The story so far
Everything below is pieced together from notes you can find in the game. Most of it comes from Balthazar, the Alchemist, whose dated notes are collected in The Alchemist's Theories, and from the Ancients' own writings in the Ancient Obelisks. Years in the notes are written as D.A.
The kingdoms
Two kingdoms matter most. Meldore was ruled by King Gormander, son of Queen Pikemead, from the city of Pikemead's Reach. Rimgard, to the north, was ruled by Lord Vorgoth, who called himself the Guard of the North. Vorgoth's sister Jezmina comes into the story too.
The Elixir
In 492 D.A. a cloaked, sickly stranger came to Vorgoth's throne room with a bright blue flask. He called it a weapon, a secret the Ancients had hidden from people. Vorgoth drank it and felt himself lift off the ground. The notes call this stranger the Mysterious Wanderer.
Vorgoth then brought the Elixir to a family gathering and slipped a drop into King Gormander's wine. Soon Gormander called in his engineers to build Elixir Wells. Jezmina argued against it, and Vorgoth hit her. Vorgoth tells all of this himself in his notes.
In 500 D.A. Balthazar studied the Elixir. It is made from tiny fungi that grow deep underground. He wrote that it gives power, but that it would never be a cure, only a weapon.
The Shroud
That same year a fog began pouring up from the depths, and people called it the Shroud. It spread sickness and changed the soil and the people it touched, and trade between the kingdoms dried up. A year later Balthazar wrote that he believed the Shroud is spores from those same fungi, woken when the first Wells were dug and the first Elixir was made. He blamed the Mysterious Wanderer for setting it loose.
The war
In 503 D.A. Vorgoth led Rimgard's army into Meldore. His soldiers were pale and sick. They broke into Pikemead's Reach and killed King Gormander. The people trapped in the city tell the siege in A Scattered Legacy. Not all of Vorgoth's soldiers believed in the war: Athalan deserted, and wrote to her brother that Gormander had never been a threat and that the Wanderer had lied to them (Athalan's Letter To Talion).
By 505 D.A. Jezmina, now called Queen Jezmina, was leading her people away in caravans (Queen Jezmina).
The Ancients
The Ancients are an old race bound to the Flame. On their obelisks they admit that they raised humans above every other creature, and that this led to war. When the Drak attacked humans to win the Ancients' attention, the Ancients pulled back and swore never to take a side again, even after the Shroud came.
The Shroud also split the Ancients. Their writings say some would rise and some would stay, the eldest on one side and the youngest on the other. By 505 D.A. Balthazar writes that the Ancients' capital had risen above the clouds, out of reach.
The Flameborn
Not all of them gave up on people. In 506 D.A. a group of young Ancients came to Balthazar with a plan they called Cinder Vaults: a vessel would guide an Ancient Flame into a human body, making a mortal born from fire who could drive back the fog. Balthazar set out to build these Cinder Vessels (Cinder Vault). One failed test burned the rat inside. In 507 D.A. a second rat, Igni, slept safely in one, untouched by time. In 508 D.A. the Blacksmith volunteered to be the first human to go in.
You play as one of these Flameborn. The game calls you humanity's last beacon of hope: your inner Flame protects you from the Shroud, but only for a limited time.