Many years ago, when the earth was still a civilized place, the life within would start to destroy itself because of the basic, yet the powerful feeling of greed.
The development of science reached a point where genetics could create life easily, so governments around the globe created "monsters" with dragon/dinosaur-like bodies which could resist most of the weapons created by mankind. These biological weapons started developing special abilities related to nature. There was a point where humanity couldn't restrain their instincts, and they broke free.
Humanity was so afraid of its own creation that we hunted down most of them by throwing special nuclear bullets, not even close in power as atomic bombs but effective enough to kill at least one of them. But there was something we missed, something that really matters after all: living beings adapt and evolve to survive.
The worst happened. Winged beasts that were immune to radiation and could burn down entire cities appeared, and even worst yet, humanity was not prepared.
The most powerful creation of the human race became the plague which decimated us, how ironic.
The ones who were still alive tried to find a way to fight back, but death awaited in every corner, so the survivors lived in fear and despair. Until one day a survivor who prayed to a god received a gift, a divine power enable to slay the beasts known as dragons. The gods made their move by giving a certain and small number of people the power to control their own creation, these people were called The Prophets. One by one, they gathered and fought the dragons with success. But after all, after the way human beings were slain by their own creation because of greed, we didn't learn the lesson.
The Prophets could have the power to slay man-made beasts but couldn't use their power against humans, so they were totally unprotected against the head-hunt of them which started with the thought of studying and possessing the gods' gifts so they could be used by everyone. Sadly the technology was not advanced enough to extract the power of the gods, so the inhuman tests on The Prophets ended up in death.
Then it happened again. A new plague haunted humanity and it was a new disease that affected both animals and humans, making them more aggressive and stronger, with time, the infected ones would transform into demonic-like forms. The plage was called "The Devil's Whisper" or TDW-A01.
In a desperate move to survive a new emergency, humanity started new experiments which included mutating ourselves by cloning and adding animal traits on us by breaking down two different DNA chains and enhancing the traits up to a point where they could fight Dragons as well, these were called the half-breeds, able to fight for survival.
Luckily, TDW-A01 was successfully contained by the half breeds and studied, it seemed like the half-breed were immune to the disease.
At this point in time, the world has suffered many changes which caused the formation of new continents and the movement of others. Earth changed and new human-like beings appeared, these had the ability to control the most primal aspects of the earth, humanity called it magic.
The human-like beings called themselves Elves. The Elves associated with human beings exchanging the knowledge of Magic for science.
At this point in time, the Dragons, an almost forgotten creation, have managed to successfully hide and reproduce silently, until the point where new species of dragons appeared, and there's another surprise, they were not immune to the TDW-A01. This created a monster among monsters, the first time it was seen, people called him death itself. The next plague, The Death Dragon, an extremely dangerous being, which could reduce to nothing anything with its dark flames.
The Prophets were almost extinct now, and the half-breed didn't stand a chance against it.
When the Death Dragon or DD showed itself, the world started to shake and dragons emerged from the depths of the oceans, caves, forests, volcanoes and landed from the sky. The very few Prophets who still lived tried to fight DD thanks to their kindness despite how they were hunted down for their powers. Unable to defeat DD, in a desperate move, The Prophets cursed DD with a divine armor that sealed DD inside a mountain and absorbed its vital energy.
After all this, humanity, with the help of the elves and half-breed could craft magic-enhanced weapons to fight back the dragons or at least to scare them away.
Many years have passed now, the world stayed in silence for too long while humanity and the other races such as half-breeds and Elves populated the earth once again. The technology, magic, and religion became more advance with time, and then when the last of The Prophets died, a new race appeared, the Dwarves, also many species of plants and fauna took over the once-popular cities in the world.
Human beings were becoming the less powerful yet the most raw-potential wielding race. With the dragons sleeping, the TDW-A01 in revision, and the Prophets dead, The Gods started to wonder about how powerful the different races would become, and without hesitation, the first god decided to land on the earth to become a ruler, and so did many other gods taking human-like bodies so no one would ever know about they being Gods.
The world in its prehistoric state was a hard place to live in for Human beings. We were still the most numerous race but the limitation of resources made harder the development of buildings and technology. Somehow we managed to make deals with the other races and the world divided into kingdoms because of their new rulers, The Gods, who descended to put a temporary stop to the imminent extinction of humans.
The half-breeds became an independent sub-race growing in number every day. Dwarves normally associated with humans making deals for resources. Elves built their own society, one more connected to nature; naturally they were wiser than humans. The Gods were attracted to science and human development so they let us do more research.
The new fauna had a prehistoric form, preserving their predecessor's behavior but obviously stronger and wilder. The offspring of Half-breeds were stronger, at least enough to hunt. Also, a low sub-class of the dragons appeared, they resembled wyverns as in the mythology; they are resistant but not as strong as a fourth part of the dragons' power.
There was an order, and the gods made sure to keep a class-divided society, a kind of improved capitalism, but leaving all the rights about owning everything for them. Everyone had to work to survive, there was poverty, yes, but the ones who had nothing were because they didn't work enough to earn it.
The buildings were becoming medieval-like because of the lack of resources for human beings but the technology was advancing, improving the lifestyle for those who could afford it.
The Elves' society didn't want to contaminate the world so they made nature-friendly buildings, however, they still had human technology because of the deals made with us.
When order was restored, the world would continue its normal course again.
A new era has begun.
But...
There's a special thing about humans: we are naturally stupid, that's our essence. Our history is full of situations where we impose our own problems and limitations, we are our own doom. It doesn't matter how much capacity of progress we develop, humanity will always have to fight its own greed and stupidity.
Chaos is natural, no matter how perfect everything would look in society's eyes, there will always be Chaos to be balanced by Order.
And so, as human nature dictates, there were some who didn't stand the current society as it was. These people were the ones who released TDW-A01 once again, but the disease mutated. This created the known "undead", but it has several stages, there were lepers, savages, ghouls, and demon-like ones.
This time, society was prepared, but the disease spread quite faster than before, this time affecting elves and dwarves as well. Then it happened, the Gods called for the most prepared living warriors and soldiers, these were called Heroes, they were armed with magic enhanced weapons, specially forged by Dwarves and Elves.
The half-breeds were stronger, yes, but most of them lose their battle instincts and only a few of them were determined to hunt.
The Gods were criticized by many people because of not creating new Prophets and sending "average" humans, half-breeds, elves, and dwarves to fight The Devil's whisper.
Then the Heroes appeared. Not a new race, but some members of the already existing races who exceeded their own limitations to a point of being exceptional warriors. Some humans learned magic and how to enhance man-made weapons with it, giving a huge step on their militia. There were also studies that determined some minerals are excellent catalysts for energy and magic, but when used together with complex weapons such as guns, drones, or machines they would lose their properties, so then the long-forgotten weapons made by the medieval humans would come back only to seize the power of the precious stones.
After many years of dealing with this new world, a new guild-like system was implemented for those who would be dedicated to exploring. This attracted the attention of many warriors, travelers, adventures, and most importantly Heroes. It consisted of gathering requests of many members of the society with rewards.
This didn't solve all the problems but it helped most of the people's concerns, obviously helping with the happiness which solved one of the rulers' problems.