Age of Tremor

The Age of Tremor was the first age after The Awakening. Taking place about 3.2 billion years after the forming of the planet, **-1,600 AB** to **-800 AB** on the Aves Belief Calendar OR between the year **1,600** to **2,399** on the core timeline.

Surface world population near end of the age: 200 million

## Description

An age of iron, concrete, steam, and steel. This age had a classical medieval way about it and was dominated by war, empire, and expansion. It was also an age of natural disasters that would foreshadow the near apocalyptic condition of the next age.

## Themes

#### Chronicle

Classical Age, Concrete Age, Early Steam Age, Age of War, Birth of the Moon

#### Flavor

Chrono Trigger (1,000 AD), *G.R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire & Tales of Dunk and Egg*, Medieval *(circa real world 400 AD to 1499 AD)*

#### Storytelling

Core central themes to use in campaign building or storytelling. The ideas that I believe are key to what I want each Age to explore and reflect to the audience.

* The actions of even a few can change the future in a significant way.
* Legacy. The old generation making room for the new one.
* An examination of love, in all its myriad forms: familial, parental, romantic, fraternal, both found and lost.
* The briefness of life, memory, and what makes a person an individual.
* Questioning tradition. Sacrifice.
* Evil exist in many forms and many places, and , as long as you believe, your faith can survive anything.
* Extremism is dangerous. Fire is deadly, but so is ice.
* Nobody is what they seem, everyone has hidden depths and even your close family members will have secrets you probably won't find out.
* Most of the really heroic actions are never told and history is written by the winners. A King who doesn't protect his people is no true king at all.
* What does chivalry truly mean? Can the knightly ethos solve problems where there aren't damsels to rescue and villains to kill?

*(Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy V, VI, IX, X; A Song of Fire and Ice, Tales of Dunk and Egg, Julius Caesar)*

#### Aesthetics

*Roman Realism, The Arch, marble statues, arts of the floating world, western world victories, Buddhism*

## Key Events

* The only Age that experiences an "Unbalance" - where the dark conditions of the Balancing occur sporadically throughout the age, for randomly periods of time. This instability dramatically impacts the surface races and sets the stage for the humans dramatic action near the end of the age.
* Following the last balance the elves of the world went mad as the light of the sols went out and their great mirror shattered. Clawing out their eyes and slinking underground they began to call themselves "Hollow" and despise the light. Their absence would lead to the collapse of the emerald market, famine, and war.
* An age of religion. Several religions both monotheistic and polytheistic begin to become organized and spread to thousands of worshipers. Many of this faiths are unknowing built around the manipulations of the Primals.
* Humans, utilizing the power of faith, flourish and spread across the continent forming an early empire.
* Lazuli spread across the world and silently stand, observing the people of the world.
* Grand cities and wonders are built using solstones and continued advancements in solomancy and lithomancy.
* Ursadar expand and explorer beyond their homelands, discovering and settling untouched islands and arctics across the Grand Sea.
* An age of calamity. Near cataclysmic earthquake shakes the dwarven kingdoms causing unrest and famine that eventually leads to civil war. Meanwhile, the astrada, humans, and ursadar war among each other causing never before seen death counts.
* Following the death of the brothers, the dwarven kingdoms fully embrace the strict social structure known as the Brother's Law.
* Humans grow ambitious and corrupt in their obsession over solstones, capturing members of the other sol races and experimenting or exterminating entire settlements.
* With war comes innovation. The roden and other inventors of the world bring telescopes, the printing-press, and the beginnings of steampowered technology.
* Towards the end of the age the humans atrocities became apparent to the world's population and a massive war was only avoided when an even greater threat rips open the floor of the world. The greatest army the world had ever seen marched out and began to conquer the southern parts of the world. In an act of desperation the human empire sacrifice the lives of thousands to create a moon for Boreal, spinning the world into chaos and ushering in the Age of Ruin.

## Timeline

This timeline uses the common calendar of the Aves Belief (AB) and places its year 1 at the start of the fifth age, the Age of Discovery (3,200 years after the start of recorded history). This is the first year following the destruction of the moon, the exile of the human empire, and the breaking apart of the old world into the new.

*Circa -1,600 AB to -800 AB*

* **-1,600 AB**
	+ **Dawn of the Age of Tremors:**
* **-800 AB**
	+ **Dawn of the Age of Ruin:**