Lore

The canonical lore of Infinity Wars derives from the cards and the campaign.

While not strictly canonical, the Wiki also accepts information from interviews with the developers and other such sources to the extent that they do not contradict the cards and the campaign.

As a general rule, the lore of Infinity Wars proceeds chronologically alongside the release of sets.

Overview

The Calamity (Core)

The original world, The Old World, suffered from a cataclysmic event known as The Calamity. Said event is directly tied to a character that makes an appearance in multiple factions and realities: Aleta.

Aleta is an immortal being that doesn't age and, if killed, regenerates.

After The Calamity, the world has been split into multiple realities (a potentially infinite amount), with each of them being home to one or more of the game's factions:

• Talich is home of the Flame Dawn and Genesis Industries.
• Reish is home of the Descendants of the Dragon, the Exiles and the Cult of Verore.
• The Old World is home of the Warpath.
• Avarrach is home of the Sleepers of Avarrach.

In addition to the main dimensions, there are two more planes, Solace and Torment. Solace and Torment can be considered to be metaphysically above and below the infinite realities created by The Calamity and are home to immortal beings that subsist off of human emotions.

The Story

A millennia has passed since the Calamity, and each of the realities carried on. All of them are home to a different, incarnated fragment of Aleta's original self who watches over them. None of the Aletas retain their original memories and they have all been severely changed by whatever reality they reside in.

With their personalities altered, each of them took a different path in the shaping of their respective realities, leading to both wonderful worlds, and horrific evil.

The Old World

Also referred to as "The Untamed World", The Old World is where it all began. With the Calamity, all humans were erased from existence. All but Aleta, The Immortal Caretaker.

She spent over a millenia caring for the feral creatures of the Old World as the sole surviving human.

With her guidance in the times of peace through the eons, the creatures of the Old World began to evolve, becoming intelligent, and some took on more human qualities. Eventually, with the opening of the rifts, these intelligent beasts banded together to deal with those that would come through and threaten their lands, adopting the name, The Warpath.

Talich

The reality of Talich is home to two of Infinity Wars' factions.

The Flame Dawn, an army of soldiers bent on controlling whichever lands they land their sight on, subduing them to their will, ruling and heavy laws. They hail from The Fortress of the Flame Dawn in Pyr, commanded by the legendary Aberion, known to all as the Hammer of Dawn. The Flame Dawn has systematically conquered almost all of Talich.

Along the Flame Dawn, exists the Genesis Industries, a corporation focused on the betterment of humanity through technology and prolonged life. Orion, The Master Architect oversaw the Genesis Industries from the headquarters in Lanstead , located in Talich's southern hemisphere (up until his death).

Previously there had been a massive amount of wars on Talich as multiple groups strove for dominance. Genesis Industries began selling advanced weaponry to the Flame Dawn, for the right price, and eventually the Flame Dawn conquered all of its opposition, leaving only it and Genesis. Due to Aberion's aggressive nature, the subsequent peace was extremely strained.

Avarrach

Eons ago, Avarrach was full of promise, with the ideals of knowledge and discovery at heart. The Aleta of this reality had fallen in love with a mortal man, and so he vowed to find a way to be with her, to live forever by her side. He began to experiment in ways to prolong his life, and eventually, he created a product that he believed would keep him alive: Nanomachines. They would work on his vital systems to make sure that they didn't give away and would protect him from illness. However, these initially benevolent machines had a very dark side: as his body began to naturally degrade with age, the nanobots came to the conclusion that the only way to preserve their host was to replace his biological components with machinery. Thus, it began targeting parts of his body, attempting to replace his organs with artificial ones that would stand the test of time. And so he became Patient Zero.

The machines within him, detecting people in need of "aid", began spreading to the rest of Avarrach's population.

At first, people believed they could contain the problem. But as time passed, panic began to set in, outweighed only by hopelessness. The plague was given a name: The Virus of Avarrach. In time, the entire planet would fall. Because the machines were powered by their human hosts, following the mechanization of the plane's population they went into hibernation, awaiting further "patients." Aleta, cursed with her immortality, was driven to madness over the centuries as the virus battled with her regeneration ability. Wandering among the dead with naught but hopelessness to keep her company, she would become known as Aleta, the Immortal Sufferer. Some time after, the rifts opened, setting the Virus loose across all realities. The Sleepers of Avarrach were eventually awoken and unleashed. 

Reish

On the Reality of Reish, Aleta, the Immortal Sorceress, alongside her most prominent subordinates, Rita and Candit, ruled over the Cult of Verore with an iron fist. To further her power, Aleta opened a series of rifts into the hellish plane of Torment, allowing her to summon and enslave a number of demons including no less than the Demon Prince Vasir, making the Cult a very powerful force of destruction, able to rampage through everything and everyone standing in their way.

Outside of Veroria, the Lone Keep, lay the magical wastes from Aleta's experiments (such as the discarded Hydras), polluting the landscape and corrupting its inhabitants. This area is referred to as the Demon Wastes. These once beautiful lands are now home to the Exiles, corrupted and maddened caricatures of their former selves. Although poorly organized, the Exiles are not a force to be underestimated. Another powerful demon from Torment known as Nysrugh is associated with them, although he is not native to the plane.

