Archived History World

What follows is a condensed telling of the history of the world as best known by the scholars and sages of the nations of men. Known history is best divided up into three major eras or 'Ages' that the world has known.

Summaries

• The Age of the Eternity: A time of clerical scripture, folk lore, tales and tellings passed down by word of mouth and the ancient pre-historic eras of the world. This period numbered an innumerable number of years and included many of the legendary wars and battles that affected the Great Making of the world including the rebellion of the immortal Titans and their imprisonment, the sundering of the gods into the Great Houses and War of the Gods which saw the near destruction and then recreation of the world.

• The Age of Ascension: A time of ancient legends, the foundation of empires and the emergence of the lesser races as rulers of their own fate. For millennia following the departure of the gods, ancient forces would continue to guide the wayward sons of men and to impact the influence of history but one species, seemingly blessed by greater powers, ascended above the rest. They were known as the Eldanar and they established a great nation named Kulthus which led to the pinnacle of civilization in areas of both science and sorcery. Eventually their decadence and hubris grew to the point that the gods could not ignore their sins any longer and so they permitted a cataclysm known as The Sundering to occur. This brought about the end of the age and set civilization back a thousand years.

• The Age of Men: Also known as the age of shadows and, more recently, the age of enlightenment. This is the present era, the Third Age of the world where lesser men guide many of the great nations and the elder races are either in decline or seclusion. Despite this, men number only a small percentage of the entire population of the world and many forces continue to move openly and behind the scenes to determine the course of history. This is the era that the game takes place in and it is a time where new legends, ones not shackled by the ancient doings of the world, are being forged.

The Age of Eternity

The Great Making

Little is known of the ancient First Age of the world, also known as the Age of the Gods. This was a time of the ancient gods and the elder races. What is known is based on legend passed down in oral and written traditions, clerical scripture and fragments of history maintained by the remaining races that hail back to this time. The time of the Great Making had passed. They had created the ancient Dragons to watch over the physical world and the immortal Titans to assist them as they sought to continue Elhim's creation. For all intents and purposes, this era was the prehistoric era of the world.

Sometime during this era, the gods declared an end to the Great Making, and constructed their holy city where they sought to watch the flow of history and to guide the course of their children. They established order over a world newly birthed, and during this age the gods worked and walked directly among the elder races and their younger siblings.

The War of the Gods

This early world of the gods would come crashing to its end as the gods began to fight amongst one another, and as the Void's self-awareness grew. One of the gods, once among their most honored numbers, began to listen to its whispers. Eventually, a prophecy, whose contents and meaning are debated, from the Fates, provided the final impetus for Maugrim to openly declare war on Daeus with intention of seizing the divine mandate of rulership of the world for himself alone. Maugrim's vision differed greatly from his brother's, and with Zalkrakus, the Sword of Destruction clenched within his fist, he separated himself from his brother, and strode forward upon the earth with the intent of conquest. His act earned him the title the Furious Emperor and Bauglir, or Betrayer, and began a war that would rage for eons.

The two brothers had been forged from the Light and the Dark, and their clash was of epic proportions. They drew to themselves the ancient races, and the might of dragons, and fought upon the earth. Their vision for Ea was as night and day, just as their origins, and Maugrim brought forth creatures corrupted by the Void and drew support from the gods who would follow him. As the brothers fought, mountains would fall and the sky would thunder. Armies surged forward from the ends of the earth, and great were the early battles of these great races.

In the wake of the war the oceans were emptied, the skies split and the mountains rent. In the end, the gods of darkness were sealed away and the remaining survivors departed from the physical plane so as to not jeopardize it again with a conflict of that scale. Though the details of these battles have been lost, scholars and priests will recall the Oath the gods are said to have taken--one that sealed them away from the earth, to prevent such acts from happening once more.

Thus ended the first age of the world.

The Age of Ascension

Resettling of the Elder Races

The prehistoric era ended and the second age began. This Age was known as the Age of Ascension. This age began in chaos and confusion as the ruling authority of the gods was removed from the world and the ancient races that had survived the war were left to fend for themselves in a damaged world. The events of the war had left some of the races greatly diminished in number and strength while others were taking advantage of the chaos to strengthen their place.

The early parts of this age saw the apex of the elder races' empires and then their rapid decline as various effects from the Gods' War settled in. The orcs, a powerful force of chaotic destruction, found themselves for the first time without leadership. Without direction, they began to turn against themselves as rabid beasts until Adom would save them. The elves found themselves diminishing as the power of the First Tree began to weaken from Gunakhar's attack upon it. Worse, their king Dawncaller had died, and his sons vied now for the throne. Twin ambition left them without leadership, and their ties to the fae, and their strength, would begin to wane. Dragons began to run amok without their masters to keep them in rein and force them back to their proper realm: the World of Wings and Flame.

It was at this time the hearts of the elves would soon be broken, as a number of their brethren sold their souls and livelihoods to she who would be Maugrim's general, beginning a war which would last for eternity.

Rise of Humanity, the Eldanar and Kulthos

By the middle of the second age, humanity had benefited the most and grew mighty during this age. Though the elder races remained strong, albeit within shrunken realms, it was humanity that gained a sudden increase in influence and power. A certain household of humanity that had been dutifully faithful to the light gods during the ancient war were given a reward for their faithfulness and allowed to settle in the region where the gods themselves had dwelled. The humans who settled in the Holy Land as its new care takers came to be known as the Eldanar. As the power and wisdom of the Eldanar grew the age began to reach a second golden era as a time period known as the Years of the Sun were ushered in. During this time civilization reached its height in areas of scientific and arcane development.

