Interturn 5 - The Age of Lords

The Ichor Tides

When the Arcktemperthae were withdrawn and destroyed, some ages of lacking control ruled over miltourne, and in these ages the ancient and mindless beasts, the Skith, emerged as predators over the ashen land.

In great hoards they spread and multiplied a thousand thousand fold, forming ichorous tides that clove what little life clung to the land unto their maws, some growing as large as mountains, and often-times feeding on eachother when no other sustenance found itself.

Vynthyric scholars saw all of the signs of their occupation but could find no commonplace resting of these beasts during the age that they retook miltourne and forged anew their people. It is of common theory amongst them that these beasts had fled into the deeps, swimming across the world to find new prey, or rest somewhere in the deeps beneath the earth, feasting on some alien flesh before returning to the light once again. Chitinous husks of dead skith litter all parts of the ashlands.

The Vynthyric Reclamation

The vynthyric reclamationists explored and reclaimed their homeland from ash and regret, the Arcktemperthae had destroyed miltourne in their campaign of domination, and reduced a once great and proud people to refugees and outcasts.

Coming back to a barren wasteland, with little caves, little plantlife and none of their ancestral forests, the Elterbrin sought to overcome their disadvantages by learning from their draconic betters, carving and working obsidian into superior weapons, armor, and trinkets of all makes. This superior material allowed them to harvest what hardy life did survive and regrow, as well mine through the hardened ash plains to the riches hidden below.

They dug deep and through innovation and hardwork invented a great deal of many mechanisms to deal with the collapse of the Tournic ecosphere and low populations of active workers supporting a great many ill and infirm. Chief of these was the discovery of what would eventually be called colloquially as "ink".

In its municipal form, a black fluid with odd properties, particularly its sudden hardening upon impact and equally miraculous softening back into a moderately viscous fluid as that force dissapitates. Its initial use was in the staining and curing of weakened and cracked obsidian, of which it seemed to have a strengthening and deepening effect on when the rock was submerged into it for periods of time.

The Fall of Lirocea

Lirocea had reached its cultural and technological peak, powered armours were beginning to become mainstream technologies as the gifts of Aeyandites stretched their use to the masses. Miners built great pneumatic rigs to grind deep earths into stone dust; Farmers made harvests in a single afternoon; Soldiers battled with the strength of 10 men; The old and infirm were not dismissed from their duties as technology allowed them graceful retirements away from dishonour.

The sciences flourished as automata of increasing ability were designed and built to perform the simple tasks in society; Hauling, chopping wood, so on and so forth. This advance in technology turned the urban centres of Lirocea into a near-utopia.

Unfortunately, to pay for the cost of this expansion, the Azure thickets and forests that Lirokof laid on his continent in the primordial era's with his own two hands had been burning for generations. Through unknown mechanism the trees began to awake and the sacred Silverwoods came forth as great lumbering humanoids of impervious argentine bark hides and limitless wisdom-laden voices that shook entire cities with decree.

The silverwoods parlayed at first with the likes of the Ember sentinels, they bargained for the lives of the forests and Lirok and asked the Liroceans to halt their burning, however they were met with insults, and ultimately the industrialization of Lirok and destruction of its natural habitats only hastened in response.

The day came when the Silver wood trees grew sorrowful but determined and the ancient groves abandoned their Jatairni wards to the jungles and marched to reclaim their primordial cradle-lands. Lirok was beset by a silver tide of silver titans, who destroyed cities and laid waste to soldiers but allowed citizenry and the innocent folk to retreat ever toward the urban centres, away from the forests' edge. This conflict waged for nearly two centuries as the armies of Lirocea held back the silver tide, slowly giving ground as they used their energy-dampening abilities to increasingly render useless the suit technologies that the liroceans had inherited from Uthaine.

Their expertise honed, the Silverwoods had hardened their stance and began a fresh wave of genocidal attacks on the spring celebration that the Annunaic had declared war on Lirocea, launching a great fleet to the latters northern shores.

