A growing discontent among the atogs, unsuccessfully moderated by the Toraiji minotaurs and stoked by the Genesai trolls, ignited into a war between the Primeval Nephilim, the Primeval Cults of the atog tribes and the Nephilim Regency - the dragons, the Krokahri crocodile-demons, and the leviathans. At war's end the leviathans were wiped out by the Krokahri crocodile-demons and the dragons fled the Krokahri, choosing to disguise themselves as apes, the mammalian tribes that were coming into dominance with the downfall of the atog. Unbeknownst to the Krokahri, the Genesai used their green magic to adapt the unhatched leviathan spawn for terrestrial life.

In the long years following the atog extinction, the dragons began to emerge from their disguises, working with the emerging human civilizations to mine metals and precious stones from the earth, trading their findings and techniques for the vices that only a human mind could conjure. Some of the dragons were benevolent, others malevolent, united by their care to keep their natures secret, lest they draw the attention of the Krokahri. Fortunately for the dragons, the Krokahri were more concerned with a fledgling race of snakefolk that bore a curious resemblance to the leviathans they had exterminated eons past. Unfortunately, for the dragons, their casual viciousness and harsh sense of justice evoked the ire of the Toraiji.

A human whose mining operations suffered under the dragons found old records of the Toraiji and set about conjuring the demoniac minotaurs. And this began the war which shaped the course of Xu's future.

The Toraiji

The Undying Gods

The Genesai

Lhurgoyf

Atogs

Krokahri

The orochi philosophy is summed by the quote “morality binds and blinds.” The orochi snakefolk will harness the elemental-binding technology of the viashino in order to bring about the rot and regrowth of Xu. Knowledge of the crimes that the Genesai committed so that the orochi might exist—sacrificing the Forgotten Tribes to fuel their genesis magic—has driven a schism into the orochi society. Orochi that betray the cause are used in experimental elementalism. They have enlisted the aid of the dragon-regents in acquiring the viashino technology while manipulating the regents into going to war against the viashino. The orochi fear that the viashino would use them as tools and would rather eliminate that risk than deal with their subdraconian machinations. From a world turned to rot the orochi hope to raise a soft, safe one without disease, death, or starvation.

Meanwhile the Dragonlords—or Undying Gods—have spread themselves thin across Xu with the intent of studying the skysnakes—a rainbow light phenomenon previously confined to the skies over the northern continent Rairaka. Though pursuers of pleasure, the Dragonlords believe that there are patterns to the skysnakes and their elemental progeny; something all-consuming and dark lurks just beyond sight.

The viashino have scattered throughout Xu in an attempt to help their respective patron among the five Old Gods emerge from the coming conflagration victorious. They revel in the role of artist and consider the plane to be raw materials fit for sculpting and believe that removing the very imperatives of life—those things that the orochi fear—would leave the plane a barren wasteland. From their territories on the continents Rairaka, Necrajunk, Midiamire, Jingreishen, and Truuz the viashino take note of the elementals spawned by the skysnakes and respond in kind—either through stronger alliances or outright aggression—to the humans that have served as test subjects for the elemental-harnessing machines built by the viashino.

Forgotten and disregarded by the humans, viashino, and orochi are the atog. In the years since their return to Xu, the atog have become slaves, their chains being lives of decadence within proverbial ivory towers--to the humans that seek to free themselves from the yoke of their viashino mercenaries—many believe “master” is a more appropriate designation for the lizardmen. The last surviving Genesai troll, Elzid, is well aware of the atogs’ plight and seeks to free them from their chains. Elzid is driven by his belief that the orochi cause is a just one worth fighting for. Thus Elzid crusades to free the atogs by rallying the lhurgoyf to go to war against humankind to remind man of his place in the grand scheme of nature.

The Forgotten Tribes are known mostly through the fossil record and by old tablets, hieroglyphs, and varies pieces of artwork said to predate the earliest recorded histories of the atogs. The tribes all have a humanlike appearance, though each tribe has a few key features that distinguish it from the others.

Firefolk - or goblins, squat, extremely muscular and apish with prominent ears, hinged jaws and rows of needleteeth. Conquest and industrialization seem to have been their strengths, based on the old scrolls and tablets.

