History in the world of the holy wars took a wary different path to get to its present day than our world did. But most of the differences are a distant memory. After two hundred years of battling with the adversary for the fate of the world, but a few scholars locked away in secluded libraries have any idea of what the time before the Holy Wars was like.

The years since then are reasonably well documented, and much of the details of the war have been recorded in an effort to perhaps gain a glimpse into the machinations of the mind of evil.

The early war was typified by victories by the agents of the lord, for the strength of the enemy was weak, his base of power unstable. The urals - where the gateway to hell was opened - seemed to be effective at containing the threat of the enemy.

But the enemies power is not always a function of its physical strength. Slowly the adversary began corrupting the minds and hearts of men. The forces holding the Urals were forced to fall back. To strengthen the position of the light, Pope Xavien I dispatched the entire body of the Brotherhood of Light (a paladinic order), and Metatron dispatched Micheal to the front lines.

On June 22nd, 1057 the adversary made his move. With Samael in the lead, ten thousand goblinkin, five thousand corrupted men and variousother infernal warriors streamed down from the mountains onto the foothills of Germania, where the Brotherhood of Light, a large group of Knights Templar, the Archangel Micheal and countless other souls were waiting.

The battle of Fallow Glen went well initally for the alliesof the Lord, but then the unthinkable happened. The Brotherhood of Light, once the personal bodyguard of the Pope and thought to be among the most pious of all paladinic orders, turned from the Lord and slaughtered the Knights Templar. From there on the battle was dismal. Without the Templars and the Brotherhood, the soldiers of the Lord stood little chance. Micheal himself only barely managed to stave off death at the hands of Samael.

The fall of Fallow Glen was a horrible loss. The allies of the Lord had been slaughtered, and the the adversary was free to move into the Germanic plain. Although several attempts to regroup were made, each battle brought more and more casualties. Inch by inch the adversary gained more land. By 1101 (the hundredth anniversary of their entrance into the mortal world) they had pushed down into Germania to the Vistula river. By this time many of the tribes of the plains of Germania had allied themselves with the Lords armies, but many more had fallen to the seduction of the dark lord.

The allies of the Dark Lord now control most of Germania, although the tribal nature of the lands has allowed large pockets of resistance to remain. The history of the war is marked with betrayal by mortals, each one driving the allies of the Lord further and further back. The front is now on the doorsteps of the allies homes. The elves hold Gallia with strong presenece on the border, and can likely hold it as long as the Roman Empire holds. The Roman Empire reaches eastward into Greece and Asia Minor, but its borders are long and the enemy seems to have an inexhautable source of troops to throw at the defensive positions on the border. The Holy Land, crucial spiritually if not strategically, is held, but outside the cities the lands are dangerous, and filled with bandits, goblinkin raiders and other terrible things.

Life now is balanced on the blade of a knife. A single betrayal could spell the end for the Lord's armies. Victory over evil seems a bleak dream - but such is the nature of faith.