Birthing of the Eloi

Images and half-images swirl and contently break apart, only to reform moments later, in the flows of magma and fire across the surface of Kovol. Orbs of Liquid magma float above the surface of its endless seas and direct these flows into shapes foreign to the world; castles, meadows and lords of old - memories of some half-insane dream. The Eloi are born during the planar fracturing, their form is misunderstood and poorly recognized by those few who can see them from afar. They are truly alien in their incapability to understand life as most species do, existing entirely as fluctuations of planar energy coherent to some kind of binding consciousness forged by unseen hands.

Some are as small as a skipping stone, others range into the miles wide, but their size is never resolute, constantly shifting and changing, forming ineffable shapes like the black and white hypnogogic after-images behind the eyelids of any dreaming mortal.

They are children, playing with power they have always known and never understood, lest anyone should discover or disturb them.

The Annunaic Invasion

In these dark hours when the armies of Lirocea had marched against the silver titans, they were met with organized fighting battalions with Armor and armaments designed specifically to negate the advantages that had made the southern realm a superpower for generations. Using spring-loaded weapon mechanisms on semi-powered suits of their own, the Annunaic had created a class of warriors entirely designed to combat and kill the Sentinel technology of a mobilized Lirocean army. Indeed, in addition to these technologies they had created classes of siege weaponry that allowed them to wage war on a whole city whilst engaging on the shores with the defending armies as they invaded.

It was to the chagrin of the retreating Vynthyrists who had come to the aid of Lirocea in its darkest hour, the Obsidian legion and the remaining sentinel forces engaging on a two-fronted defence as civilians were forced into exodus from the failing realm. The Sentinels were of course, patriotic to the last, defending not just their peoples but the land to which they had divine patronage, and the gardens of the fruits of their ancestors. No trained and rightfully lirocean man, woman, or child would leave their home shores to burn and so many chose to stay in light of increasingly grim odds.

When the Brassborn and the Vynthyric Obsidian-smiths fruited their work to seal the planar gate, a great bulkhead of steel and obsidian bolts had been rendered in place of the gate to the southern-hemisphere, forcing it open permanently and equally sealing it off. This disruption in planar energy ultimately caused the planar flows to re-route and a new gate to open to the heart of the great volcano on Lirok, impassable and hidden. After this point travel between the hemispheres was prevented almost entirely.

The dwindling

Those few Lirocean refugees, some thousands and thousands, who fled to the re-established Vynthyric colonies made themselves homes of slums and shanty towns outside official cities, working in muck and menial jobs to make ends meet in a society that was already struggling with scarcity of supplies on a burnt ashen continent.

Without access to their fruits, what suits they had brought with them of municipal use became unusable in a matter of generations, the grace of the gods and Uthaine leaving their blood as the old passed onto the new. What were pinnacles of engineering became harbored relics and reminders of the lost and soon to be forgotten. Those few caretaker families that chose to remain with the gardens to ensure they didn't come into the hands of the invaders have had their names carved onto dozens of granite slabs quarried memorially, their memory is held as a symbol of old Lirocean valour in the face of total annihilation, and a reminder of the values that the goddess Aeyandite had sought to elicit in the descendants of her children - and in doing so bring out the best in them.

Over generations it became apparent that the few natural ember sentinels left would have to aggressively breed in order to maintain some standing future population of guardians to their developing people. This led to ethically... questionable practices for the female survivors of the sentinel orders. Those who could not maintain a steady output of children carrying the Uthainic lineage were forced to do so, and in these efforts the reproductive technologies of the Lirocean people were born.

Specifically in the study of herbs and vivosectional surgical techniques that preserved the survival of a child, or children in the way of forced multiple embryo's. These techniques were looked down heavily upon by the Vynthyric Elterbrin who saw these practices as unholy and unnatural, and led to an increase in tensions between the two parties.

This aggressive study of the anatomical sciences lead to the vast inbreeding of the remaining sentinel bloodline, for those who deviated from it deviated in bounds from potential power, and thus were unusable to the already degrading levels of power that the blood could produce. Every few generations a pureblooded throwback to the days of old would emerge, capable of piloting a suit fully and possessing the grace and long life of Uthaine, but they were increasingly rare as sciences sought to mass produce the mediocre offspring of his loins.

