World History

The Prehistory

WIP.

The Age of Creation: 0-1261

The First Age, or the Age of Creation, was a fairly benign period of history, though it reigned over an equally long and uncertain period of mortal development. The Age of Creation began with the synthesis of the first mortal race by Y'shendra, the Hyr'norai. Born in a grove somewhere within the southern portions of what is now the Daravinic Empire, these first Elves were shepherded by the Gods, as well as the Eldashan who they had created to guide them. They learned to hunt, to feed, to build, to wander. They were taught to walk and to communicate, to share emotions through words and the language of their form alike. Early literacy appeared in these days as well, ancient Elves communicating through runes and paintings inscribed on cave walls, or carvings on trees. By the end of the first lifetime of many of these old Elves, the first mortal race had been made fully functional, the drivers of change in a newly formed world.

Not long after, this process of being shepherded through the world was one the Elves reciprocated onto others. Humans were created in the year 347, and the unified Elves were given the task of teaching these strange, short-lived creatures the ways in which they might interact with the world. During this time, nearly all sapient life on Atharen resided in the region of Mornoth, the vast majority of them wandering as nomads, settled into a Paleolithic lifestyle. Very late into the First Age, in the year 1155, the eternal city of Vinasra Ilan was built, signaling to many in the region the end of the nomadic centuries that had preceded it. Fine accounts of this Age vary widely, though Daravinic scholars believe it to be the period in which men and Elves learned to harness fire, build tools and domesticate beasts. It was a primitive era, though Elves often envisage it to have been a period of magic and myth, with countless stories of old Elven heroes that once felled great beasts on land and sea.

The Age of Elves: 1262-3389

What truly primed the Second Age in the eyes of mortalkind was the birth of Elven monolithic nationalism. While most accounts from these periods vary and are deemed highly unreliable, there are many accounts of this period noting that the Elves felt their homeland to be under threat from invasive forces. While many within Daravin wished to continue a peaceful coexistence with the other races, the fiercely conservative Ald’norai believed their homeland was being stolen by the growing number of humans, many of whom had come west from Calanon. In response to this, Elven city-states began to raze, sack and enslave cities led by other races, while focusing on their own Empire-building to ensure they might retain their superior hand.

Mornoth's malign history began with the Elven fixation on growth and domination. They moved deep into Mornoth's corridors, settling cities along the rivers of what is now Daravin and Sil-Elaine, forging gilded principalities built on the backs of human slaves. This period of Elven expansionism began in the 1500s, with many of these realms the first of their kind. Systems of government and codes of law were constructed; city-states fought in competition and triumphed every so often, heralding Counts and then Duchies, and eventually something much more. A millennia passed, and then a millennia and a half. Little changed but small fluctuations of power, as civilization built, magic was learned and culture slowly evolved. From huts came wooden overlooks, then stone castles, then the marble towers Elves once treaded on to look down upon man.

In the year 2849, Riala Elaine was born in what is now the city of Arlain, though at the time it was Vinasra Ilan, the first of Mornoth’s cities; a center of culture and wealth, covered in flawless white towers and ziggurats. Riala was born to a powerful boble family, the patrons of wide farming estates that surrounded the city’s walls. Despite her wealth, the Elven woman was always rife with a deep ambition. It is said that early on that she knew how to stun the Court into submission as easily as she could rule them into action, dazzling and inspiring the courtiers of Vinasra until she had built a network powerful enough to take the city unilaterally as hers. Upon coming to power, her armies marched across the Amoras and Vinasir rivers, sacking countless cities and principalities in her name. All free human settlements that remained were subjugated and transformed into client slave states, ensuring hegemonic Elven dominance.

At this time, the Elves of Central Mornoth were known as the Ald’norai, or Ashen Elves, after their fiery ember-colored eyes, their ash white hair and their proficiency with a Pyromancy seemingly unique to them. They were divided into several Duchies across Mornoth’s center and its west, and with Riala becoming a powerful Duchess at the heart of Elven politics, many great enemies of hers were quick to rise. In the early half of the second century, the Elven states were constantly embroiled in war, mired in a competition to expand upon old magics and advance their arcane knowledge to surpass one another in war. Due to the Ald’norai mastery of flame, much of the countryside was often charred in the wake of frequent and gruesome battles, with many cities following this route into destruction by the end of these vicious wars.

Yet at the end, Riala was victorious, a justification for her violent conquest that tore the Elven realms asunder and costed millions of lives. Vinasra was renamed to Elaine Indorin - the origin of its present name - and it became the capital of the Kingdom of Silor, the world’s leading nation for centuries to follow.

Elves lived long - perhaps even longer back then, and this allowed Riala to bring her Kingdom to new heights throughout her immensely long reign. Yet by the end, she was dissatisfied by how she had failed to reach her goals. Despite constant near-decisive conflict with the Hytori in an effort to subdue the last of her Elven peers, she had failed to gain much ground in Ailizane and even Mornoth had seen some instability at the hand of human slave revolts. She needed longer, or perhaps simply couldn’t bear to lose what she had built — and so she indulged in magics that offered eternal life.

