A long time ago on a planet far far away there lived many species spread across 8 continents. These continents were further divided into many different kingdoms. The Orcs had the largest population, followed by the goblins, then the humans, centaurs, gnomes, trolls, ogres, scorpids, murlocs and finally the species with the lowest population were the elves. Further each species had many different sects such as the night elves, the moon shadow elves, the high elves etc.
Life evolved on this planet much like our own over millions of years. With the advent of agriculture nomadic tribes started to settle down and over the years tribes became kingdoms and some of these kingdoms spawned great civilizations.
The centaurs were a half humanoid, half horse race who lived in the semi-arid plains of Kalimdor. The centaurs were a war loving species and were constantly involved in battle amongst each other. With the advent of archery one of these tribes was able to subdue and conquer all the other centaur tribes and thus for the first time all of Kalimdor came under one banner and was ruled by King Balanar. King Balanar took his army of centaurs also known as the golden horde and set out west and over the next 40 years, the golden horde conquered three fourths of the largest land mass on this planet which was a union of four continents. King Balanars reign lasted until his death and the Golden (horde) Empire finally collapsed 300 years later under the reign of Balanars great grandson. Under the Golden empire trade flourished and there was a lot of inter mixing of races within the continents.
Following the collapse of the Golden empire, the high elves from the tiny Island nation of Thalassian began their conquest of the world. Over the next 150 years they conquered much of the world and had their territories in all the eight continents. Not only were the high elves technologically the most advanced species at the time of their global conquest they had the best navy. Unlike the Golden horde which dominated their enemies with brute force and superior battle tactics, the high elves began their conquest through trade. The high elves first inroads into the Orc Kingdom in the southern part of the Draenor continent happened with the West Draenor Company. The West Draenor Company was initially established to acquire and trade the kundu flower which only grew in the southern part of Draenor. The dominion of Draenor by the West Draenor Company started with the Battle of Yesal when the Chieftain of the Warsong Orc Clan surrendered his dominion to the company.
While the high elves had superior technology, they were insignificant in numbers compared to the orcs or any of the other races, thus they strategically used quite a few tactics to subvert and dominate tribes and kingdoms. Wherever they went they first made their foray into that territory through trade. Then did everything they possibly could to pit one tribe against another and one kingdom against another. Whatever differences and conflicts that existed between kingdoms the high elves further exacerbated them and where conflicts did not exist the high elves created new ones. The elves sold weapons to all sides and amassed great amounts of wealths and acquired the war torn kingdoms weakened by conflict. In the territories that the high elves acquired they systematically destroyed the existing systems of education and replaced them with a carefully crafted elven system of education. While on the surface they made it look like they were bringing culture to brootish races the real reason behind this was to drill down the ideas of conformity and obedience to authority into children. The ability to memorize was rewarded and thinking for oneself was punished. The native healing practices such using herbs, working on pressure points / energy centers within the body and shamanism which had evolved over thousands of years in various parts of the world were also systematically suppressed and replaced by modern medicine. The elves were so good at manipulating races that most of them genuinely started believing that the modern elven medicine was far superior to their own native forms of healing which by this point was considered to be quackery.
The elves recruited soldiers from all races into the royal high elf army and the royal high elf navy. The elves established systems of governance and tax collection throughout the world. The systems of governance (most often subjugation) were almost always manned by the people from the very same race that was being subjugated. While one might think that it is surprising for people to be subjugating their fellow beings from their very own race on behalf of another race it almost always turned out that there were enough beings who were willing to do this for money and power without much thought to the larger consequences of their actions and where every there was an uprising the high elves would bring in battalions of other races to absolutely crush any acts of revolt. The suppression of uprisings were so brutal that they would instill fear in the hearts of anyone else who was even remotely considering the possibility of revolting against the elven empire. The elves were also the first ones to establish a central bank - The royal bank of Thalassian and gold was replaced by currency printed by the elven central bank. Many of the countries that were not directly ruled by the high elves were given large loans by the royal bank of Thalassian and upon failing to repay the loan infrastructure such as ports or other strategically important parts of the country were taken over by the elven empire.
At the height of the elven empire when it seemed almost inconceivable for any nation or race to challenge the might of the elven empire, there was one goblin who stood up to challenge the empire. He chose civil disobedience and non violence as his tools to fight the mighty elven empire. While the idea seemed absurd to most people initially, with time most races realized this was probably their best chance and probably the only way to fight back against the oppressive elven empire as every violet revolt had been crushed swiftly and with extreme brutality. As this form of resistance showed promise most of the territories governed by the elven empire started to adopt civil disobedience and non violence as means to fight back against the empire. One by one the elven empire started to lose control over their territories and much of the world transitioned to democracies.
