Axelo

## Overview

*The Eternal Isles stretch before you, here you shall find limitless options, but be cautious they did not earn that name for naught, each island was created to fit the Personality of some god or goddess, while most have grown fat and lazy over the course of millennium, a few still stand vengeful watch over their sanctums, eager to punish those who dare step forth into their homes, so be warned, o' fair traveler!*

## History

### Prehistory (30001BE+)

Once upon a time, eons ago, there was nothing, just a blank featureless void but then, one by one, twenty gods and goddesses appeared from the void, and they began to create worlds unending. After many long years the gods gathered together in the Moon Palace and began to debate, growing tired of the ceaselessly making worlds, only for them to be destroyed by their infighting, and so, during their great conference they came to the decision to create their greatest world to date, and for a hundred thousand years they labored in the void, creating what would later on be known as the Eternal Isles, however in the process they created something else, more gods who joined them in their work of creating the eternal isles.

However, when they completed most of the island they met again in the Moon Palace to make the last, and perhaps most important decision: whether they would populate this world with sentient life. Nine of the major gods, with the major gods being the ones who first formed, and nine voted for, with two being undecided and just wanting peace. However, their dream of peace was not to be, as heated discussion broke out between the two parties that threatened to destroy even the sacred halls of the Moon Palace. While none noticed it at the time, the gods who were warring had their Essence siphoned out and fusing into a new deity, the Judge who, as the legends say, soon put a stop to their fighting and decreed that half of the islands would be allowed to have sentient races placed on them while the other half would remain uninhabited.

With that verdict from the upstart, the current king of the gods, Lord Borealis, was furious in a way few mortals could comprehend and soon challenged the Judge to a duel of sorts, a duel that obviously the Judge won, leaving Lord Borealis to take the title of Lord as a former divine king, but sulking he left the Moon Palace as soon as possible. After the concave of the divine, he went to the palace he had been preparing for himself at the very center of the world, and with mere gestures he ripped it from the realm, leaving a crater behind, and created a new realm for it to call home, Uderon, connected to the landmass it was once part of by a leygate at the very center of the world.

##### Age of Monsters.

Although it is a mere rumour and it it's existence is merely theorized by scholars and arcanologists and therefore dates for it can not be confirmed it is believed that before the Judge came to power the world took another form where more primal forms of Magic connected to the leylines ruled true and monsters were both far more common, they were far more dangerous both in terms of magic they might wield and many even had different, more "rough" forms.

### The Dawn of Sentience (30,000-20000 BE)

While Lord Borealis had the most dramatic exit from the Conclave of all, the various deities scattered across the void, some going to the Eternal Isles to claim islands to live and control, others to personal realms, some went into the depths of both land and sea, while a few just stayed in the Moon Palace, and as the judge went into position above the Disk(in the Isles, the world is a disk, not a sphere), those gods who chose to settle on the main disk set to work, creating life with the power that the Judge's spirit provided. For some five thousand years they worked in silence, preparing their islands with non-sentient species ranging from the common bug to monsters of a hundred varieties each as it should be, not to mention the plants but that is for another day.

For five thousand years beasts and gods ruled the isles, but eventually three minor gods got together, Oberon, Soerin, and Velor, three of the sons of the Horned God himself, and before their father the three began discussing how to design sentient life, and together they decided to each create a species based on humans of the past realm, Oberon with the help of his wife Titania created The Elves of the Eternal Isles, while Soerin created Humani, and Velor last of all, created Dwarves.

### The Stone Age (19999-3911 BE.)

#### Hunter-Gatherer Age (19999-9981)

For millennia the various sentient species lived within small hunter gatherer tribes with few events of note happening, with most just running around the areas their ancestors were created in, trying to survive the near constant attacks of minor gods and various monsters.

One of the few things that happened during this era, and towards the end of the era, was the birth of the first wizard, Luun, the adopted son of the Moon Goddess, Selenia herself, who was born when the moon goddess possessed the body of a young Humani female(who died in childbirth), and while it is unknown if Luun's inherent magical ability was why Selenia chose to inhabit his mother or if it was mere coincidence that the two's relationship began, but regardless, when she came to earth in order to teach the mortals about Magic at long last, the two became in a way, mother and son, and as Luun grew within the human tribe he was born into, his mother would teach him how to use Magic, taking him to a hidden cave that only the two of them know of so that no one would know, but when Luun neared adulthood, Selenia knew that he was ready, and so sent him on a quest to slay a dragon roosting on a nearby peak to where the tribe had settled. To a normal mortal, the mere thought of this feat would have been suicide, but Selenia had faith in the man she had raised and taught. Instructing him to bring nothing but a flint knife for weaponry, she had him depart to find the beast. Using his magic, he managed to slay it, upon doing so he, as instructed, carved a patch of its hide from its body, and broke off part of its jawbone and carried those back to his mother waiting in their secret cave, where she etched and carved them into two new things, first the "Mark of the Dragonslayer" the cloak of dragon hide that all Dragonslayers wear to show their prowess, but also more importantly, the piece of jawbone was turned into not only a weapon better than anything else currently in use, but also as a magical focus which massively increased Luun's power, but that was not the last gift Selenia gave her son, she also made him a Demigod, rendering him immortal, and free to explore.

