An unknown time ago, there was a war in the heavens. Izrador, the god of corruption, fought the gods, turning many angels into devils and demons. He lost the war, so the gods punished him by banishing him to Eredane for all eternity. Izrador's fall created the Veil of Izrador, a barrier that prevented the other gods from influencing the land.
When Izrador fell to earth, his first thought was of reaching godhood again. His plan to do that was to make all humans, elves and dwarves give him their magic. Izrador has since taken over the land, so now there is no magic in Eredane but his own, and Izrador has become "The Shadow".
Long before Izrador's fall, in the First Age of Eredane, a sorceress named Aradil came to the elven throne. She brought peace to her people and this peace spread across the land, creating a new age of peace and trade in magic and science, until it seemed that magic would have no bounds. There were no disputes between cultures, and customs were passed along. But after four thousand years, a new race came from an unknown land. The gnomes and halflings opened their arms to this new people, a human race called the Dorns, who had lost their land across the sea due to the betrayal of King Jahir III. Hoping to claim land for themselves, they slaughtered all they found and wiped out most of those who had wished to help them. War had arrived.
The Dorns quickly attacked the elves and dwarves. As these races were used only to fighting undisciplined orcs, they were quickly outmatched by the war-hardened Dorns. But the elves and dwarves developed their tactics until the sides were even. The ensuing war tore Eredane apart for 300 years.
After this time, the dead began to rise. The souls of the dead had no place to go, so they lingered and animated their corpses, becoming the "Fell", hungry for flesh. Many times, after a battle, the dead would rise, and both sides would drop their weapons and flee these abominations. After a few years of fighting these creatures, their resources spent, the races of Eredane adopted a new method of burying their dead and the rising of corpses was slowed to a trickle. The land looked to a new age of peace, science, and magic as the war ended.
For 700 years, trade routes reopened and the Dorns came to be trusted again. But the Shadow massed an army of orcs, goblins, and countless other things. The Shadow knew that the elves were its greatest foe, so it attempted to destroy them quickly, but to no avail. For five days, the races of Eredane fought, until the rivers ran red with blood and the forest groves turned to swamps with the blood of the orcs. And so the Shadow was finally driven back to the North.