What followed was a period of peace and prosperity, where trade between nations flourished and there were immense advances in technology. Inter national bodies were established to ensure that peace remains and to prevent nations from trying to wage wars and conquer each other. Most of the races believed that they were finally free from the clutches of empire in fact after a few generations even the idea of empire seemed like a distant dream. But this is where they couldn't be further from the truth.
Even at the peak of the high elf empire it was not as if the whole nation of Thalassian was dominating and subjugating the rest of the world. In fact most of the high elves in Thalassian were working in factories, farms, laboratories, mines, etc. There were not more than a hundred or two hundred royal born high elves who were in control of Thalassian and the rest of the world. While most people assumed the days of empire were over, the empire builders and their successors were far from being done. The empire builders had a vast wealth of knowledge accumulated over hundreds of years on tactics of subversion and conquest, they also learnt a lot from the collapse of the Thalassian empire, they realized one of the biggest mistakes they had made was to be overt overlords and races were able to eventually come together to overthrow the High elf empire. From this understanding was born the Invisible empire.
The successors of the Royal born high elves didn’t care much for blood lines, in fact they weren't even too bothered with the race of origin, as long as beings were onboard with the agenda and willing to further the objectives of global conquest they were integrated into their systems of covert control.
Much like the Thalassian empire the Invisible empire started its means of conquest through trade. Like the West Draenor company many gigantic corporations were established that had operations around the world. This time around central banking was also an integral part of the strategy of global conquest. While in ancient times gold, silver and other items of value were used as money, the Thalassian empire had introduced currency which was denominated in units of gold and silver, the Invisible empire went a step further and under their stewardship currency had been completely decoupled from gold and silver and thus was born the concept of fiat currency and fractional reserve banking. In simple terms this was a magic trick where money could be created out of thin air and races around the world were willing to exchange this intrinsically worthless piece of paper for items of real value. The traditional ideas of slavery evolved into debt slavery. The empire builders realized why go through all the trouble of enslaving an orc or a goblin and extracting work from him through force when we could simply enslave his mind and he would willingly work for us without even realizing what was happening. Thanks to the education system put in place by the Thalassian empire most races had lost the ability to think for themselves, creativity was condemned and conformity was rewarded, those with the best ability to remember what was taught without question were regarded as the best students and usually the best students went on to become doctors. Finance while actually being pretty simple was made to look like a monster far too complex for most brains to comprehend. The empire builders came up with a brilliant strategy of debt slavery where students would not only pay for their higher education (read brain washing) but more often than not get deeply in debt while paying for their own brain washing.
The invisible no longer operated just The Royal bank of Thalassian but had established central banks in almost every nation that on the surface appeared to be independent bodies. With the control of central banks they had control over the creation of economic boom and bust cycles and with every boom and bust cycle they ended up acquiring more of the tangible wealth of the world.
The other major pillar of the invisible empire was its absolute control over all forms of media. The invisible empire was not content with just brainwashing children for the first twelve to sixteen years of their lives they also had to curate every piece of information that would enter a brain after they left these institutions of education. Given that they had absolute control over the creation of the money supply it wasn’t much of a problem for them to acquire every major source of media. While on the surface the illusion of separation and competition between various media houses was maintained, through a complex web of ownership structures it all tied back into the invisible empire. While these media houses could fight like cats and dogs on most topics, on the events and topics that matted to the agendas of the invisible empire there was absolute cohesion between these media houses.
The Invisible empire slowly but steadily took control over most of the world's food production through a group of fertilizer, pesticide and most importantly the Tunguska seed corporation, which patented and produced genetically modified seeds. Simply by changing a few bits of information in a naturally occurring variety of seeds the Tunguska seed corporation was able to patent those seeds. They systematically went from region to region and got farmers to replace the native seed varieties with the genetically modified seeds. Whatever the changes that may have been done to the seeds, one change that was done for sure with every seed was that the plant it would produce would not produce seeds. The poor farmers who were often tricked into switching with the promises of higher yields and bigger profits didn’t really understand what they were signing up for and in time their traditional practices of seed saving was replaced with the necessity to buy seeds from the Tunguska seed corporation before every sowing cycle.