For some time, seemingly having developed immortality, Riala was given God-like reverence by her subjects. She offered the same gift to her most loyal of soldiers and courtiers, her vassals and then more and more of her people, and for a century Silor thrived in a golden age unlike any before it. But as it is known to scholars of this time, this fixation on immortality held adverse consequence to her realm.

Wraedan punished her, introducing the Black Sigil for the first time, a curse that culled those who had defied death for too long. She was the first of her kind to be culled in this way, though the Sigil rapidly swept over the majority of Silor’s political and military order over the following years, leading to apocalyptic hysteria and civil unrest that culminated in a series of civil wars.

The slave uprisings of yore became a real threat during this time — and it is from these riots that Lorien was born, with disparate factions of rebelling slaves fleeing north to find freedom. Beyond that, an even greater fracturing of Elven society occurred simultaneously; the Hytori, a traditionalist sect of Elves dedicated to preserving their old ways within the greater “Ald’norai” society, broke away in the midst of the catastrophic civil wars and the plummeting morale of their kin. They had warned against adopting means of immortality which might defy the Gods, and as they had been correct in their warnings, the Hytori felt vindicated in leaving.

But this group of Elves most often occupied soldierly and marshal roles, and so the strength of the Elven armies plummeted in their absence. A second and smaller group of rising Elves who had also prophetically spoken of the Black Sigil’s repercussions - now known as the Dratori - quietly followed suit, systematically vanishing from Mornoth and its societies, at least at first.

Around six centuries into the Third Age, these major cracks had begun to mire the Elven regime, and while Silor remained the dominant power in Mornoth, it was forced to withdraw its Ailizane campaigns, bringing its armies home to quell the rebellions that had engulfed the Kingdom in violence. The hegemony still ruled, but were never quite the same.

Around the middle of the tenth century, the Elves plunged into yet another hysterical civil war. A conspiring faction slipped into Elaine Indorin undetected through its network of portals, and killed the young King, Randil. As Riala’s grandson he was well loved by the Kingdom’s people, and after allegations were made that his death was at the hands of one of the northern Dukes, retribution was swift. A vast army washed over Silor’s north, sacking cities and culling all those loyal to their supposedly traitorous Lords.

But the accusation was false — and seemingly so perfectly, in what is now Adena, an upstart man named Valen Dres rebelled against his Elven overlords and riled millions of men to his cause. The civil war raged and the fighting grew so intense as to distract the Dukes of Silor until Valen was at their gates. Silor’s armies rapidly marched south to meet him, but were quickly overwhelmed - in their depleted state - by the sheer number of followers he had amassed, and his own arcane ability.

Elaine Indorin was taken, and in the following years, a mass exodus of Ald’norai to what is now Sil-Elaine quickly became a genocide, as the humans of Mornoth partook in a blood rage that terrorized the Elves that had long subdued them.

Silor had fallen. The end of the Third Age came shortly after, an entire millennia after dedicated as a monument to what followed.

The Age of Tyranny/The Age of Man: 3390-3962

While the non-human population of Atharen typically refers to the Fourth Age as the Age of Tyranny, many within the region of Mornoth, and particularly in Daravin, refer to it as ‘the Age of Man’. Mornoth carried, until this time, much of the world’s foundational history due to its status as the homeland of the Elves. Yet due to the imperious nature of the Ashen Elves, who now called themselves Sil'norai in order to conceal their ancient shame, humans had been subjected to thousands of years of chattel slavery. With the conquest of Silor by Valen Dres, the younger races had taken the mantle of supremacy from their old masters and had begun to build their world anew.

The Clockwork Empire formed, and then expanded greatly. Ectahl, Daravin and Sil-Elaine were the first of its provinces, but unlike the Sil'norai who had failed to expand deep into Ailizane, the Empire was wildly successful in its attempts. Humans thrived in Daravin, building new cities along the province’s rivers and taking hold over the great Elven cities of old. Not long into the Fourth Age, in the 87th year, Genteven was founded — though it would sit as an inconsequential trade port for nearly eight hundred years.

Lorien unified not long after, forming a formidable Kingdom to the north that the Empire would never be able to topple.

And the Elves...?

Some Silver Elves call this time the ‘Time of Shame’. In order to assimilate the Sil'norai into productive members of the Empire, they were allowed to keep their monarchy, the descendants of Queen Riala. They were invited to attend court in Adena, and were educated in affairs necessary to administer their people in the changing times. By all accounts, Valen had been good to his former slavers, even though a number of the Elven Nobility loathed him. Elves, again, lived long and many still remembered the conquest of their home — their fall from grace. And of course, the genocide against them to remove them from Daravin, a place many viewed as the true Elven homeland.