In the mountains beyond the wastes lie the monks who call themselves the Descendants of the Dragon. Honoring the teachings of their leader, the dragon sage Ao Shun, and sheltering behind the Great Wall of Jinhai, the Descendants seek to preserve their lands from the corruption that befell the demon wastes. Wary of outsiders, they are a bastion of hope in this otherwise grim world. Meditation and hard training, along with their unbreakable willpower, are their most famous characteristics.

Solace

Solace is a heavenly realm home to the angelic Overseers of Solace, who feed off of positive human emotions and are locked in an eternal conflict with the demons of Torment (note: the demons of Torment do not yet have a faction in the game, although they are associated with the Cult of Verore, which summoned several of them, and the Exiles, who are corrupted devils and not demons themselves but flock to the demons as leaders).

The Overseers were reluctant to directly intervene in the realities, but the rampant expansion of the Sleepers of Avarrach forced their hand and threatened to end their food source.

The Opening of the Rifts

On Talich, peace between Genesis Industries and the Flame Dawn came to an end as Aberion attacked a Genesis scouting party, using it as a pretext to declare war upon the last region unconquered by the Dawn.

As the war broke out, however, the rifts began to open. The rifts between worlds appear to converge on the Old World, making it both the epicenter of the Calamity and the epicenter of the multiverse.

As the rifts opened, the Flame Dawn and Genesis Industries set aside their differences to explore, exploit, and conquer the Untamed World. Some of their scouts found further rifts into Avarrach, awakening the Virus.

There is no record of any expedition from Reish exploring Avarrach, only from the Sleepers pouring through into Reish. As the combined Genesis and Flame Dawn forces fought the Warpath, the Sleepers began to spill over into the Untamed World and threaten Talich itself.

The Overseers Intervene

With the Sleepers of Avarrach flooding over every world which they could find a rift to, the worlds of Talich, Reish, and The Old World were in dire straits.

The Old World was particularly the hardest hit due in part to its primitive nature, its war with the advanced forces from Talich, and its location as the epicenter of the rifts, making it into hotly contested territory. As the infestation spread, the Warpath allied itself with the Flame Dawn and Genesis to fight off the Sleepers but was quickly abandoned as the situation continued to deteriorate. The Immortal Caretaker was in a panic to protect her world when she met the Prophet Karani. Karani told her that she has had a vision and needs to travel to the crater left by the Calamity in order to perform a ritual that will “lead to their world being cleansed of the undead”. Aleta agreed and escorted her there through the undead horde. When they arrive, Karani took her own life as a sacrifice, opening up a portal to Solace.

Through the portal came the Overseers who began to purge the world of the undead. As the Untamed World was particularly infested and was not home to humans (the Overseers did not feed off of the emotions of the native beasts), the Overseers elected to cleanse it with what amounts to a nuclear strike, purging much of the world of all life except for an isolated settlement to the north. Aleta felt betrayed by this and swore vengeance against the Overseers.

The Overseers traveled to Talich and Reish as well, where Lilariah granted some of her power to the dedicated women of the “untainted” factions there: Kali, Xi, and Lucca. On those less-infested planes the Overseers took a much more thorough approach to exterminating the virus and are quickly successful. In the meantime, the Lone Keep of the Cult of Verore was destroyed as the demon prince Vasir escaped the bonds that the Immortal Sorceress used to enslave him. He promptly enslaved her and threw the Cult into chaos before having a minor and inconclusive run-in with the Overseers. He is still at large, as is Nysrugh.

Before the arrival of the Overseers, Orion had sent the Talich Aleta into Avarrach to find out what she could about the virus. While there, Aleta encountered the Immortal Sufferer, who she brought back to Talich in order to study and attempt to cure the virus. When the Overseers heard that Genesis Industries possessed a sample of the virus, they demanded that Orion destroy it. When he refused, the Flame Dawn and Overseers declared war upon Genesis Industries. One of the high-ranking Overseers, Sol, personally slew Orion, yet Genesis continued to fight on and even managed to create a cure for the virus.

Though initially reluctant to interfere, the Overseers now took great interest in the multiple realities. Even as their war with Genesis raged, they began to regulate the rifts and interrogate whoever had been involved with them. This state of interplanar oppression has made them unpopular among many who had initially welcomed them as saviors, and only time would tell what sort of rebellion would arise against their rule.

Rebellion

Sol's oppressive policies engendered great resentment among the people of the mortal realms. While the Warpath, Exiles, and Cult of Verore had always been at war with him, his attack upon Genesis Industries and imposition of restrictions even upon the angels' allies eventually led to open rebellion against the Overseers taking place on every plane and (at least in part) among every faction. Worse, Lucca and Xi, two of the three individuals originally ascended by the Overseers, lost confidence in the angels and left to return to their own factions--where Lucca would become the leader of the Genesis rebel forces.

Worst of these rebellions was that of Lilariah, one of his own. Losing faith in Sol's tactics and reason and arguing that he had lost sight of their purpose--to protect the realms, not oppress or regulate them--Lilariah raised a force of angels and brought civil war to Solace, which still rages on.

On Reish, matters were not improving. The demonic forces of Torment were still spilling forth and the Exiles were growing bolder. With the Overseers distracted and at war with themselves and the entire multiverse, the Descendants of the Dragon--themselves rebelling against the tyrannical angels--were left on their own to protect the planes from the demonic threat. With Aleta gone, the Cult of Verore had been plunged into a struggle for power that saw Rita emerge victorious, killing her rival Candit, but left the organization in tatters.

See also

• Lore: Characters
• Lore: Worlds
• Lore: Factions

References

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