The Lore of Magic

During the Age of Gods, divine wars and battles ravaged the land. Many Gods fought with a wild and furious abandon, brimming as they were with the elemental powers of their new world. Others fought using constructs as proxies, imbuing them with power or granting them powerful artifacts through which to channel their will. Still others stayed true to their origins, wielding powerful divine magic to sear or curse their foes in displays of might.
As the myriad of Gods battled across the length and breadth of the world, the effects of their magic began to leave permanent scars in the world, both in its physical surface and also in the firmament which separated the realm of the Gods from the world itself. Deep wellsprings of power began to form where the most violent conflicts had happened, and from some of them seeped forth terrible and formless power, which mutated the very world and spewed forth Beasts and Monsters, changing Ambria forever.
When the Gods finally realised their collective mistake, it was already too late to repair the damage, but as the Age of Magic began, Ambria began to create creatures itself, to heal the damage. First, elves, dryads and all manner of fair peoples sprung from the earth. Created where the wellsprings of living magic ran deep, these beings were blessed with immortality, and a deep connection to the magic that now flowed through Ambria. Next came the dwarves; formed among the scorched earth on the largest of battlefields, the dwarves shared a connection with the land itself, making them hearty and strong. While not immortal, their tethers to the land allowed them an extraordinarily long life. Finally, orcs, goblins and a host of fell peoples were created as Ambria's direct response to the monsters ravaging the land, formed close to the wells of the wild and chaotic magics. Due to the harsh, barren nature of their origins, combined with the instability of the magic that flowed through them, they would experience a wildly fluctuating life span, spanning from mere decades to centuries depending on the luck of the tribe in question. All these new inhabitants would quickly grasp the formless powers throughout the world and begin to channel them into forms which mirrored – in some small way – the feats of the Gods.
Powerful worldly magics, relics long discarded, arcane and unknowable rituals, and even true connection to some of the Gods quickly became prevalent among the Ambrians. From their varied origins, each new race grew an understanding of magic that was fundamentally different to every other. Elves across Ambria either embraced or shunned the powerful nature magics of forest, air and water: either turning them into a great boon for the world, or twisting them to use as a weapon against their foes. From their hard origins, and with a task to repair the physical damage the Gods had wrought, the Dwarves used their magics of fire, earth, and steel to build great things and enhance themselves. So on, and so forth with each new race, until the number of different magics and faiths across Ambria far outstripped the number of new races that had been born upon it. These formative magics, which were born from the magic present at each race’s origin, would form the majority of the magic used by each race; still, there were always those who did not accept the norm, and many mages across every race would find themselves practicing aspects of magic that they were not inherently imbued with. With these new powers to hand, the Ambrians were finally able to carve out places of real safety from the hordes of beasts that plagued them, and so civilization was able to flourish.
When, at last, the Age of Starfall heralded the coming of humans to Ambria, they too would quickly pick up and embrace the tools accidentally left behind for them by the Gods. Burning as brightly as the stars from which they came, humanity would take these gifts gladly and with them cement themselves as a force to be reckoned with in Ambria. Their unique outlooks on both their own blessings of sky magic - connected to the sun, moon and stars - as well as the magics of the other races, quickly morphed the study of the unknowable arcane from a gradual process into an ever expanding torrent of new knowledge for all races.