"...War always takes its toll.
Whether is it lives, gold or freedom,
There is always a price to pay.
Quite often we find that one price is not enough..."
- Emperor Galerius The Fourth
The Taviric Empire. An ancient and mysterious realm, which has been at war for thousands of years. Countless enemies have slowly ground the mighty Empire to but a shadow of what it once was. And so the war went, that the smiths of the Empire worked day and night to produce weapons and armor for its Legions, the furnaces of the Empire's last remaining cities, never dieing out.
Blood Iron ore, from which the famed Taviric steel was produced, became the most demanded commodity in the nation. The miners dug into every mountain, day and night. But it was not enough.
Only with steel, could the Legions hold back the Demonic hordes and the savage Wood Elves. And so, the Senate decreed, there must be enough steel to arm the legions. Thus, it was decided.
Every man and guilty of a crime, no matter how insignificant, was sent to the southern province of Khorinis, where he would spend the rest of his life toiling in the mines of the valley which runs through this realm. Thus, the mines of Khorinis filled with workers. And the province was given another name: The Valley of the Mines.
To make it impossible for the convicts to escape, the Senate sent its Mages with the last Ethereal Gems, which contained all that was left of the Empire's stocks of Rift Energy, which was used to power its spells. The senators knew that the technique to craft Ethereal Gems had been lost hundreds of years ago. This was the final spell a Tavirian would ever cast.
The Mages set out to create a magical barrier around the area of the valley, known as the Colony. Thirteen of them, they were. The last Magic users in the entire Empire. But, as they began to cast their spell, something went wrong. Something had disturbed the delicate structure of Magic. And the barrier went out of control, taking within it the very Mages who created it.
Thus, the Barrier grew to a size far beyond what its creators had planned. And it was such an impenetrable structure. One could go in, but he would never get out again. Or, as some would say, he would walk out the other side, a dead man.
One moment of negligence is all it took. One moment in which a guard looked away, or failed to see something he should have. And the unthinkable happened. The convicts rose up and annihilated their captors. The Colony was now under the control of the Convicts.
The Senate had no choice. They had to negotiate.
And so, month after month, they sent the Convicts whatever they needed. Weapons, women, wine. And month after month, the prisoners sent back a supply of ore through the device known as the Elevator. Ore had become the currency of the Colony. And so it went on for years.
The prisoners split into three factions. The first and oldest was called simply, the Old Camp. It was the biggest and most powerful of the three, as it was the one who traded with the Empire in exchange for supplies. Ruled by a group of powerful Ore Barons, their leader being a man named Gomez, it was protected constantly by its warriors, the Guards. And its agents, the Shadows, formed the Old Camp's intelligence network, overseeing the diggers and gathering information about the other camps.
However, not all Convicts were satisfied with the new order of things. A group led by the former Mages formed and left to the mountains in the west. The Mages had gathered around them the powerful warriors of the former General, Lee. They formed the Mercenaries of the Mages. And the bargain they struck was simple: They would protect the Mages and in return, the Mages would find a way to break the Barrier and set them free.
Thus began the New Camp. And soon, a large number of thieves and bandits who were unhappy with the strict order of the Old Camp, flocked to it. They became the Rogues, the rank and file denizens of the New Camp. A lawless place, where the rule of the fist is the only law.
And last, but not least, a third group split from the Old Camp. A man named Berrion claimed he was visited in his sleep by a powerful god called the Sleeper. He and his Gurus led their followers to the swamps in the south of the valley, where an ancient ruined temple was found. And there, they formed the Brotherhood of the Sleeper. The spiritual Gurus taught their novices about the Way of the Sleeper. And from amongst these novices, a group of warriors was formed. The Templars.
The Brotherhood would have starved, of course, if not for the discovery they had made. A plant, which when rolled up into a reefer, could be smoked, causing a state of euphoria and, the members of the Brotherhood believed, brought visions from their god as well. The plant became known as Swampweed and it soon became a lucrative industry, enabling the Swamp Camp to barter goods with the other camps.
To the southwest of the enclosed Colony, lie the Elf Lands, a wild and dangerous place inhabited by a tribe of Wood Elves who were also trapped inside the Barrier. No human dares enter those lands and the only entrance to that plateau is always heavily guarded.
And so, the things went for many years. But life never remains in balance. More and more convicts were brought to the edge of the cliff which marked the entrance to the valley. And as they were sent tumbling over the edge, into the lake below, they made the passage into a different world. And every time, the Old Camp's Guards were there to greet them with a fist in their faces and the words: "Welcome to the Colony."