But they let their grudges linger, and never deigned to act on them. Not five centuries into the Fourth Age, this generation of begrudging Elves had all been claimed by age, and many of the younger ones were far keener to the intrigue of human court and the Common tongue. The Elven language began to change as did their culture, and the whole region adopted a single form of currency - the farthing - to tighten their ever more entangled market. Elves prospered again, and the old city of Veranor became a bustling hub of trade, education and industry with the coming of Clockwork technological advances.

Time passed. Centuries before anyone fully grasped the instability of a global Empire ran by a self-styled God. Valen Dres’ influence over the world’s affairs grew, but so too did his roster of foes. The ruling family of Lorien, the Empire’s main rival at the time, was a house governed by a historical line of Draedan with great prominence in global affairs. Partly with their backing, hidden deals were made with the internal Nobility of Valen Dres’ realm, and a poison of ambition and envy seeped into the foundations of the Empire.

Corruption built up. A political and sociological breakdown followed, leading to increased tensions between the Empire’s many races, regions and ethnic groups. Many internal and external forces used these divisions to their advantage, and quickly the satin carpet was pulled from beneath the Emperor’s feet. In the midst of all this he had sought the secrets to full, incomparable divinity, and he was unbearably close. When this secret was discovered by his courtiers and subsequently spread to his vassals, a rage of rebellions rose to take his head before he could crush his enemies beneath his heel. Before, essentially, it was too late.

But it was too late. Not because Valen had met the Godhood he so desired, but because he had gone far enough to where he refused to ever go back. To allow his suspension into divinity to be compromised; to allow his pride and grandeur to be taken from him. As a flail against those who sought to stop him, it is said that he directly compromised Venadak's ability to stabilize the planes, enabling Raw Magic to flood through the cracks that filtered through. The world was flooded with Corruption, Adena - Valen's capital - at its epicenter. The reaction from this sequence of events was horrifying and immediate, but also very long-lived. The Empire collapsed faster than any before it, and left an untenable scar upon the land that bled into the veins of every mortal and the sap of every tree.

The Age of Ashes: 3963-4299

The event that forged the Age of Ashes is coined many different things, across cultures and religions. Most ardent of the Path would go on to call it 'the Fall', Elves 'Noveron' - or the undoing - and later, in the halls of Daravin's Omen, it would be called 'the First Rapture', or 'the Warning'. Most, across the world, call it the Bleeding of Venadak, or in shorter terms, the Bleeding.

The Bleeding became the core premise through which the Age of Ashes was built, and recognized. In the wake of that cataclysmic event, Mornoth was transmogrified from the most populous and developed region in Atharen to a wasteland of decay, agonizing suffering, infertility, invasive entities and a poison that had quickly nestled into nearly the entire region. The immediate impact was obvious: virtually everyone in Ectahl at the time, tens of millions of people, died within an instant of the Bleeding’s climax. Sil-Elaine lost similar scores and around ninety percent of its population, nearly performing a total genocide of the Sil'norai race within a span of days and weeks. Daravin faced a loss of nearly half of its population, and the decimation of tens of ancient cities situated upon the Kingdom’s interior rivers. More than that, it was blighted forever after; as one goes closer to the borders of Ectahl and Sil-Elaine, they find the waters growing noxious and the fields producing more rot than bounty.

Lorien was impacted the least, with Hollows mostly unhindered by the Bleeding and the mountains and hills separating most of their cities from the Bleeding’s initial impact, along with their distance. This spelled an ironic golden age for Lorien, which was given the opportunity to remove their focus from border forces to fend off enemy invasions. But it was not one that lasted incredibly long.

The Sil'norai were beaten. The high spires of Veranor flung to the streets below, the cities were razed and the people infected with terminal illnesses of pain and disgust. Bubbling tumors and aberrations of skin and flesh endemically spread through the forms of the Elves, and the vast majority of all Sil'norai died, particularly in Sil-Elaine’s north. After the Bleeding a faction of upstart courtiers who had become Dranoch in order to live, quickly culled their remaining peers and completely embedded themselves into the realm’s power structure. This group - the Court of Dusk - proceeded to envelop Sil-Elaine into a tyrannical rule that it has endured since.

The Age of Bleeding was transformational and destructive for Mornoth, more than any other part of the world. There is still a sense of loss, sorrow and anger that lives in nearly all of the region’s inhabitants from that time, the Sil'norai most of all, brought utterly to their knees.

The Age of Industry: 4300-4621

The current age is one of, ironically, relative peace for the region as a whole. While the Dranoch Huntsmen subjugate and bleed their subjects and the Kingdom of Lorien is divided by civil war, there has been a distinct lack of international conflict between the region’s two major powers, with Daravin focusing much of its strength west. Mornoth has been slowly rebuilding since the slow regression of the Bleeding’s effects, though with the monumental rise of the Omen in recent centuries many believe it has gone down a frightful and shrouded path.

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