Memories From the Old World

The Hyperboreans

The frozen wastes stirred up a blizzard, the icy wind blocking the sight of anyone that was stuck away from shelter. The ice storms of Hyperborea could live on for days in the most northerly areas, and had devastating effects on crops, people, and buildings alike.

This blizzard had come at a time of conflict, at the drawing of swords and the clashing of shields. Two armies sat across the snowy battlefield, their faces laden with grimace and scowl.

The armies were of two races, the Lessers and the Greaters. Each stood on their own side of the field, on their own side of Hyperborea, always ready to take a little more land from the other side through combat. The Lessers were engineers of war, their skill in the design and expert creation of war machines such as catapults and trebuchets that rained fire upon their enemies from a safe distance. This race was smart, inventive, and diplomatic, their gills and their scaly tail suggesting they were mainly aquatic, but their furred wolfen legs proving they had adapted to live on the surface of the world.

And across from these great minds stood tall the Greaters. These were the violent race, whose technology was vast, but only invested in weapons and shields and armor. It took many a blow to fell one greater, and so the catapults were necessary for the lessers' survival. Beneath the iron and steel and linked chainmail was the sharp face of a fox, which carried a smirk as the bloodlust of battle began pumping through their head. The Greaters were a race true to the land, the stiff, thick fur covering them protecting their skin and bones from the blizzards, and their tail providing more balance for dexterous movement in a fight. Their lower arms and legs were massive, both ending in paw-like structure, their hands big enough to hold and crush a skull in each simultaneously. This was the race of warriors, smiths, and honor-bound leaders, and they didn't rest from battle too long before re-entering the fray.

For now, both sides still stared across the icy waste, their vision plagued by the storm of frost, until the leader of the Greaters pulled a horn from its sling over his arm, and issued the call to attack.

It wasn't a question, this was the answer to their grand gathering, and what set off the eruption of war cries on the side of both the brutal and the intelligent. The clanking of shields and crushing of snow beneath steel boot and fur echoed for miles through the hazardous white storm. The catapults had already been loosed, blades drawn, and blood just a moment from being spilt. It was the first in a series of the most terrifying and violent battles the frozen wastes would see, further separating the already hostile races and sending them down their path of perpetual hostility.

This began the war between the two races so close, yet with so many walls built between them. The Hyperborean War had yet to reach its worst.