ELF–DWARF WAR
The Elven Kingdom had risen since the end of the Age of Chaos and dominated the Time of a Thousand Magics. Near the end of that age the Dwarven Empire also rose to prominence. The New Kingdom (Elven) and the Dwarven Empire grew more intolerant of each other and war broke out. The loss of life and destruction was so great over the next 2000 years that many people still talk of it as if it were recent history, not 8,000 years past. Out of over 100 million elves perhaps only 9 million survived, and out of 75 million dwarves it is estimated 6 million lived on. To this day there is still much animosity between the two races.
The devastation was hardly limited to the lives lost. The Baalgor Wastelands were once a woodland, with soaring Elven cities such as their capital, the Golden City of Baalgor, home to 23 million elves, humans, orcs and goblins. It, and the land around it, was blasted by a dark magic woven by the greatest dwarven sorcerers of the time. The New Kingdom, and the Dwarven Empire mountains around it, are now a dark land controlled by the “monster races” called the Old Kingdom.
It is no wonder than that out of this destruction and death rose the Millennium of Purification.
As told by the Tristine Chronicles, " And when the dogs of war were laid dead, and when the battle weary stopped to survey what they had wrought, both Elf and Dwarf wept. The great cities above and below the ground were laid to waste. The rivers ran red with blood, and corpses did litter the land so that one could not walk ten paces without stumbling over the dead, or the bloated carrion that fed upon them. Not since the sins and darkness of the Great Old Ones had the world witnessed such wanton wickedness, blind power and darkness."
