The Salvage Age

Was the age which began following the end of the Great Searing which destroyed the entirety of The Old Age's Technologically advanced and World-spanning Civilization in a series of endless floods, famines, disease, and violence triggered by massive global climate change. After the 500 year cataclysmic event in which mankind's excessive pollution of the planet tore a great hole in the sky, allowing the suns rays to beat down relentlessly upon the Earth, the world finally began to cool down. The few bands of the less than one percent of the human race which managed to endure the hellish period emerged from their various dugouts to a new and drastically changed world. Almost all having little recollection of the times before other than legends folklore passed down to them through endless generations of illiterate tribal elders and shamans.

Entire continents such as Maer'Ka had been reshaped after a large part of their lower lying coastlines had disappeared beneath the rising seas, the larger part of the Old Age's great cities had now long ago vanished beneath the waves. The climates had shifted northward, with formerly dry areas now being even dryer and wet ones became wetter. The few species of wildlife which had adapted to survive the harshness of the Searing had evolved into wild beasts, now hunting their former hunters. In more temperate and tropical areas, foliage had finally begun to regrow across the world, engulfing the battered remains of ancient ruins which had not been engulfed by the sea.

These old ruins would soon become the main source of resources for the various peoples of the resurrected World, giving the era its name, The Salvage Age. The skeletons of rotting skyscrapers, highways, machinery, and various other structures and infrastructure became the primary source of Iron and other metals, effectively beginning a new Iron age across Maer'ka. The small bands of the times of the Searing evolved into larger tribes equipped with new iron tools and weapons, some of these tribes would settle down and adopt an agricultural way of life, building new villages from the rubble, while others chose to retain their tribal lifestyles. Later, these agriculturalists would form some of the first Civilizations since the Age Before, constructing new cities amongst the ruins of old ones, forming new states with complex social hierarchies, religions, and military forces.

The peoples of the Salvage age across Maer'Ka now spoke a plethora of new regional langauges which had evolved out of various dialects of the almost entirely forgotten Old Languages due to the isolation and breakdown of communications during the Searing. These ancient mother languages such as English, Spanish, French, and various other minor which had once been dominant among the peoples of the Age Before had now long since been distorted. These new languages were vulgarizations and mutations of the lost languages, with entirely new words and pronunciations. The Old Alphabet had also been forgotten by all but the Arkivists, and some more developed civilizations had even created entirely new Alphabets which formed and spread between the new civilizations of the continent.

Folklore, legends, tales, and various cultures differing views of the Old Age had gradually developed into New Faiths, and they had almost completely replaced the vast Majority of the Old Faiths which were reduced to obscurity, with the exception of Moormunism which remained prominent among the desert tribes and kingdoms of the Great Basin. A large part of these new systems of belief were known as Nostalgia Cults, which centered around the worship of pantheons whose Gods and Goddesses were based on misinterpretations of major leaders, celebrities, or ideas from the Old Age. These polytheistic faiths mainly believed that the Old Age was a time of greatness where these Deities lived among mortals, and developed complex mythologies based on legends of the ancient past. Other religions and cults despised the ancients, and viewed them as demons and giants to be feared, mostly due to their responsibility for The Searing and the destruction of the world, instead they worshipped spirits and deities representing the forces of nature. These ranged from tribal shamaninistic and animistic religions, to more organized ones complete with priesthoods or exclusive religious societies. One very unique religion was that of Arkivism, which believed the Old Age and its civilizations extensive knowledge could be utilized to re-enlighten the world, and eventually produce a new and better world. They possessed no Gods but rather revered the Old Language and sought to defend its memory with their lives in hopes of one day acheiving Acumen, a sort of intellectual enlightenment. They rejected the Nostaliga cults Gods seeing them as false idols due to their knowledge that these "Deities" were nothing more than mortals who had lived during the Old Age.

The Salvage age is generally divided by the Arkivist Calendar into four major Epochs, spanning from the end of the Searing to the beginning of the Re-Enlightenment; The Epoch of Rebirth, the Epoch of Empires, the Epoch of Transformations, and the Epoch of Tribulations. Each of the Epochs began or ended with a major event in history, and each were subdivided into various eras.