Brinefolk - or merfolk. With fishlike appendages and either shelllike growths or armor derived from various kinds of seashells. An obsession with time and the manipulation thereof is apparent in the study of Brinefolk relics. Whether this was a literal interest in travelling time, or a type of magic that likened the flow of the tides to the march of time is currently unknown.

Thornfolk - or elves. A reveling, hedonistic and predatory folk with cloven hooves and elaborate antlers that seem to denote an elf's social status. Petrified forests hold paintings suggesting that the Thornfolk preyed upon the Bladefolk and Rotfolk.

Rotfolk - or undead lords. A folk concerned with manipulating powers unknown and merely guessed at by the best of Xu's academics, they seem to favor the use of necromancy.

Bladefolk - or stout humanlike plainsdwellers that revered the beasts and spirits of the plains, savannahs and tundras. Recovered and restored ledgers from the Bladefolk ruins suggest a trading relationship with the Brinefolk and Firefolk and an aversion to the Thornfolk rooted in superstition and practicality. Academics speculate that the Bladefolk are the closest relatives of the simians, and that they were driven from the mountains by the firefolk.

The atogs are the plane's oldest sapient race. They worshiped the Nephilim, one of the last elder races. For reasons unknown to the atogs, the Nephilim appointed regents from among the plane's big three iconics: dragons, crocodile-demons, and leviathans. Dissension within the atog tribes led to war. The Toraiji attempted to avert the war and failed. The Genesai encouraged the war. The crocodile-demons hunted the leviathan into extinction while the Genesai harvested the leviathan eggs and used their green magic to adapt the unhatched leviathan spawn into terrestrial life, allowing the unhatched to escape the crocodile-demons. The dragons feared the crocodile-demons and so went into hiding, disguised as members of the fledgling ape tribes that had began to emerge toward the end of the atog reign.

In the aftermath, some of the dragons sought refuge from the crocodile-demons in the north and retook the frozen lands from the last of the Toraiji. Others continued to exist alongside the apes, and later mankind's ancestors. While in disguise the dragons indulged in the pleasures concocted by the apes and humans. Some of the mortal mammals took note of the hidden dragons' immortality and began to refer to them as the Undying Gods. Eons pass, mankind comes into dominance and the Undying Gods are all but forgotten. Some beggars living in the jungle ruins of a ruined city discovered the Undying Gods. The dragons, itching for a bit of self-indulgence, accepted the title once more. A few dragons have since come out of hiding, resuming their natural form and making their homes in regions rendered hostile to most other forms of life (a defense against the crocodile-demons).

The Undying Gods built their powerbase by appealing to the cripples, beggars, and broken of Xu. They helped these outcasts mine precious metals, fuels, and mana stones. Demand for these commodities began to decline, drawing the ire of Xu's wealthy. Believing this to be unjust, they began seeking ways to eliminate the threat posed by the dragons lest they be left impoverished by the Undying Gods' kindness. They found their solution by way of an old leper who had suffered under the brutal justice of the Undying Gods. The leper led them to old scrolls with instructions for summoning the Toraiji.

The Toraiji allowed their human handlers to show them the lands where rich and poor worshiped the Undying Gods and where more secular minds had incorporated some of the Undying Gods' teachings into their social and judicial institutions. Anger kindled within the Toraiji, who believed there could be no real justice when the arbiters were hedonists and avatars of casual cruelty like the dragons. However there were those among the Toraiji that argued that their current masters--the elite of human society--were no better than the Undying Gods. While the Toraiji debated the extent of their rights as bringers of justice, their old faithful in the far north received word of the Toraiji summoning.

At the northernmost reaches of Xu is the continent Rairaka. A land of mesas, steam vents built to take advantage of the Plains of Burning Ice (literal plains of ice kept ablaze by dragonfire, intended as a protection against agents sent by the crocodile-demons), and most notably the mercenary army known as the Coldfire Command. Prior to the summoning of the Toraiji, the Coldfire Command had been involved in a cleansing of the land's dragon-cults. With the return of the Toraiji, the Command ceased their genocide of the dragon-cults and turned their attention to the southlands where the Toraiji had been summoned.