In time, though, the Eldanar leadership began to grow more and more obsessed with finding ways to prolong their life and to study into matters that were forbidden to them by their divine patrons. By the latter part of the Second Age these High Artificers had assumed control over much of the nation, then known by the name of Kulthus, and had began to turn the works of wonders the Eldanar had produced into means by which to enslave the world. At the height of their power they built great floating cities and used their power to begin to drain the magic of the world in their quest for immortality. The gods sent warning after warning but they went unheeded due to the Eldanars' hubris.

The Sundering

Finally, the judgment of the gods struck. One thousand years ago, a mysterious cataclysm, the Sundering, gripped the heartlands of the Kulthus nation. Their floating cities were destroyed and the High Artificers were snatched away.

The Time of the Sword

The Sundering's magical cataclysm ripped its way through the known world, bringing down civilization and setting development back a thousand years and ushering in a time of barbarism known as The Time of the Sword, when magic threatened to vanish from Gaea all together.

The Age of Men

Under this shadow the Third Age, then dubbed the Age of Shadows, began. In the chaos that gripped the world following The Sundering the gods of evil slipped back into the world but the gods of light guided the faithful Eldanar that remained into strengthening their newly founded nation Aegena to become a bulwark for the rest of the world. In time Aegena became known as The Millennium Kingdom and its High Kings unified the wayward realms of men and aided other lands and species in these dark times. During this era the gods of evil attempted to strike by triggering an invasion from the Void Beyond Creation. These Daemon Wars were brief but destructive and further cleansed life from the world but the High King Elbereth gave his life to drive back the herald of the god Maugrim, and sealed the Furious Emperor from the world again. This was at great cost, for he died and left no direct heir and thus an end came to the days of Eldanar power and lordship over the world, over five hundred years ago.

Year 0: Rise of New Nations

The modern era has been built off of the echoing shadows of these ancient tales. With the demise of the Millennium Kingdom the fragments of this nation began to seek autonomy and developed into lands all their own. Today the two most prominent nations in the world are nations that grew out of the sundering of The Millennium Kingdom. In the west the High Kingdom of Myrddion gained power and strength through religious fervor, dedication to the gods of light and the Holy Order of Ea and benefited from leadership tied by distant blood to the old line of Elbereth. This leadership, The House of Terenas, was ordained as High King over the western kingdoms although the title was begrudgingly given in some cases and the western lands bickered more then they were unified. Thus Myrddion existed only as a shadow of old Aegena albeit a mighty shadow.

South east of Myrddion the nation of Charn spread out of colonies once established by Kulthus and separated from the northwest continent by The Desolation and great Mana Rifts, they spread south and east into the continent of Vantyre, there making alliances among lands the west would consider dangerous, decadent and immoral. Charn grew in strength, growing rich and fat off of its conquests and the rule of its theocratic elite. Diametrically opposed to Myrddion, the two nations began skirmishing with one another almost as soon as they came into contact with one another for the first time.

For centuries, these conflicts took place as both empires grew in strength but they did not exist in a vacuum and their warring affairs slowly subsumed smaller realms through both expansionist efforts and treaties made through law, marriage or matters of subterfuge. Constant was the bickering of Charn and Myrddion and they grew heedless of nations caught in-between. The heartlands of the continent Arcania, where Myrddion was situated, was one such example of this as six nations prospered here in a line of control that created what was known as The Border Realms for beyond them lay untamed wilds tainted by Mana Rifts and Desolace and unbroken regions sparsely populated until one reached the distant mysterious lands beyond such as the domain of The Dran. These nations, Alexandros, Dragonier, Landen, Ordalia and Rune each dealt with the steady increase of conflict in different matters and not all survived to this day.

c. 934-983: The Crown Wars and the Great Plague

Alexandros and Dragonier successfully crafted places of power for themselves through either military might or commerce but Landen was destroyed in an invasion by goblinoids triggered by Charn and Ordalia subsumed into Charn’s expansionist efforts as it marched north. The destruction of Landen triggered Myrrish reprisal and a great war known as The Crown Wars began as Rune and Dragonier pledged their efforts to support Myrddion and Alexandros, a nation of engineers, commerce and miners, proclaimed neutrality but agreed to allow their ports to be used as a staging ground for these efforts. However the years of war were not kind and The Great Plague gripped much of the continents of Arcania and Vantyre, dealing a devastating blow to all caught within its passage. In the aftermath, the populations greatly depleted and Charn turning increasingly more towards forbidden forms of Artifice known as Black-Tech, many nations were hard pressed to defend themselves and stay independent. Thus, the Alexandros monarchy fell when a general of Charn, a witch by the name of Altima, invaded and seized the land to turn its rich resources to aid the Charnese war machine in violation of treaty and trade agreements.

c. 936-988: The Sorceress Wars

The witch, Altima, reigned over Alexandros for fifty years and in her time many lands fell under the sway of Charn and the war seemed doomed to end with Charn as the victor. However, Altima suddenly renounced her allegiance to Charn and in turn was abandoned by the nation which itself suddenly retreated from counter striking forces led by an alliance of countries. In time this alliance turned itself towards Altima with the intention of freeing Alexandros and ten years ago this culminated in a struggle known as The Sorceress Wars. In the end, it was not the nations led by Myrddion that defeated Altima but one of the many insurgent groups that resisted her dominion. Charn disappeared behind its great iron wall and a period known as the Quiet Years began.

At the end of the war, Myrddion formed a treaty with Alexandros that gave it sovereign control over its lands until a time could be ascertained that Alexandros had sufficiently built its strength back up to be an independent nation again. Ten years passed and after a period of turmoil and danger, that time came and Alexandros is once more free to seek its own path while facing an uncertain future. This was ten years ago.

The Game Opens

Tenebrae opened in the year 998, ten years after the fall of Altima, during the Age of Man. This is placed into its own section (Recent History) as we expect it will grow through the combined efforts of both players and DMs.