A thousand years the shadow has grown in power, the natural order straining and powerless to prevent the minions of darkness from overwhelming and infesting the hidden corners of the world, tainting it with their very presence. The winds moan in violation at their passing and are befouled by their hissed words, the earth shudders beneath their tread and the grasses die where they linger.
In a time and place where the darkness grew too strong, the natural order rebelled. It could no longer countenance these unwelcome intruders, and when one of the unnatural minions of the shadow caused four people to perish, one by fire, one by drowning, one by suffocation and one crushed to death, the primal forces stopped them at the moment of their dying. For no person could die by fire, unless fire allowed her to burn, and fire had need for her strength still, to reach into places where it could not.
The Four arose, the Primal Defenders. Slain by a vampire, a creature who has no body heat, no 'fire' within it, that does not breathe, and mocks the air with it's every spoken word, who has crawled forth from the earth's embrace and violated the sanctity of the grave and who no longer feels the tides of the life-giving sea within it's breast, and must steal the waters of life from those who still obey the rhythms of the natural order, these four were empowered to return such abominations to whatever hells spawned them.