Reading from Hero of Lukomorye Chapter V

History of the Principality of Buyan

From time immemorial the island was populated by the ancient race of Pterosapians, wise birds, who possessed a unique and powerful kind of magic. During the Great Magic War, the Pterosapians refused to take sides and covered the island of Buyan with a Veil of Invisibility, so that any trace of the island was lost for centuries. Only occasional shipwrecks would reach the islands' shore. Those stranded humans learned Pterosapian magic from that dying breed.
After several millenia, the humans took control of the island but soon split into two factions: those who are Invisibilists and support invisibility for the island and those who are Visionaries and want the island open to all.
One family of the mighty Visionary wizards fled Buyan to the nearest mainland, where the Kingdom of Obodrain was located. The youngest daughter of the refugee family was chosen by local king Saul to be his wife. However, she gave birth to a son while the king was away and, in her birth pains, she enchanted her son with the Fast Grow spell so he matured into manhood in a very short time.
The King's advisors were afraid that the queen had given birth to a monster, so they threw her and her son into the ocean in a barrel. By the time the barrel reached Buyan's shore, young Guido was a fully-formed adult, strong and dexterous. The barrel landed where the last battle between the Visionaries and Invisibilists was taking place and Guido, without knowing what he was really doing, killed the leader of the Invisibilists.
That brought disarray into both political camps, and very soon they signed a peace treaty deciding that the island would remain invisible but there could be trade with other human nations. Guido was elected Prince of Buyan. Several years later, his father learned that Guido had survived and was now the mature ruler of a nearby beautiful island, much richer than his own kingdom.
Guido's father, King Saul, sailed to Buyan and reconciled with his wife and son. After his death, Guido ruled both Buyan and Obodrain. Now Buyan is ruled by Prince Guido XVII, but he doesn't have an heir and there are rumors that someone from the Lukomorian Obereg dynasty might succeed him.

When the world was already inhabited for several centuries by humans, orcs, dwarves, goblins and other races, some new tribes have arrived through portals from other worlds. Some of them were very small and rapidly forgotten but two - dragons and elves - changed history forever.
While dragons quickly settled in mountains and swamps, elves faced a strong opposition from humans and orcs with whom they had to share forests and plains. Besides that elves came in three waves and represented three different factions (the war between those factions destroyed their world, so they have to seek a refuge) who immediately started to quarrel with each other.
Bright Elves were the least belligerent of them and entered land-sharing agreements with humand and orcs along the eastern shore of Tritonic Ocean. Greenwar Elves occupied most of forests in the center of Sineoka continent. The most bellicose fraction, Stainless Steel Elves, not only brought their advanced technomagic with them but declared that other species must obey their orders. They settled first in the number of islands all over the world and due to their superb naval power were able to control most of intercontinental trade. Some diplomacy and arranged marriages brought Greenwar and Stainless Steel factions into reconciliation and, when the leader of Unified Elves, Intivrir, has signed a secret treaty with the Great Dragon-King, Ctagaak II, their Coalition became the world only superpower as they controlled sea, air and most of the largest continent.
Three centuries of uneasy peace (during which Bright Elves were droven into small pockets of resistance on Svetloyar Sea shores and humans were expelled from all over Eastern Sineoka) culminated in the Derrf Peace Conference during which the Coalition proposed the final solution: humans and orcs would live only in several walled regions, Bright Elves will dissolve themselves, and goblins and dwarves must be enslaved. The uproar led to the 120-year long Great Magic War. It costs Allied Races (humans, orcs, dwarves, goblins, vampires and others) almost half of their population but in the end the Coalition was defeated and the Ultimate Peace Treaty was signed marking the beginning of Peaceful Era.
According to the Treaty, dragons were dispersed while Unified Elves were given the remote continent of Boitess in Southeastern Seas as their land as all Elvish Navy was given to human Empire of Uhaydoku located north of Boitess. In millennia passed since that elves attempted several times to break out from their imprisonment but were quickly defeated and send back. Recent intelligence report suggest that elves might use the conflicts in Western Sineoka (Freymore Turmoil, Savirian-Lukomorian War, Kozney's Rebellion) to establish their bases on the islands in that part of the world. The ultimate goal for them would be to regain their status as the superpower and renegotiate the Ultimate Peace Treaty.

Three Wolfhounds

Helavisa the Blessed is known for her amazingly rich poetry, written in both Long Buyanish (the classical language) and Short Buyanish (the colloquial language). She was also a gifted prophetess who foresaw many events.
One of the best known examples of her prophetic poetry is a short poem "The Wolfhound". Its refrain is "Every age for its terrible beast there will appear the Wolfhound" and its three stanzas apparently describe three different Wolfhounds (heroes) that will appear in response to different maladies (beasts).
The first Wolfhound was Buyan's Duke Stoughy Termenhare, head of its Principal Air Force. In the heat of the summer of 6971, by using masterfully created mirages and maneuvering, he defeated the heir-apparent Glub, son of the dragon king Bezdn, who wished to annex Buyan to his kingdom. (Bezdn refused to recognize his loss and for the next thirty years he proclaimed that his army had conquered the Island of Buyan.)
The second Wolfhound appeared three centuries later when Buyan was plagued by a serial killer, the Nightlurker, who would snatch kids from their beds and kill them after prolonged torture. For twelve years, he succeeded in his grim crimes until Izza Kostoy, a police detective from Odettia, chased him down in a remote forest area. Almost immediately after the Nightlurker was executed, the rumor spread that Kostoy must be the second Wolfhound prophesied by Helavisa who destroyed the second beast.
The third and last Wolfhound is described in Helavisa's poetry as one who will come "from the hunger, from the eternal cold, from the iron mountains' darkness, from the ancient prison, from some northern country". Commentators suggest that based on these geographical details the Wolfhound may come from either the Duinn Delta of Great Parmia or from the region around the Lukomorian city of Seversk. It remains to be seen what great beast he will have to deal with.