The Coldfire Command sailed south for their reborn patrons, the Toraiji, and provided the otherworldly minotaurs with counsel in the matter of the Undying Gods and their southern followers. In the end, the Toraiji allowed the Coldfire Command to slaughter the wealthy lords that had summoned them. Thoughtless action by the Coldfire Command, battle-hardened mercenaries driven by their fear of the barbarism they encountered among the dragon-cultists of Rairaka, left the lords' territories in a state of destabilization.

Initially the Undying Gods didn't take an active role. Instead they began turning their followers into regents-lesser dragons that are more mana construct than flesh, scale and bone-and sending the regents against the Coldfire Command and the Toraiji. The followers selected for regency were those that did not desire the role; the dragons were inspired by the human idea that the best leaders are those that don't want to assume the mantle of leadership. Members of the Coldfire Command that had been sent in ahead of the armies to infiltrate the Undying Gods' territory were able to save some of those chosen for regency through countermagics that left the halfmade regents as human-dragon hybrids known as viashino. These viashino were happy to assist the Coldfire Command through the use of land-destruction magics that attacked the Undying Gods' resources.

The Undying Gods ceased their use of regents and instead drew upon the emotions and subconscious of their followers, slaves, and subjects to create avatars of the mind. These avatar embodied ideals and emotional states and were the main magical weapon of the Undying Gods. The avatars demonstrated the ability to generate lesser elementals anchored in the more minor thoughts that contributed to the core of the avatars' being.

While the Toraiji went to war against the chaotic hedonism of the Undying Gods, the Genesai trolls were driven into action by fear of the crocodile-demons. War had always been a profitable venture for the lords of death and fertility. Genesai shaman walked the land, raising elementals and waking apes from their eternal slumber in the jungletop villages in order to defend Xu and the plane's people against the depredations of bandits looking to profit from the war.

A Genesai troll by the name of Elzid sought a more proactive role in the war, and thus traveled to the continent Necrajunk where he studied the histories of Xu in libraries maintained by the crocodile-demon priesthood. The crocodile-demon clerics (distinguished by a condition that leaves their skin with a rough, reticulated appearance) pointed Elzid to documents on the lhurgoyf, an old reptilian folk said to be the progenitor's of Xu's reptilian races. Elzid's charisma and hard evidence in the form of the documents earned him followers among the Genesai who believed that it was the trolls' duty to end the war rather than tend the wounds of the war.

Elzid and his splinter faction of Genesai conjured the lhurgoyf via the incantations found in the texts taken from Necrajunk. This played into the hands of the crocodile-demon priesthood, who hoped that the presence of the reptilian progenitors would enrage the vain crocodile-demons and spur them into action. The crocodile-demons waited until Elzid's followers, griped by Elzid's charisma and dogmatic speeches, attempted to use the lhurgoyf to depose Elzid. Elzid had grown weary of the damage left in wake of the lhurgoyf and wanted to curtail their use, relegating them to a role akin to that of the elementals and apes: protection and defense rather than outright aggression. Elzid was forced to flee his fanatical followers, and found refuge in the den of a crocodile-demon that offered Elzid and his last few companions a means of dealing with the lhurgoyf and the fanatics: the atogs.

Elzid and his companions used the knowledge of the crocodile-demons to create the atogs with genesis magic that required a sacrifice of lhurgoyf and ape. While Elzid worried that this would leave the lands vulnerable, he convinced himself that it would ultimately provide the lands with a greater protection against the warring factions and encroaching bandits. The cost of Elzid's ambition was in Genesai that opposed his abduction and ritual butchering of the eternal apes to fuel the genesis magic that gave rise to the atogs. Elzid's atogs were intended to act as peacemakers between the Toraiji and the Undying Gods. Rather than make peace, however, the atogs forged relationships with the lhurgoyf and together the two reborn races rose against their Genesai masters. In the aftermath of the Genesai genocide, there were few trolls left, Elzid being among the survivors.

The crocodile-demons sent their priesthood to the atog and lhurgoyf, showing them kindness and helping them establish sanctuaries throughout Xu where they would be able to live in peace. In the atog and lhurgoyf the crocodile-demons saw an answer to the mind-avatars conjured by the Undying Gods' magic: they knew that the ancient knowledge of the atog would allow the little reptile-apes to build an infrastructure fueled by magic, including the magic that birthed the mind-avatars.