Anthromor

Anthromor was the first human nation to exist in the Aeon of the Champion story series, founded in -4,700 by human settlers of the Anthori tribe who dwelled in the east of Old Vigrith. Following the end of the War of the Ancients, the humans incorporated their new settlement due to concerns that the trolls were still too powerful in this region.

History
The foundation of Anthromor is surrounded in a degree of mystery, but one thing most historians agree on is that the empire was established in the city of Arathor around -4,700. The humans in the area were concerned that the ruling jungle trolls were becoming too much of a threat as they scrambled to save the remnants of their Sulebian empire. Humans from various tribes coalesced around Arathor, travelling across the continent to its protection.

On the northern tip of the Eastern Kingdoms, however, things weren't so stable. The night elf insurgents (now known as high elves), led by Lord Mytnas Dawndancer, were in open conflict with the trolls. Via the use of their magic, the elves were able to capture several major settlements around Laudrin, but struggled to push any further than Holders Hill because they were outnumbered. The troll king, Azzarin, decided to pepper the elves with hit-and-run skirmishes in order to force them to leave the area. Without the elves keeping the trolls in check, the humans of Anthromor were left looking over their shoulders all the time.

In spring -4,400, human envoys travelled from Arathor to Highdawn, the then-capital of Quel'thalas. They offered the exhausted elves a proposal: an alliance of their races and human support in the wars against the trolls - in exchange for knowledge of the arcane. Dawndancer agreed, and the Highdawn League was established as a common alliance between the humans of Anthromor and the high elves of Quel'thalas. Their combined forces defeated the jungle trolls and sent Azzarin and his royal guard into hiding.

Following this victory, some of the human mages started to die off. Unable to comprehend why their heroes of war were perishing in their numbers, the humans asked the elves for an explanation. The result of this meeting was a 10-year research investigation, which concluded that human bodies were not adapted for the handling of arcane magic, and it would take a number of generations for the negative effect on their life expectancies to be curbed. Knowing this, some of the human magi returned to the empire to set up magic schools, in order to pass on their talents to the next generation. The elves were at first skeptical of this, but Dawndancer could only see good in it. The magi were warned though, not to allow arcane magic to proliferate, for it could easily trigger another War of the Ancients. This gave rise to the Magic Aptitude Test, a way for wizardry schools to completely narrow down their choices for students. Starter class sizes were limited to no more than 5 pupils at the most, with few exceptions.

With time, however, generations of humans had been empowered. It was around this time that arcanum, a chemical element behind magic, had been discovered, and soon, a reactor plant - Scyther - had been erected in the heart of the city of Piltshire to harvest the freshly-mined arcanum. The citizens of Piltshire were right to suspect it was a dangerous tool, and in -4,000, a terrible accident took place which claimed scores of lives. The people of Piltshire, and eventually the entire empire, rose up against magic in what was known as the Rune Revolution, which led to the empire's eventual break up into seven (initially six) individual kingdoms.