The story as it's told.

((WARNING: Some of the places/people/events mentioned here didn't happen/exist. That is because this is an alternate world.))

Long, long ago there was a world that lived in an uneasy alliance. Creatures called Elessarians existed alongside humans and they shared the Earth equally. Eventually, however, the humans became edgy and in 1409, they slaughtered thousands of their Elessarian neighbors. There were thoughts of a war that the Elessarians would have won, except that the leaders-a council of five-decided instead to retreat. It was not their goal to destroy the humans, but to live with them. So they pretended to die off and the humans, believing victory, celebrated the murder of another sentient race. Although they didn't know it, their hated 'enemy' lived in the neighboring houses once more. The entire Elessarian race had shuffled itself, famlies moved from one country to another in order to hide the fact that they were not dead.

Unfortunately, puberty-hitting children were having a very hard time concealing their abilities around their not-so-gifted 'friends'. After several witch burnings, a young woman named Arafin Melwasúl decided that to protect the young of the Elessarian race they needed a school. So she had one built on an island called Vastarsis which existed at some indiscernible distance in the Atlantic. As the students came and went, Vastarsis, which had already been the size of Japan, grew moderately larger. In fact, it became the homeland of the entire magical race. Very few humans were ever allowed entrance, let alone permission to live there, although the reasons why were always confidential. Vastarsis was paradise due to the Elessarian power bases: Fire, Water, Earth and Air. Eventually a mutation in the Earth genes created yet another power base: Metal. Metal was rarer than the other four, but it slowly grew to be more prominent.

All of this happened over the passing of years. When Arafin was the acceptable death age (for Elessarians) of 250, she...died. Due to this, her legacy passed down to her eldest child, in this case, her son. And so on it went through the ages as Aegnor became a more prosperous and aged school, turning out Elessarian adults who could correctly blend into the human lifestyles and adapt to changes. The headmaster of the school has always been of the Melwasúl bloodline. An entire wing was named after Arafin in her honor, for she was the greatest of Elessians. She was an Ultimate, one of the very select few who could control all of the elements.