here is a time known as the Dark before Time, the period of Thanatic history that precedes Charon. The legends about this time claim that life and death composed but one realm, where land and spirits were overlaid. All was well: there was no death. But that perfection was lost as the two realms split during what we now call the Sundering. Thus, there came to be the realm of the Living and the realm of the Dead.

In the Land of the Dead, also called the Shadowlands, the Lady of Fate emerged from darkness and found the headwaters of the River of Deaths as it flowed away from this world. Reading the skein of Fate, she foretold the coming of Charon, who would lead others to the Far Shores.

During this time, the Malfeans, dark beasts of fiercest destruction, horned and frilled and scaled and roaring with hunger, rose from the Utter Darkness beneath the Shadowlands and began to burrow great tunnels, ultimately boring a dread Labyrinth that wound its way into the heart of Oblivion.