1. The Ancient Peace
Before the Eternal War, Aeternum knew a fragile equilibrium. Vampires ruled the western territories — the Shadowlands, the Obsidian Coast, and the Black Citadel — while werewolf clans dominated the eastern wilds: the Howling Peaks, the Ashwood Forest, and the Storm Plains. Between them lay a natural border: the River of Tears, a wide, silver-banked waterway said to have been created by the Moon Goddess Selara herself to separate her children.
For seven hundred years, this border held. The Treaty of the Silver River — signed in Year minus-700 by Elder Vampire Cassivara the Pale and Pack Alpha Orryn the Ironmaw — established that neither race would cross the River. Trade occurred at designated crossing points called the Duskmarkets. Intermarriage was forbidden. Magic was not to be weaponized against the other race.
It was not peace born of respect. It was peace born of exhaustion. Both races had fought four previous wars — the Shadow Purges — and both had been nearly destroyed. The Silver River Treaty was a wound poorly healed: functional, but always threatening to reopen.
2. The Summit at Ashbridge
In Year 0 (the calendar system used in-game begins here), Elder Vampire Malachar the Hungering called for a Grand Summit at Ashbridge — the largest crossing point on the River of Tears. Malachar was the eldest living vampire at the time, over 800 years old, and held the title of Blood Lord — the supreme political authority among vampire nobility.
His stated purpose: renegotiate trade quotas. Werewolves had grown prosperous trading iron ore from the Howling Peaks, and vampires — whose underground citadels required vast amounts of metal for fortification — felt the pricing had become exploitative. Wolf King Skarr Ironhide, Alpha of the Five Peaks, agreed to attend. Skarr was young by werewolf standards — barely 120 years old — but already legendary for his physical power and political shrewdness.
The summit began well enough. Both delegations dined separately — vampires consuming blood wine, werewolves roasting a elk slain that morning. Initial trade proposals were exchanged. Malachar offered expanded access to the Shadowlands' rare herbs (used in werewolf healing rituals) in exchange for a 30% reduction in iron pricing.
Skarr declined. The Iron Peaks provided the majority of his clan's war funding. A 30% reduction would signal weakness to rival packs who were already questioning his leadership. He counter-offered 15% with a clause restricting vampire fortification-scale purchases. Malachar considered it insufficient.
3. The First Bite
What happened next is disputed between the two races to this day — and this dispute has itself fueled three thousand years of irreconcilable narrative.
The Vampire Account: As the negotiations turned tense, Wolf King Skarr rose and partially transformed — a display of dominance that vampires interpret as an open threat. Elder Malachar, responding to what he perceived as imminent attack, used an ancient blood-drinking technique called the Crimson Reach, briefly draining Skarr's blood through the air across the table. The intent was to weaken, not transform. But Malachar's hunger had gone unaddressed for three months (he had fasted deliberately as a sign of respect for the summit's neutrality), and the bite went deeper than intended.
The Werewolf Account: Skarr had simply stood to shake Malachar's hand in the traditional pack-farewell gesture — paw to shoulder. Malachar attacked without provocation, driven by hunger and opportunism, seeking to use Skarr's blood to gain power over the Five Peaks clans through vampire blood-binding magic.
Regardless of intent, the result was undeniable: Skarr Ironhide survived but was permanently changed. The vampiric blood that entered his system during the Crimson Reach created something new — a hybrid curse. By the next full moon, Skarr transformed not just into a werewolf, but into a creature of nightmarish power: the first Bloodwolf. His control over the transformation was gone. He killed six of his own honor guard before dawn.
The werewolf delegates who survived Skarr's rampage fled back to the Howling Peaks carrying news of what had happened. They called it a deliberate assassination attempt. A curse weapon, unleashed under the flag of diplomacy.
4. The War's Outbreak
Skarr survived his transformation and recovered his mind within a month — but his leadership was permanently compromised. Among werewolves, a leader who could not fully control their own transformation was traditionally ineligible to hold the Alpha title. His council — the Five Pack Elders — convened without him and declared a state of Blood Debt against the vampire nation.
Blood Debt was the most extreme declaration available in werewolf law. It committed the entire pack nation to war until either the debt was repaid (Malachar's death) or a new agreement was reached. Under Blood Debt rules, no individual pack could negotiate a separate peace — it was total war by design.
Elder Malachar's response was characteristic of vampire political philosophy: he issued a formal denial of wrongdoing, offered to pay a reparations fee in blood-gems, and simultaneously ordered the military fortification of the entire River of Tears border. His private journals (recovered 200 years later) suggest he expected the war to last five years before both sides negotiated again from a position of strength.
He was wrong by a factor of six hundred.
The First Eclipse War began 40 days after the summit when a vampire raiding force crossed the River of Tears at the Ashbridge crossing — the same location where the summit had been held. They burned the Duskmarket there, killing 200 werewolf traders and merchants. Skarr, still recovering, was not present. His second-in-command, Alpha Vorka Stonepaw, led the counterattack.
The First Eclipse War lasted 87 years. It ended not with a treaty but with mutual exhaustion and the emergence of a new threat — the Void Incursion — which forced both races to briefly cooperate. But no formal peace was ever signed. The war simply paused.
5. Three Thousand Years of Consequence
The First Bite reshaped Aeternum in ways that its participants could never have anticipated. The Crimson Court — the vampire governing body — was established partly in direct response to the chaos that Malachar's action caused. The founding principle was that no vampire elder would ever again act unilaterally in diplomatic situations.
Werewolf society underwent an even more profound transformation. The Five Packs unified under the Iron Council — a governing body that superseded individual Alpha authority. This unification, which scholars call the "Blood Debt Consolidation," created the organizational structure that modern werewolf clans in the game still operate within.
The Blood Moon Crystal — formed at Ashbridge — became a religious artifact for both races. Vampires believe it contains Malachar's stolen power, crystallized. Werewolves believe it is a shard of Skarr's corrupted essence, preserved as a warning. Every hundred years, when both moons align in a Blood Moon convergence, the Crystal resurfaces — and both factions attempt to claim it.
The in-game world exists in Year 3,000 — precisely thirty centuries after the summit at Ashbridge. Players enter Aeternum at the beginning of the Third Eclipse War, which began when a young werewolf champion shattered the latest diplomatic accord (the Treaty of Ashen Bridge, Year 2,980) by executing a vampire ambassador during what was supposed to be another trade negotiation. The irony is not lost on either faction's historians.
The Eternal War may have started with a single bite. But it continues because both races have built their entire identities around it. Ending the war would require not just a treaty, but a fundamental reimagining of what it means to be vampire or werewolf in Aeternum — and that, the lore suggests, may be the true challenge players ultimately face.