#### Early Villages.(9980-3911 BE)

At some point after the discovery of arcane magic, farming as well was discovered by the High Elves which caused their culture to develop at a rapid rate however over time their discovery spread to the other populations which also allowed them to grow both in population and culturally, however perhaps more importantly than that was the fact that without the need to travel around following herds of animals, sentients began to settle down and build small villages for themselves surrounded by fields of some sort of crop and usually led by a shaman or increasingly a proper wizard who used slabs of stones with crude pictograms written onto them instead of spell books.

In 8000 B.E. on the island of Venio, instead of on other islands where the people were forced to build up small villages here and there on patches of fertile soil, the local Yuan-ti were able to build up the first cities, sprawling affairs of mud brick they were a site to see according to the few remaining (legible accounts), however all are fully aware that they were nothing compared to modern cities. for Millennium the Yuan-ti lived on the banks of the great River and her tributary rivers, forming small kingdoms, with them at some point morphing into the more familiar Lizard-folk, however the Yuan-ti lived on as the noble class.

In 6000 years the four archangels grew tired of their vigil over the prime soul and began working on the creating the first of the celestials who would enable them to spend less time defending the prime soul and so after a century or so, they were successful in creating celestials

### Bronze age (3911 BE-600 BE)

Unfortunately for the Yuan-ti, they were not the only ones who desired greatness so to speak, and so Draco, the first true (land) dragon flew to Venio alongside six of his children to conquer the Yuan-ti civilization and drove the few survivors to the mountains in the south of Venio where they either died off or built a new civilization to replace the one they were forced from. which is true varies based on who is telling the story, but no matter who tells the story one thing is for certain, is that each of the seven dragons claimed their own part of the Yuan-ti empire, crowing themselves as Pharaohs, the greatest of whom was the great Pharaoh, the first of whom was Draco himself however after six hundred years of his reign, during who's reign the lizardfolk slaves first learned how to craft bronze into both tools and jewelry, one of Draco's children, Apep, the most cruel and foul of Draco's children, challenged him to a duel and and torn the first true dragons to shreds, but perhaps feeling remorse, or perhaps to show his own power over dragons, ordered a massive pyramid in the style that the original yuan-ti lords first used to memorialize their own dead.

however as a result of Apep's cruelty, an uprising grew amongst the lizard folk, however one day one of them, the lizardfolk known only as wyrm-born broke into Apep's false-dragon "stables" and through means unknown to most, bounded with one of them, in the process becoming the first of the four Dragon-Riders, but when Apep's guards Wyrm-born and his mount were forced to flee from the Tyrant, and soaring on the dragon's back fled to the mountains in hopes of finding the Yuan-ti in order to hopefully enlist their aid in overthrowing Apep, but could only find refuge in an abandoned city of their's, dejected he settled their only flying for long enough to hunt more meat for the both of them, but in times other lizardfolk, who found their way to the city told that Wyrm-born that Apep's tyranny was increasing and that the red-dragon so named for both his blood red scales and the rivers of blood that followed him wherever he went, that through cruel breeding programs and magic rituals had created a new race, named the dragonborn to hunt down Wyrm-born, and so the Lizardfolk was forced to confront his rival in open battle, but forged for himself, two blades, twin khopeshs made from Orichalcum. In battle the two met once more, and at first Wyrm-born was winning against the red-dragon, but unfortunately for him, despite his swords biting deep into his scales, he was not above trickery and cast a spell that drained the moisture from both Wyrm-born and his mount, mummifying them within moments, commanding that their bodies be left behind for the beasts but at night lizardfolk still loyal to their promised savior hid the bodies in hopes one day he would return and save them from the tyranny of Apep. but perhaps in a cruel twist of fate, a century later it was not a lizardfolk who killed him no, instead it was one of his daughters, who crowned herself the third great Pharaoh, but remembering her father's mistakes, although she appointed a lizardfolk Vizier who would rule over the lizardfolk on her behalf, something her cousins in charge of the other draconic kingdoms copied lest they earn her rage, and when they washed ashore on the banks of the great river one morning, she entrusted Wyrm-born's khopeshes to the first Vizier to serve as their badge of office.

IN two thousand BE something very different was happening on the island of Lower Valina, a scant few miles from the base of Mt Valina itself, a young high elf was born, by the name of Xilkas, at first he seemed to be nothing special, merely another scion of one of the numerous high elven proto-kingdoms that had sprung up on the lands, however as the young elf grew up he became favored of magic, being both a potent magic user and in his 100th summer the goddess Titania came to him and made him a Eldrain, and so using his new powers and his new kingdom, his father having died and left Haesong-Tzun to him he soon set to work conquering the other proto-kingdoms, bringing them under his banner, and bringing with his forces the power to work bronze into weapons that were better than all but the enchanted obsidian knifes used by shamans, by the time of 1700 AE his kingdom stretched from the coast to the strait between Upper and Lower Valina, to the world-wall mountains however unfortunately for Xilkas it would not last, and he died in battle against a rival warlord.

