Trepheon

The continent of Trepheon is one of the 6 major landmasses of the world of Azura, it has many diverse features and biomes, as well as an even more diverse populace. While the most common form of sentient life within these lands consist mostly of humans, a variety of other races - such as ents or lizardkin - are also native to Trepheon. With three main kingdoms built up in various locations, it also has many other regions with various towns and prosperous life, though it is also home to deadly terrain and fierce wildlife. When it comes to Trepheon, there is certainly no shortage of thrills, from the scorching deserts, to the flat grasslands, and far into the barren North.

## History

Many historians and scholars say that when the realm of Azura was created and when humanity was still in its infancy, they lived a nomadic lifestyle as hunter-gatherers. They would travel place to place within the barren snow, scavenging for food and surviving before moving on as the wind guided them. Some theories point to them coming down from the North due to an expanding ice age, which also formed thick encasements of ice on the shores of Trepheon and allowed a mass migration of humans to the main lands of Trepheon. Others suggest they came South after discovering a small peninsula to inhabit for some time, and found the warmer climates and lush vegetation to be a great source for food. Either way, whether it was fate or luck, the humans came down and found what would become their home for many ages.

As they continued to live as nomads, although more successful in finding plentiful food, they began to migrate South more and more until they settled in a vast grassland. This area, which is said to have contained great “geographic luck,” or abundant resources for the nomads to tap into, sparked a new evolution within humanity. Forfeiting their hunter-gatherer lives, they learned to settle down and pitched their tents made of animal hides and other materials, and not long after, they learned about basic farming and gardening. When their population grew significantly, they also made use of the river to the West in order to plant crops and irrigate them, as the soil near that area was very rich.

With the collection of humans growing and becoming a large settlement in the Great Plains to the south of Trepheon, they eventually came together to form the first major civilization on the continent - and probably the biggest civilization of the time. The oldest records date all the way back to 1,400 PF (Pre-Fall), about how a civilization eventually came together and formed a city known as Dormia, being the capital located in the Southern area of Trepheon. As the ages went by, the structures and settlements grew, being carved out of lavish stone and people thriving within the ever-growing empire as it sent scholars and various people to the edges of the continent. Some of these records, carved in stone, detail the rise of the civilization, its laws, and the extension of it to the outer reaches of the continent. While the capital was large and strong in the Great Plains, the Dormian Empire saw settlements pop up in the Northeast, Southwest forest, and even in the canyons to the East. It wouldn’t be long before the the arrival of new races, such as the elves, drows and even spirits.

The arrival of spirits, and by extension, demons to the realm of Azura was huge, with large portals being constructed which allowed spirits passage into the world of the mortals. The spirits, sharing their knowledge from their land, heralded the mysterious “mancy stones,” and brought them to the realm of the mortals. With these stones, humans and other races could perform various rituals and meditate in order to gain a mancy. These stones have survived throughout the ages and are standing even to this day, lying in wait for those that seem to unlock the potential of mancy. With the influence of the Dormian Empire already great enough to reach ears to certain races across Azura, the spirits’ gift greatly increased that potential, making way for a Golden Age within the empire.

Soon after, the elves landed in the Eastern and Southern shores of Trepheon, docking and pouring out to learn about the great civilization of Dormia. As the explorers heralded the marvels they saw, they went back to their mainland of Ludwag to tell others of these amazing discoveries, with more elves coming to study the region and a good amount of them staying to integrate themselves within Dormian society. It wasn’t too long until drows followed suit, along with some orcs and minotaurs being carried in to Trepheon as labor during the later years of the empire, while it was flourishing. Among the last of the races to make their way to Dormia were the dwarves, who mounted few expeditions to Trepheon, if any. They mostly spent time exploring Nerius, as it was very similar to Hallmond. Eventually, they made their way far South and discovered it, much in the same way the humans did. The lizardkin were mostly primitive races that didn’t integrate too much within the empire, which was astonishing considering they were native to Trepehon and lived in small civilizations along the water and underneath the surface.

Dormia flourished for almost a century after mancy was bestowed upon the people, but one fateful day, an unknown event of cataclysmic proportions reigned down on the empire. After a “lost battle,” with its details mostly forgotten in history erupted, the capital of Dormia was utterly decimated. The whole landscape became scorched and was left in ruins, leading historians to believe that it was caused by an underwater volcano that erupted, and then promptly sunk back under the sea underneath Trepheon. Some legends, however, describe “bright lights” that rained down from the sky, destroyed the capital of Dormia and causing the empire to fall apart. The survivors from this event all went their own ways, with some settling in distant branches of the empire.

Some people went North to the remaining grasslands and formed the Central Kingdom. Some went to the East where there were more elves and a few small ports being built. Some went to the West, with its great plateau and region ripe for protection. There were, however, people who stayed close by to the ruins left where the ancient city stood. Those people being the Detarians living within the canyon, and there are even some settlements within the Great Desert, itself. Some of these “direct descendants” of Dormians speak many legends of the lost civilization, with many scriptures and slabs of history being passed down. All in all, the ruins remain a lost and forbidden place, and the monstrous beings around the area deter anyone else from going nearby.

The three main kingdoms of Trepheon have gone through centuries of building themselves up into small fractions of what the empire of Dormia used to be, though still flourishing in their own ways. Each of them have built up different cultures, values, histories, and even separate beliefs. Though they all supposedly hail from Dormian ancestry, their current outlooks are vastly different from one another.