It is a sad fate, to fade instead of a noble death. This was the fate of Uthaines children, That limb by limb, piece by piece, the ability of his children would diminish to power his gift to them, until it was little more than a gauntlet. Prophecies of course by mad sentinels emerged about the child who would be born in an era without guardians who would bring back the light of the wise father, but these were dismissed as by this point in the age the after effects of debilitating health and intellectual retardation had turned many sentinel offspring into something rather left dead than raised.

The Brassborn

After their aid in sealing the gate from the falling southern realms, the Brassborn realized the lateness of the hours in the world and that all that had held and bound the principles of honour and benevolence to the mortal races was failing. In this political tensions rose within their own nations, particularly between political parties whose own diplomatic ties to other realms had seen their ideology change in favour of helping them and extending benevolence where it wasn't asked for, and to help uplift the likes of the Lirocean refugees who had fled and now suffered.

This is opposed to the traditionalist isolationists who believed that the only way the Brassborn people would survive the oncoming ages would be through safety and defence, and thus sought to retreat from the cavernous undercities of the homeland into the sub-aqueous safekeeps that the brassborn had masterworked and kept hidden from all.

Both parties came to diplomatic resolution in their schisms, and the latter severed many ties to the former land-bound Brassborn. Although both still call themselves brassborn they recognized the need for diplomatic sovereignty prior to their schism, and so those intent on helping and maintaining open contact with other races called themselves the Urbraessica and those who secluded into hiding on the ocean floor were known as the Ardobraessica.

Subsequently the Urbraessica had new suits of war forged for their people, and the Brass legion of old was reformed in the hopes of peacekeeping and restoring some measure of order to the remaining northern realms, for the south was now kept at arms length. Some reconnaissance in this method was carried out in the south through the volcano gate, and a small outpost within the volcano was kept by the Brassborn as a means of watching the southern realms under foreign rule.

To date, the Urbraessica hold the last refuges for members of the old compact.

The Silver Titans

The Annunaic swept through the ruins of Lirocea, and just as efficiently as they killed every last remaining man, woman, and child, they came in with new inventions. They repaired bridges, they re-established order, and within weeks ships full of citizens were being shipped from the crowded isle of selvin to inhabit this claimed land and rebuild it to the standard of their law.

The silver tide was not indifferent as it was not unintelligent, and the Silverwood tree elders, titans as they were, made a proclamation to all the men, all generals and their accompanying diplomats to the south. They would leave the azure forests and the jungles of the south and it inhabitants alone and the remaining silver wood titans (for many had already perished) would leave the realms of man alone.

So it was agreed that they would both recede from one another and the realms of man would make efforts to reseed the azure forests where possible, opting for sources of power derived, of all places, from the sea. They had understood and developed a means of powering their new technologies superior in some ways to the Liroceans in that the churning of water turned great paddles, which could be used to rewind capacitorial flywheels of great magnitude, storing the power of the waves instead of burning the emissaries of nature.

The Silverwoods retreated to several groves across the south, as the jungles spread to the southern peninsula of lirok across the lone arch, and consumed the barren rockpools with lush and verdant green. The Jatairni disappeared within and were likely never seen again during the ensuing thousands of years by any manner of mortal, living the life of savages and companions of the enduring will of the Silverwoods, which in turn travelled from danger to myth, and eventually; Legend.

Formation of the Vornost Imperial Administration (The Vornost Imperium)

The Vornost Imperial administration was led by a single man; in his previous lifetime known as Halfthaine, Uncle of Uthaine. He had been brought back and restored by Aashirya, his presence and his driving will to conquer opposition led him back into a position of prominance and revered rule over the savage marauders of the Annunaic.

From them he forged a new nation.

Within generations he had sorted out the bloodlines carrying genetic illnesses and individuals carrying all manner of pox and disease, rendering the race of men cleaner then they ever had been, revolutionizing the management of the peoples' ills.

This was of course, driven by his necessary desire for military glory, and through schools of engineering and smithing, new weapons and designs came to fruit from the remains of the few sentinels killed in combat with Annunaic raiding parties. New suit technologies came over centuries, building semi-powered rigs for the strongest and fastest warriors to bear and use as counters to the legendary monopolous Sentinels of Ember.

