Sorry guys, I think I killed the thread. On that note...
Here's a lore idea: what if... we LOST the war... the cities of dalaya were overrun by Kaezul's forces, after their armies were routed. Few civilians managed to escape the rapid onslaught, even fewer soldiers and mercenaries(hint: the adventurers of SoD, perhaps.... even a server event on SoD could be run as a kind of leadup to the SoD 2 launch!!!!), and they were driven underground into the dark places once occupied by the monsters who had crushed them so easily.
That was a thousand years ago. The Immortal God-Lich Kaezul rules Dalaya with an iron fist, his orcish heavy tanks, goblin and aviak scouts, sarnak enchanters... etc, etc - the bad guys of the world, kaezuls forces, now occupy the cities. A few dungeons, perhaps lower guk(or better yet one of the darkened guk zones from ldon access from lower guk - you get the idea) are now the crowded homes of the remaining Free Races.
So we go for three, deep dungeons as the new cities for the remaining races. Each city is ruled by a faction which was once either CoI, Blackscale or Silver Crown. All player races can choose any of the three cities as their starting city, and with enough faction work any player can be tolerated(make it say dubious max for non-home city?) within the other cities(but you start kos, the factions hated each other, the cities grew to as well).
Of course there are still some of the humans, elves, etc, et al living in Kaezulia - slaves descended from slaves for 1000 years.
So of course its the time to strike back, to push the evil forces away yada yada. This allows a lot of events to be run - a gm event where players besiege and re-capture newport for example? Or maybe an event where players defend blackscale lair(deepest guk? ;p) from invading kaezulian forces, and if they fail to.....
It kind takes SoD story and says "what if we got our @#%#$@ handed to us, and now its gonna be a thousand times harder to beat this guy in round two?"