In 1400 A.E. the Orcs increased their raids against the other islands who by this time had formed a flourishing society rich in trade and shared story-telling however all that came to an end as the Orcish forces wiped out many major city states and cultures using the power of their artifact, including Valorium which was the center of early Humani development, but after Orcs wiped it out via flooding, Four fleets were able to flee, with some survivors staying and becoming the people of Valorium we know of today.

Luckily for the greater Archipelago, A band of Heroes, known as the Heroi were able to slay the Orc high king responsible, but it was too late, and a dark age began as trade was wiped out and each sub-archipelago was forced to focus on barely surviving, and many technologies, both magical and technological were lost as their users were unable to continue records.

### Iron Age/Dawon Age (599 BE to 260 AE.)

Of the four fleets from Valorium one landed in Gwinlond, and during the dark age City states formed across the Islands of Gwinlond, Kessix, and Basincell, however on Gwinlond, the City state of Dawon soon began conquering her neighbors and for centuries they slowly formed the Dawon Empire.

While Dawon was forming its empire, in the Venio Archipelago another empire was dying, as in 90 B.E. the Seventh Draconic Pharaoh, Akketh, during a feast to celebrate his victory in a duel against a challenging dragon, choked to death on a Tortle he was eating, however as Akketh died without a killer the other Dragons of the empire soon began fighting amongst each other for dominance, this caused a splintering of the draconic empire and the death of many dragons and tens of thousands of Lizardfolk soldiers and Dragonborn fighters as they were forced to kill one another for the glory of their Dragon-Gods.

### Cidel Empire: (261 AE-present (1210 A.E)

#### Lver wars (1180 AE)

##### First Lver war. (1186 AE)

After a group of Lverian nobles rebelled against their High King. the High king called upon ancient oaths and favors to get allies from both the Cidel Empire, and the High elves, But in retaliation, the Rebellious nobles hired Dwarvish, and Dragonborn mercenaries to boost their armies against the High King and the loyal noblemen.

After two years of brutal fighting between the two factions, the former High King was killed and a new one was crowned by the surviving Nobles. with the high elf Nic Tirili being crowned as High King.

##### Second Lver war (1201 AE)

Unfortunately for the people of Lver, High King Tirili was not such a good choice for High King, and forced high taxes upon his Nobles, who passed those taxes down upon their subjects, causing them to Rebel against their corrupt nobles, however this caused the beginning of the second Lver war, with Dwarves and the Humani siding with the rebels this time, whereas Dragonborn and High elves sided with the Nobles, but unfortunately for those two races. the Rebels were able to win and elected a humani shaman as their new high king.

## Appearance

Axelo is a circular disk thirty thousand miles in diameter and two hundred miles thick however there are massive pockets of air on either side extending another hundred miles.

As for the surface, the "Top side" is covered in a network of archipelagos covering the entire surface with fifty percent of it being land and the rest being water obviously.

The Underside however is a dry barren wasteland dotted with the ancient remains of civilizations gone long ago while there still are roving bands of monsters and other nasties who are a hazard for any adventurers who for whatever reason have found their way through the crust and now are left in this hellscape. However the Dwarves have managed to create a single city and a tunnel linking their way to the surface and through the gravity switch that enables life on the underside. However even that particular City state needs to be on constant lookout for a marauder band that could overwhelm her defense.

To the common folk on either side of the Disk, they imagine the crust as solid, or at least mostly besides the occasional cave, but in fact as a gift from Metamorphia, a cross-section of the world would reveal that the entire world is honeycombed with a network of caves and secret tunnels that combined create a massive world that few have ever seen, combined it is known as the Depths but there are several regions to it with their own lifeforms. But rather interesting one of the best ways to enter the Depths is in the tunnels that connect the cities of Valorium as many count them as one of the regions of the Depths .

## Noteworthy locations

Venio:

Although the first sentient life began on Valina, the first civilisation in the isles began on the main island of the Venio archipelago, (shown to the left) However as detailed above the fire Dragons wiped out the natives and at some point the Lizardfolk took over as the dominant smallfolk in the archipelago while the seven Draconic Pharos ruled over the archipelagos in succession.

The Cidel Empire

The main home land of the Humani this multi-kingdom empire is one of the major factions in the isles however their member kingdoms have the bad habit of warring with one another whenever they get the chance as although officially it is ruled by their High king, often times the High King has little real power which means one of the lesser kings while use the weakness of the High King to wage war against their rivals.

Valina

The Homeland of the Elves, various other Fae, and of course, one of two homes of the Seelie Court and Horned God. However despite the Seelie Court keeping as much of the peace as they can, even they can not have prevented the High Elves conquering much of the Archipelago, with only the Wood elves and Celestial elves having much land of their own and the various Free-Fae forced to the outskirts of the Archipelago.