The Shadow War of 1914–1918

(Known mundanely as World War I)

The Great War the world remembers — trenches, mustard gas, the first tanks — was only half the truth. Behind the smoke and propaganda, the magical world fought a war of its own — one far older, bloodier, and more personal.

The Spark

In the early 1910s, tensions between humans and sub-species had reached breaking point. Decades of colonial expansion had forced elves, dwarves, orcs, and countless mythic peoples into human-controlled territories. While glamours kept them hidden from most mortals, resentment brewed. Racist laws crept through the magical political councils, stripping non-humans of land, titles, and rights.

When a mundane assassination in Sarajevo set the human nations on the path to war, the magical underworld saw opportunity — and danger. Sub-species factions began arming in secret, believing the chaos of a human war would be their only chance to reclaim sovereignty.

The Vance Schism

Even among the great houses, loyalties were split. The Vance Family, one of the most feared and respected human bloodlines, came dangerously close to tearing itself apart.

• Half the family wanted to stand with the sub-species, believing unity could secure a better future.

• The other half feared that siding with them would paint all humans as traitors in the eyes of the gods and Watchers.

The split came to a head in 1915, when Vance blades clashed with Vance blades in the back alleys of Paris. The violence would have escalated into full-blown civil war if Heihachi Vance, with the help of Roan Pendrake’s father, had not intervened. Together, they invoked ancient Vance law to forbid their bloodline from participating in the war on either side, forcing neutrality.

The Shadow Front

With the Vance neutral, other great houses had free rein. The Ur’Vash Orcs fought openly at Verdun under heavy glamour, their presence “explained” mundanely as shock troops in gas masks. Elven war mages burned miles of forest in the Ardennes. Entire dwarven clans tunneled under enemy lines, collapsing trenches without a single shot fired.

The Watchers and elder pantheons realized the war would expose the magical world if it continued unchecked. And so, the mundane war became a cover story — an elaborate theater of human blood to distract from the real war, a species-wide conflict of magic, bloodlines, and racial politics.

The Cost

By the war’s end:

• Millions of sub-species dead, many forced into concentration camps in Europe.

• Non-human populations scattered and weakened, paving the way for humans to seize leadership of the mortal world.

• The Veil reinforced — violently — to hide the genocide from mortal history books.

• The surviving sub-species forced to adopt compulsory glamours, under penalty of death.

Mundanely, World War I was remembered as the “War to End All Wars.”
Magically, it was the Great Betrayal — the final nail in the coffin of true coexistence.

The War of Gods and Shadows (1939–1945)

(Mundanely: World War II)

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, mortals believed they were witnessing the beginning of another purely human war. In truth, the invasion was only the visible ripple of a much deeper, bloodier conflict — one born not from politics, but from the Vance family’s most dangerous rivalry.

The Spark: Brothers at War

In the late 1930s, tensions between Heihachi Vance and his eldest son, Kazuya, had grown into open hatred. The rivalry, fueled by a century of personal slights and philosophical divides, reached its breaking point in Berlin.

• Heihachi sought to solidify control over Central Europe’s magical networks, particularly ancient Norse artifacts smuggled out of Denmark and Norway.

• Kazuya believed those relics were too dangerous for any one pantheon to wield, and attempted to return them to the Norse keepers in Poland.

Their duel — fought over the streets of Warsaw, tearing through reality and shattering glamours — ended with the death of a fledgling Norse god, struck down in the crossfire. His name is now erased from all mortal records, but in the magical world his fall was the true declaration of war.

Pantheons Mobilize

The Norse took the death as an act of war from the Vance family, and called their banners.

• The Aesir and Vanir demanded retribution, sending demi-gods and Einherjar into Europe.

• The Olympians split — some siding with the Vance out of old alliances, others joining the Norse to balance power.

• The Pendrake Family initially tried to mediate but was drawn in when Avalon’s wards were breached by Norse raiders.

Before long, dozens of pantheons — Greek, Norse, Slavic, and even some African war cults — were drawn into the fighting.

The Rise of the Black Market Kings

While the pantheons spilled blood across hidden battlefields, the mortal underworld saw an opportunity.

• The Ur’Vash Orcs, still nursing generational wounds from the Great Betrayal of World War I, saw their chance to expand. They built weapons smuggling routes under the guise of supplying the Allies, in reality arming magical factions on both sides.

• The Geats rose in parallel, using their control of port cities to dominate sea smuggling lanes between Europe and North America.

• The Umbra Bureau was formally born, pulling agents from surviving Watcher lines and embedding them in Allied intelligence agencies. Their original mandate was to contain magical fallout and erase evidence of pantheon battles before mortal governments caught on.

This unholy alliance between Orc, Geat, and Bureau formed the backbone of the modern magical black market — a network that still exists today, older than most human intelligence agencies.

The Hidden Front

While mortals fought over beaches and cities, the magical war raged in places they couldn’t see:

• The Siege of Alfheim Gate — Norse forces defending the last natural portal to the Fae Realms from Vance-led Olympian coalitions.

• The Kraków Blight — a magical nerve gas unleashed by an unknown faction, killing both mortals and mythics, leaving parts of Poland magically dead to this day.

• The Night of Nine Thrones — when nine divine rulers fell in a single evening, assassinated by mixed mortal-mythic hit teams.

The Aftermath

By 1945, both the mortal and magical wars ended — but the damage was irreversible:

• Entire pantheons fractured; the Norse never fully recovered their political unity.

• The Vance family emerged bloodied but still feared, their feud unresolved but paused under a fragile truce.

• The Ur’Vash and Geats cemented themselves as untouchable criminal dynasties, answerable to no mortal authority.

• The Umbra Bureau entrenched itself in post-war intelligence networks, ensuring that the next war would be hidden even deeper.

For mortals, World War II was a victory over tyranny.
For the magical world, it was the last war where gods bled openly — and the beginning of a shadow empire that still grips the underworld today.