From the point of view of the Invisible empire the presidents and prime ministers of various countries were simply the managing directors of various regions, while the citizens were kept under the illusion of separation. There was always the threat that your neighbouring nation could attack you at any time given their military build up and their advances towards one's own national borders, which justified ever increasing military budgets on all sides. While nation states never had enough money to uplift their homeless and hungry they were never lacking for their military budgets.
This level of control it seemed was not enough for the architects of the Invisible empire. All herbs and plants that could connect various races to the greater intelligence of the planet and open up doors of perception were criminalized and there were brutal crackdowns on those who dared to provide these plants, herbs or fungi to their fellow beings. Instead a fermented brew from a type of grass was heavily popularized, this brew not only impaired motor functions, it was also a liver toxin which killed neurons and dumbed down the target population.
What the Invisible empire wanted was absolute dominion over every resource, landmass, water body and conscious being on the entire planet and thus began the next phase of their dominion over the planet - Medical Imperialism. By this time courtesy the Thalassian empire almost all native and indigenous forms of healing had been destroyed and replaced with modern medicine.
On the pretext of an airborne pathogen that spread through farts, the global health body issued guidelines to impose lockdowns, based on these guidelines governments (to govern / control the mind) around the world imposed strict lockdowns. All the media houses amplified the messages from the global health body and created astronomical levels of fear and paranoia. As a result of these lockdowns which were implemented multiple times, the global economy was completely decimated. But the impact of this economic destruction was not evenly distributed, small and medium size businesses took the biggest hit and some of the giant corporations got even bigger. Governments around the world unleashed ridiculous stimulus packages to create economic recovery, but the real reason behind this was not to stimulate the economy but to destroy the existing fiat currencies, whose transactions were already being pushed more and more towards being digital and cash was being phased out. Eventually the inflation started to show and a trickle became a flood and the inflation became hyper inflation and as planned the national fiat currencies started to collapse in rapid succession. At this point the solution offered was a one world centralized crypto currency, where every transaction could be tracked and analysed by the ever advancing AI and anyone who dared question let alone oppose any of the systems of control of the invisible empire could have their financial life terminated remotely.
Governments which by this time are completely broke cede control over all remaining public assets to global companies. Also much of the initial spending which rendered them bankrupt was spent on their war against this invisible pathogen which immensely enriched the global medical conglomerates.
In order to curtail the fart pandemic, contact tracing apps were made mandatory across the world. The apps had different names in different countries but the functioning was the same everywhere. If the app showed green you could live your life and if the app showed red you were a threat to society where your silent farts could potentially kill the unsuspecting citizens around you. How the app decided when to show red or green was a mystery one simply had to place their complete faith in their governments. Once societies had gotten accustomed to using these apps this was another tool to shut down dissidents. A more brilliant strategy could not have been thought of, why go through all the trouble of imprisoning those who rise up against you, when the possibility exists that they would imprison themselves and even pay for their own prisons.
A social credit system was also eventually introduced so that the good citizens of the nations didn’t have to use their common sense to ascertain the kind of people they were interacting with but would much rather simply see one's score to understand the kind of person they were interacting with. A high score came with many perks and benefits and a low score made life extremely hard. Also interacting with people with low scores would lower one's own score and needless to say any activity that went against the government or the systems of control came with a heavy toll on one's social credit score.
And finally life which was already on the path of being downgraded from a three dimensional existence to a two dimensional one was epicly accelerated. Where once beings would meet face to face and have adventures in their own lives, they had become accustomed to going to office and upon returning home they were happy to enjoy an artificially created adventure being portrayed by others on a two dimensional surface called a screen. The screens came in all sizes but funnily enough people kept getting downgraded even in the size of the screen. Where once they would watch an artificial second hand adventure on a screen bigger than a house, this eventually gave way to screens that could fit inside one's bedroom, but the shrinking didn't stop there, they were finally reduced to a screen that would fit in the palm of their hands. After the great fart pathogen most people had to work from home where their work would come to them through a screen and all their interactions with other beings would also happen through a screen. Centaur calves much like all other children were born into tiny prisons called homes, their interactions with other beings were heavily curtailed. Where they once learned about the world by roaming about in the vast arid plains of Kalimdor and interacting with all members of the tribe, they now got to learn about the world through a screen, they seldom got to touch and play with other children, their interactions were largely limited to their parents and siblings.
This was coupled with the creation of permanent totalitarianism controlled by global companies and a 24/7 invasive police state supported by widespread blossoming of “smart” technology and the people thought they were free.