When the time came for the invasion, a quarter of a million soldiers were ready to launch on iron ships across the sea, carrying with them banners and weapons of war. The stratagems timed perfectly to catch the Lirocean legions out between the Annunaic armies and the Silver titans to the south, encouraging and forcing a retreat and thus reducing unnecessary loss of life through exodus.

When the gate was sealed upon the Annunaic, Halfthaine, Imperial lord of the Annunaic, reforged their cultural identity into a central bastion of ruling power, the Vornost Imperial realm covered Selvin and much of Lirok, as well as the East coast and parts of the midland westerling continent.

He sought to use the people he had come to be reliant on for intrinsic existence as tools for his continued glory. Tools, he had thought, was a fitting terminology for what would become a strict caste system. Ordering people of professions and natural skill into breeding castes, enforced by warriors (which were themselves a caste), humanity would breed itself into performing a variety of roles with superior capability.

The Sword Caste; would serve as the soldiers and enforcers of the Imperial realm. They were bred for superior strength but also with an emphasis on overall agility, as the greatest warriors would be deemed suitable to pilot fully enclosed battle suits. There is an unspoken law of honor amongst the Sword Caste, in that all things lived for pertain to the honor of achievement through conflict or sacrifice, for if you go to battle ultimately you either beat your obstacle into submission or you die trying.

The Hammer Caste; serving as smiths and engineers under a cumulative role would design and build the devices and infrastructure used to maintain and advance Vornostic society forward. They would be singularly responsible for all of the many works of art in turn constructed and shaped to advance the symbiotic culture of the various castes. There is a semblance of pride in ones work amongst the Hammer caste, those most respected are those most capable in creation and devising means of creation, and thus achievement is measured through what one creates directly.

The Quill Caste; serving as the scholars and freethinkers (to a fault) of the imperial rule. They were the nervous system supporting the other various castes, acting as intermediate bureaucratic managers of Halfthaines burgeoning realm, whilst also managing academic pursuits and devising new ways of considering old obstacles to be overcome. To the members of the Quill caste, whom have been bred to be intellectually superior to all other castes of men, the ability to reason and debate is considered the greatest importance and thus respect is given not to the greatest bureaucrat but to those most capable of providing elocution of their rhetoric to their peers.

The Hourglass caste; serve as unique position within the caste system, serving no directly divinable purpose to the mechanical infrastructure of the Vornostic realm. They instead serve a genetic purpose, to which end they are undifferentiated and freely bred within the means of their own class, just as humans of old. Their purpose is a seed bank, so that if any caste became inbred or lacking in material, members of the Hourglass caste could be used to replenish their stocks and buffer that gap in the bloodline.

The Scythe caste serve as the muscles and sinew of the Vornostic body, they are the labourers; the farmers, the haulers; the quarryers of stone and all the myriad jobs of the more physical professions in the imperial realm. They are often seen as lesser than by other societies because of this, but they are a highly valued and honored role for their bred physical endurance and raw strength, a feature which makes them physically second only to the sword caste. Amongst the scythe caste one might imagine that life is bleak, but indeed one devotes their life to their work. Those who achieve the most successful quota's in their job by measured units are considered respectable by all classes of society, but often lack the time to revel in that respect due to the physical nature of their jobs.

In addition to these new blooded casts saw to it the industrialization of this culture and its adoption of previously esoteric designs, chief among them was the Vynthraic design of Shatterbombs that had become semi-popular in parts of old Lirocea, heat-magic infused stone that could explode with white-hot shards to devastating effect. Rather than battling with bows and arrows, the forces of the Vornost imperium would use arms and explosives forged from these esoteric magics, bound by the principles and wills of countless industrial forges and forge-mages. Where once one might throw a stone and have it explode, now Vornostic weapons could fire dozens per minute from steel contraptions, cannons and hand-cannons using lever-action mechanisms, some small enough to punch holes in flesh, others large enough to punch holes in a fortress.

As is the bountiful harvest of Vornostic industry that they even improved on the chemical formulas of the esoteric Lirocean steel, forging new Annunaic alloys to make their dozens of industries stronger, and faster- and this is not to speak of its effect on forging Armor and weapons.

