The world was called Myl'eao, and its greatest kingdom was Shuk Djal. The kingdom, nestled between the two lesser kingdoms of Verai and Ushuk Aem, was awe-inspiring, not for its militaristic power, but for the sake of the balance it struck with the world. Its advances in both the technological and arcane arts made it a force that the other countries could not compete with- and, while this created a certain amount of tension between it and the rest of the world, it also gave Shuk Djal the authority to keep the peace both inside and outside its borders. Shuk Djal was to the world as the beam was to a scale- without it, everything would fall apart into chaos.
Of course, it goes without saying that a country of such power had its enemies. Those who envied its greatness or coveted its strength were plentiful, but it wasn't until the kingdom of Verai had fallen prey to an unexpected palace coup that this dissent was given the shape and form of an army.
War was declared in earnest, and the soldiers of the new order of Verai marched for the land of their neighboring kingdom. Shuk Djal had had very little formal army assembled in that previous time of peace, merely pockets of soldiers to bring in for domestic problems; with their vast population, they could have no doubt raised a legion of willing fighters within days, but the inexperience of their troops would have still risked their downfall. Fortunately, Shuk Djal had a far greater defense than spilling the blood of enemies.
There were six stones- each stone was a shard of a greater stone, connected by perfect angles. Their colors did not vary, but were a perfectly uniform grey-black. Upon seeing one of these stones, about the size of a head, there would be no reason to speculate that there was anything especially unusual about them; not until they were taken from each other and exposed to a certain type of magic would their supernatural properties be revealed. Each stone was linked in perfect harmony to one another, and when all six were magically charged, they produced a dome-like shield that protected all that lay between them. This shield could be controlled only by one of the stones, opened only at the behest of one with control over one of the artifacts.
When Verai's armies arrived at the kingdom of Shuk Djal, the doors were effectively closed; solid to the touch, the shield held strong against the attempts of the soldiers to break past it. Persistant as they were, Verai set up camps along the border of Shuk Djal, waiting for the day that the shield would drop. Agents were sent by sea around Shuk Djal into Ushuk Aem, where they made their way into the enemy country and sought to sabatoge the stones and somehow gain control of the shield; ever vigilant, Shuk Djal defended itself against these lowhanded attacks as well as it could.
It was not quite good enough, though. Many years after the beginning of this so-far-bloodless war, one of the stones was critically damaged in a sabatoge attempt; the shield weakened, but did not quite drop. The armies waiting on the lands of Verai had grown, and the armies of Shuk Djal were still weak in comparison. An all-out war would not go well for the great country. After long deliberations, it was determined that the only option was to remove the shield and bring the damaged stone to one of the others and magically restore it to the shape of its brother, and then return it to its place and put up the shield before too many lives could be lost while Shuk Djal's army warded off the soldiers of Verai.
A small team was chosen for the mission- small, because they would have to travel in absolute secrecy. It was the dead of night when the shield dropped and the armies of Verai stirred- Shuk Djal took the initiative on the attack, and in the first spilled blood of combat, the unit of four soldiers that retreated from the scene with the damaged stone aboard a hovering caravan were completely unnoticed.
The four soldiers- known as the "Cwn Annwn"- travelled under spells of non-detection and cloaking devices; they stopped at no town for rest, and never laid foot on a road for fear of being spotted. Making their way cross-country towards the nearest stone, they knew full well the responsibility that weighed upon their shoulders and the need for haste. Their journey would take three weeks to and three weeks from their destination, barring any obstacles.
From here, we can only speculate what went wrong. One day, the soldiers were still believed to be in transit, perhaps three days from their destination... then next day, the damaged stone was sold off to Verai. The fates of the four soldiers were discovered within a few days- their bodies still littered the ground around the caravan, not even having been given a proper burial by their killers.
Shuk Djal fell within half a year, and with the greatest country under their control, Verai continued to build its empire across Myl'eao.
***
The souls of the Cwn Annwn, having failed their country and king and kinsmen, were banished into Limbo, never to taste any true afterlife that they might have thought to have earned. An indeterminate amount of time later, however, these four souls were found missing from the void and brought to Gaia, where they were manifested in the form of the four Disgraces babies.
