Duels: The Elemental Age is set to launch early 2009 and will include:
* 2 new races
* More than three hundred new items
* New elemental themed pets
* New, elemental themed Actions
* A new multi-week serial quest and PVP event that will challenge Duelists of all levels and introduce two all new expansion factions.
* Awesome additional features throughout the expansion!
Just a few months ago, the city of Phyrra found itself under siege. Brave Duelists fought back and with the aid of the reawakened elementals, repelled the Singlemind force. Victory, however, was not without its price.
Much of the city had been turned into a battleground and large sections, including the House of Healing, the Green Scene and the fabled Hall of Gates now lay in ruin. At the behest of the city’s Archons, the elementals have agreed to stay on in Phyrra and assist in its rebuilding.
Phyrra, the city of Doors is being transformed into a wonderland of natural beauty and labor is required to see the project to completion. The elementals have summoned shamans and druids from across the world to the Elemental Plain and requested assistance in this massive undertaking.
Prologue to ‘The Elemental Age’: Orcs Don’t Dream
Once again, Krunk wakes up to the sound of his own deep, terrified screaming. He is glad to be in the city. The thick stone walls block the sound and the other Flamehammer orcs are spared the shame of his weakness. How could his brethren sympathize with his plight? Orcs don’t dream. Or at least they’re not supposed to.
Before coming to Phyrra, when he was still a Vistav orc, Krunk had feared nothing. Even under constant threat of Red Tide attack, hunting lands scorched and salted, women and children taken in the night rediscovered in the cold morning nothing but used up husks. Even as the specter of death had cast a long shadow over the Vistav Mountains, Krunk had not lived in fear. Rage and thirst for vengeance had been his response to the horrors of existence, fear and cowardice abstract insults with little practical truth. That all changed the day Grol Flamehammer returned from the Elemental Plain.
The shaman stood before the collected Warlords of the Vistav tribes. He explained that had sought assistance from the elementals themselves. They agreed, but for a price. Far to the south, the elementals had assisted the civilized beings of Phyrra in the face of an unspeakable alien threat: the Singlemind. Though they were triumphant and the invaders repelled, much of the city was razed in the conflict. The elementals had a simple request. The Vistav were to come to Phyrra and assist in the rebuilding. In exchange, the elementals would bless the war effort. Their weapons would be granted the power of storm; the wind would carry their arrows true.
The deal was not well received. Many Vistav saw Phyrra as a decadent Hell, filled with the grotesque flotsam of a thousand diseased cultures. It was no better than slavery to serve those too weak to survive in the true world, outside of the swaddling embrace of stone walls and magic. Others, however, saw pride as a reasonable sacrifice for the final destruction of the Red Tide. Lines were drawn. Blood was spilled. In the end, Grol Flamehammer and his followers were banished. Now homeless, the newly christened Flamehammer orcs set out for Phyrra and their new elemental allies. The trek south was long and brutal. Cold and hunger claimed many lives. More were lost to beasts and each other’s rage. After thirty days, the remaining Flamehammer found themselves on the Emrian coast looking over the gleaming domes of the City of Duels.
If their arrival in the famed metropolis was cause to celebrate, that cause was short lived. Upon arriving in Phyrra, the Flamehammer orcs dreamt for the first time. Or, more accurately, they had their first nightmares. Krunk was greeted that night by a dark reflection of the world he knew. In it he saw a shadow Phyrra: gateway to a thousand hellish worlds. Within its obsidian walls he was assaulted by visions of violence and debauchery so vile as to turn even his stout orcish stomach. The next morning, none of the Flamehammers mentioned the visions. With quiet resolve they set out to make good on their commitment to elementals and the slow restoration of the city.
Once again Krunk wakes up to the sound of his own deep, terrified screaming and, after a few moments of waking confusion, rises and makes his way to the Hall of Gates. The reconstruction zone is a buzzing hive of activity. What were once brown rock walls are being reshaped by great stone, tree and fire elementals, pulsing veins of multicolored magma flowing between thick branches, and encircling columns of solid flame. Were he not half-delirious from midnight escapades into the mouth of horror, Krunk would have been amazed at the lavish natural beauty he was helping to create.
As the sun sets over the domes of the Phyrran skyline, Krunk follows a group of his fellows to a dim underground tavern, formerly known as the Green Scene. It too was nearly destroyed in the Singlemind invasion, though restoration here has been far less impressive. The floor is still littered with debris and deep stains. The orcs sit in this morose pit, drinking silently, late into the night. Though none will express it, they are each loathe to return to their quarters and the dark incubus that awaits them. Too soon, however, Krunk is alone in his tiny stone nook and sleep takes him.
Krunk is harried once again by phantasms from the shadow world. He sees his dark twin, dining on a tiny carcass with a five fingered hand. His eyes go wide with terror, as his twin looks up and smiles, black teeth sticky with meat.
“Bring me more.”
Once again Krunk wakes up to the sound of his own deep terrified screaming. The vision of his own face, darkened and scarred fills his vision. As he rises and makes his way to the Hall, those mirror-familiar red eyes float before him. As he hefts runed blocks of warm, indestructible ice into a fiery scaffold, the glare hovers, boring its twisted desire into him. When he looks his brothers in the eye, he sees this same wary revulsion.
As night falls, the orcs return silently to their quarters. When sleep once again drags Krunk into the foul trench of Dark Phyrra, he is confronted with his savage self, standing in a mockery of the Hall of Gates. The dark Krunk is flanked by enormous black shapes, featureless but for paired white lights, searing his mind with their gaze, making him feel alternating waves of hate, greed, wrath and the need to destroy. Krunk’s dark half embraces him and whispers in his ear, the scent of dead things and dust heavy on its breath.
“Bring them to me.”
And when Krunk wakes, he is not screaming. In fact, a peaceful smile has spread across his tusky mouth. He knows how to make dreams stop now.
