Once, In ancient times, a powerful mage and explorer by the name of Artis unearthed the first ever artifact, the original artifact. Of unknown sources, It was not only powerful, but perfect in every sense, with limitless capabilities. With it, Artis obtained unlimited knowledge and power.
The mage, with his newly acquired power by the one ancient artifact, quickly saw the great possibilities its power unlocked, he could change the world for the better. He could heal the sick, house the homeless, feed the hungry, and fix what the world had wrong.
Taking inspiration on the original artifact, and using its power, he created specialized artifacts with amazing capabilities that although not even a fraction of the power of the original one, they were enough to start shaping how the world works.
Countless Artifacts were created with many different properties. Hunters could use them to find greater catches, cattle could grow larger and healthier, water could be purified, and broken parts could be restored. Artis wills were surely materializing.
However, with this great power, he discovered a side effects of the original artifact, he quickly began having visions of his creations to be used for the wrong, by the evil, in the far future. At this time, many different researchers throughout the world already started studying the arcane of the Artis artifacts, and it would not be long until they started to harness their power, altering their original intended use. This wasn't meant to be, so Artis felt that this was wrong, and started being overly cautious. There were already thousands of artifacts created! What if they are used to kill good people?
He couldn't stand the pressure, and year after year these twisted visions led to his demise, succumbing into madness. In his last strokes of sanity, Artis used the power of the original artifact to corrupt and spread every other artifact that he created throughout the world, on the hope that they would no longer be able to be used. In order to prevent this to happen in the future as well, he shattered and scattered the original artifact into seven pieces, and buried them in an immeasurable depth, where he thought they would be safe, also creating an insolvable ever-changing maze that would guarantee every curious soul to be crushed, to protect each piece.
This event would be historically known as The Great Artifact Collapse. Soon after, Artis disappeared with no traces.
Centuries after this era, the energy of the ancient broken artifacts started seeping into the ground, modifying life and matter around it unpredictably. Creatures and plants nearby were given a different characteristic. Some simply grew larger, more vibrant and lively, animals stronger and healthier, while in some other cases plants showed twisted and leafless branches, animals with large fangs and scary eyes that seemed to pull life out of the air. The artifacts' energy has changed the world forever.
Nowadays, it's not possible to say that Artis story is merely a fairy tale, as there are more than simply traces of them in the land and living. Although severely weakened, and just a fraction of their original power, Artifacts are still found and studied, with the dream of restoring the power they once shimmered with.
Sometimes, their power were still enough to be used; Current scholars managed to create a process to forge and combine them into new pieces. This process is not perfect, however, because the resulting piece is never as powerful as the two used ones combined, but nonetheless it allowed for giving new forms to this ancient power. It soon became a crucial source material for the world's infrastructure.
This new days of creating and manipulating the power of ancient Artis' Artifacts gave birth to a new exploration age, called Artiforgery. The brave explorers who search for the ancient origin of the artifacts are called the Artiforgers.