Interturn 2 - The Age of Disunion

WA - 6'300'001  - The Age of Disunion

It had been an age since the gods saw it befit to look upon their creations, and in their absence much had happened.

**The Noshkalar:**

The Noshkalar had undergone ages of division and war, for the Nosh Embre, worshippers of the righteous flames of **Vynthrol** sought dominion over the expanding fishfolk and their colonies. Thus tensions of their increasing fanaticism and obsession with the 'dry life', or that above the waters, conflicted with the more pragmatic populace. Indeed, the Noshkalar entered a age of societal enlightenment upon discovery of a grand new crop, the Glanchorp specium. The adoption of this new crop along with the understandings of agriculture allowed the Noshkalar to grow and become less reliant on hunting and the eggtides, allowing for population booms and a greater focus on societal development. The city of Opuirn Embres was founded by those most fanatic to **Vynthrol** around this time, in pursuit of building a grand temple to their flames. From the spurnings of the fire-worshippers was also the discovery of primitive metalworking over the ages, working what scrap metal they could scrounge from quarrying, tin, lead and bare irons.

Not until the Wyrd Dragons arrived from their great obsidian obelisks did the great war begin, the schism of two fires. The promises of upliftment, of knowledge and better lives tore apart the Noshkalaric society as those with pragmatic ties in the east began to build themselves around these great lizard sages, whose very presence seemed to inspire the birth of leaders and thinkers alike, a renaissance of thought and culture exploded through the cities like wildfire. The Nosh Embre, isolated and insecure in their beliefs decided that they would rather prove their superiority through a series of savage assaults on the eastern Noshkalar than allow them to outpace the flames above.

Thus did the great war begin, and in it thousands of Noshkalari died to savage battles, the Wyrd Dragons retreated from the continent in this time at the savagry and incomprehensible development of amphibian tactics by these aquatic folk. In the end what was one race was left divided by three.

The Nosh Embre formed their own state along the western coast, few in number but a culture of martialism lead to greater physical attributes being developed. This subrace became known over time as the Vatarnkalar, whilst the Eastern Noshkalar continued their cultural development to the point of developing methods of shipbuilding, which lead to their colonization of Lirok, feeding off of its rich jungles and reefs to build Nosh Jatairn.

These southern tropical Noshkalar adapted over time to the reef-hunting and jungle going that their northern brethren could not, and over the aeons became increasingly versatile on land, whilst their amphibian traits became vestigial. The Jatairni were born from this evolution.

**Humanity:**

*Humanity* spent its aeon's polishing its worship of ones ancestors, building a great many cities throughout Selvin, and a great many cairns deep in the forest and in the north in the grasslands to commemorate the victorious dead, their skill with smithing bronze and its composite materials lead to the formation of great clan leaders, and their entombment in bodices of tin and armored plate of bronze. This age is and was the age of the Freyonaye Lords, *They who carry metal*

of these cities, these villages and halls built into the forest and rock, Forests Edge, Erethane and Proscatalia. The Mannish nation is as divided as it is populous, their folk becoming profficient hunters of the forest kindreds as they are farmers of lesser crops such as mushrooms.

the Noshkalar of Nosh Kairon opened trade with the Freyonaye era of lords, trading their fished goods such as pearls and deep-sea treasure for skilled metalworks, an art they had not themselves mastered, unlike their western brethren. This union was in no way official, but when the great war between the broods of Noshkalar occurred, the great schism, Man answered the call of his eastern fish-friends. They rode on beasts of burden after crossing the narrow strait and fought through the Fungal forests, Man and Noshkalar alike. Using their hunting prowess they buried many brave warriors during that generation, an entire stratigraphical layer of the great clans' cairns was reserved for these timeless warriors, founding a tradition of honor in bravery, and bravery in death among many clans.

**Elterbrin:**

On MIltourne the Elterbrin extended forth their dominion over all reaches that they could; in knowledge, in land and in society. For they founded another great city, Arma-tempd from which great pastures of Armmammiks were herded and trained as beasts of burden and hunting alike. This honored tradition of Amberaine was given to the greatest hunter-chieftain of each generation, sometimes multiple a generation. These Amberaine were given to rule over their people through honored right of unquestionable dominion.

The Elterbrin likewise developed their knowledge of the Life Fires, seeking to purify their spirit through meditation of it, and thus an order of holy women were formed to guard and stricture the uses of these eldritch places, the Itarriarchnah.

Through the visions and wisdom granted from these eldritch places, the Elterbrin foresaw the coming of the Wyrd Dragons before their time and through only of them as beasts come to claim the land of these hunters. When the Wyrd Dragon's brethren' of MIltourne arrived they were met with volleys of arrows and suffering, for the Elterbrin sought dominion over and mastery of all places and things for it was this arrogance that had defined the nature of fire, to burn and not be complacent.

So the Elterbrin drove back after many great battles the Dragons Wyrd, back through their obelisk, across space and time.

