness or Freedom against Slavery, but there was little truth in that. The few chroniclers who in our own day write the history of the epic struggle agree on one thing: the aims and designs of the goddess of Devotion are not always as pure and flawless as one might think looking at her shining robes, while the wild impulses of the goddess of Fury are at times full of honor and nobility.

As a reward for victories over the enemy, Deidra and Riel grant their devoted the Blessing – a fragment of their magical power that strengthens armor, sharpens the fury of blades and the striking force of spells. And there is no better reward in the world for a faithful knight than another measure of the Blessing. For its sake the followers of the White and Dark goddesses are capable of much. For there are no feats that great heroes would not perform in the name of Love, and rivers of blood have been spilled more than once for Devotion to word and duty. And the most devastating wars have often begun at the will of unbridled Passion and untamable Fury.

The goddesses' Wishes are fickle and ever-changing, but ever more faithful devotees of Love and Devotion, of Fury and Passion, stand ready to cross blades for a new share of the Blessing. And there is no hope that the epic battle for Teos will ever end in peace. The Alliance of Light and the Union of Fury will settle for nothing less than final victory — or mutual annihilation.

There is no other way.