At last, the plagues and foul beasts God had sent against the mortals were no more. For the first time in history, the world was united in peace, in jubilation, in celebration.

It was short-lived. There was a problem no one had accounted for. With God dead, there were no new souls. Every new baby died as soon as it was born. Human, elf, dwarf, orc, even livestock.

At first, they all banded together, trying to find a solution. Nothing worked. Food supplies were suddenly very scarce; even crops could no longer be cultivated. The only renewable source of food were from magic, and mages were rare.

The warforged, originally created to aid in the battle against God, were now turned against former allies. Wars were fought over storehouses and mages. The mortal races had accrued terrible weapons in their centuries-long war, and now entire kingdoms were reduced to smoking craters in the blink of an eye.

But that was then. Things have calmed down quite a bit now. Most of the mortals are dead. Orcs are completely extinct, and the youngest humans– those born just before God was slain– are into their sixties. Only the dwarves and elves really remain. Few of them are left, though, and even their time is dwindling.

The age of the mortals is over. This is the age of the warforged, of the kiln-born, of the liches and undead.

When mortal artificers designed the first creation forge, it was heralded as a triumph of magical ingenuity. For the first time, sentient beings could be created wholesale from inert materials.

Among the first of the warforged created, some even say the first, was a particularly shrewd one known as Tensyk. Tensyk pleased his masters, but secretly worked behind their backs to establish his own creation forge. Tensyk took control of his parentforge using his own homegrown soldiers as well as forgebrothers whom he’d convinced to defect with him.

After taking control of the first forge, he turned on his forgebrothers, slaughtering them. Tensyk then altered the original forge to be more like his own creation, ensuring that he would be the only warforged imbued with free will.

Tensyk began a campaign of conquest, establishing new forges frequently so that his unliving army swelled exponentially. Before long, no mortal civilization remained. Formerly great cities and castles crumbled into ruins, immense tombstones for dead kingdoms.

Warforged outnumber mortals by dozens if not hundreds to one, and each warforged is easily a match for several humans, elves or dwarves. Thrae is a world slowly dying.

The few survivors exist in meager numbers, fighting a guerrilla war not even to retake their former lands but for simple survival. Food, water and shelter are all scarce and fiercely contested; sometimes the warforged are not your most immediate enemy, but your best friend.