Through this grand place, an army lead by the Amberaines of their time was led, to which they met the Jatairni of Lirokof (Continent).

It was initially a time of discovery as the foreign biomes of jungle and basalt mountain were explored by the folks of miltourne, until they at last realized their intentions, engaging in the construction of Havath-Nort, their southern colony accessed through the obelisks of Lirokof, and their subjugation and rule over the relatively primitive Jatairni, whom they shipped through the obelisks backed to miltourne to be used as an indentured peoples of labour.

Under the rule of the Amberaines, the Jatairni were treated harshly but fairly, used as lumberers, as miners, and domestic servants of the wealthier class, particularly the houses of the Amberaines themselves. This prosperity bought by servitude emboldened and engreatened the society of the Elterbrin, leading to the cultural revolution of arts and less pragmatic crafts amongst the elite of their kin.

**Devowla:**

Of the Kilaueat'i Devowla, the winged burrowers in the north, they did eat deep into the depths of the Caldera until discovering a great and vibrant cornucopia of spreading life, all colors and sizes. They fed long and deep, numbering into the many tens of thousands in this under-biome, inserting themselves and mighty apex predators in the lush forests below. They developed great size and long-life as a result of this prosperity in the food chain, but lost a great deal of fertility in the process.

**Devowelers:**

The Devowelers were greatly successful in the ice burrowing they had been brought to do by their maker, **Uode**, and so all across the northern icesheets are their kindred found, burrowing the ice.

**The Skith:**

Of all the unexpected things to appear before the Elterbrin during the time of the Amberaines and the height of their society was the skith, a parasitism that threatened the nature of things as these beasts from the deep grew in numbers beyond count and to sizes of monsters from legend.

The Amberaines gathered the Armmamik-riding forces of the South-east and the hunters of the forest, and the servant-warrior castes of the Jatairni, and with great urgency did they purge the Skith of the coast in great battles, at least twice a generation. This "culling" as it was known became a right of passage for the Elterbrin youths of a generation, killing as many skith as they might. Future Amberaines were chosen from the ranks of those most prolific in their martial prowess here. They succeeded in limiting the spread of this scourge but could not predict its northward evolution. The Skairtha.

Landing on the shores of Hexrock, the evolved Skairtha were larger and more ferocious anthropods, with great prehensile limbs and a vestigial carapace in favor of a more streamlined skeletal structure. Not so much burrowers as cave-dwellers and scavengers of the granite plateau, they bothered not the stone folk, instead tending to the few livelihoods they could in relative solace, the harsh environment preventing their population from exploding as it did the Skith on the bottom of the ocean.

**The Dwarves:**

The Dwarves themselves, the stonefolk, eventually discovered a process of ceremonial reproduction.

It was through the chanting songs of their kind that they could carve newborn Dwarves from raw rock and as such they would be imbued with the spirit of their people, before the previous generation passed on.

Not so much a ruling class as the means of passing knowledge on, the Loremasters of the dwarves were infants raised in the final years of a generation, with all of their knowledge intact so that they might live out into the epoch of the next generation, passing on the oral knowledges and histories of their people as teachers and great philosophers who would succeed in propogating the culture of their people. This primitive means of reproduction by organic standards left the Dwarves stunted, living out cyclic epochs in increasingly-great stone-halls of the dead and stone-halls of ponderance.  They recorded a great many philosophic and artisanal thoughts on stone tablets, to be buried in granite libraries beneath the plateau.

With each generation of burrowing and each preceding generation preserved in the halls of the dead, the Dwarves dug deeper with each passing epoch, until the children of such generations knew not of the existence of the surface but only the winding and twisting halls of their kind, their knowledge reserved only from the oral histories of the Loremasters and the philosophic libraries they drew upon for wisdom.

**The Brassborn:**

The Stone reaches of Brassborn were hit with cataclysm when the Planar spike was planted by the likes of Lirokof.

Friends in time of the Dragons Wyrd, the Brassborn built a great new city, Teregany, above ground so that they might interface with and in time learn a many things from the Wyrd Dragons, whom with curiosity and disgust (in equal measure) proceeded in societal relations with the Brassborn, of whom they could not assume reincarnation from due to their inorganic nature.

Thusly the Brassborn were cultural children and protege's of the Wyrd Dragons, working with them on Kovol where they might leave their home-cities for a time, to inspect the works of art of the immortal drakes and their obsidian cities. Likewise did the Wyrd dragons help in a great many carvings of Teregany and the creation of obsidian arts and halls in the cliffs of the volcano overhead.

The Brassborn mastered their reproductive cycle in this epoch, using the fires of the volcano to vast and forge the next generation of their brethren, from the heart of the volcano would the fiery souls be forged by the invisible ethers above, so it was believed.

Likewise they came to understand and study the world about them, the surface and its interests beyond the cavernous realm below their feet.