Devoeans

The Devoeans, or as they became to be known amongst the mortal races over millennia, *The Changelings*, were a orchestrated hierarchy of shapeshifters who sought to gather knowledge and information on all things across all strata's of distant societies. They had integrated into virtually ever corner of the civilized realms before the planar spikes fell and had a indirect hand in maintaining the Council of the whitespire in the unofficial guises of other races (Elterbrin, Man, Dwarf, and Lirocean, Brassborn forms had proven uniquely impossible to replicate accurately).

Indeed several high-ranking members of the changeling collective were present when the Zidhae (Giants + Titan nation) struck their acts of terrorism against the Planar nexus, launching a full scale assault on the Hexen spike and storming the citadel within. To the astonishment of all present the spikes were rendered quite irrevocably depowered and away from their senses the planes were rendered in turmoil as all that excess planar energy caused a fracturing of the realms.

The planar fracture had a myriad of effects to be discussed elsewhere, but the Devoeans were only ones to be capable and alive still as the Giants and Titans ferried the remaining mortals, including those survivals from the days of the Compact/dragons from the Arcktemperthae through a new rift onto Muspel, where they were encouraged to live with the Zidhae as refugees or found their way to a more suitable home on the northern hemisphere of Numen, as the gates were now closed permanently, just mere spikes of Obsidian.

The Outer Realm

When the planes fractured, like a prism cracking, the planar energies that had been congealing from the realms into the planar nexus like rivers unto a great lake were all diverted into areas not previously realms - indeed into the void itself. This influx of planar energy caused a massive fracturing and the Outer realms were formed, a myriad of metaphysical spaces that erupted in a minute, coincidentally where the minds of those banished to the void could inhabit instead of the empty blackness. Subject to the powers of thought and emotion, as opposed to matter and energy, the Outer realm/s were adjacent to much of reality, and the mortals most tied to fate could sense its presence against the back of their minds, behind some invisible membrane. They took to calling it a variety of things, but it is most commonly known amongst the men of the west as the Astral plane. It can't be reached by traditional means, but occasionally dreams and nightmares intersect with it and some glimpse of the incomprehensibility within are touched upon the mind of a mortal, rendering them anywhere from terrified to insane.

Indeed the sudden and explosive nature of the outer realm/s being formed lead to the subsequently instant formation of the Atlaps, like flares off the stars, the Atlaps are primordially constructed creatures that feed on raw planar energy, existing outside time and space. They are only a danger to those who enjourney the Astral plane, but otherwise take no notice or heed of the going on's of reality inside the corporeal planes. They are a manifestation of the planar flows and damage done to the balance of the cosmos, slowly feeding and reproducing on the tattered, cracked edges of creation.

The Planar Shattering

As the world had come to be reliant and dependent on Lirokof's grace for travel, and communication, and diplomacy - the realms were plunged into a variety of forms of chaos when the gates fell.

The brassborn were trapped finally and truly against the backdrop of the rising Vynthyrist power.

The Zidhae, with increasing power over the other mortal races since the shattering, had grown mightily and ruled most of the northern hemisphere directly and indirectly.

The influx and outflow of the Chaos dragons had been a great omen to the Brassborn, who saw the return of such evils into the world as a sign of coming calamity. They retreated into themselves and built great gates once again, using their advances in technology to ward off would be explorers, diplomats, and engineers. What few mortals they coerced with still were previously known to them, and they too in time, would all fade.

This isolationism on part of the brassborn was not without its conflicts, for waged on the fronts of their councils and law-makers was the political parties of those opposed to isolationism and those for it. This caused great divine amongst the cities and peoples of the Brassborn, and over centuries those most willing to see some mortals still remained on the surface and in the mountain cities whilst those who saw calamity in the portence moved to their most safely kept cities along the bottom of the ocean, capital of which was Insover still.

The Banished

When the zatvok failed as the planar gates were depowered, all of that power was held in the divine staff that the Titanlord wielded. He saw fit for all of the compacts armies, the forces of the Arcktemperthae, the Ecthakyr, and even Uthaine to be unfrozen. To the remaining living members of the Council of the Whitespire, Uthaine was made an example of as were the Ecthakyr - both parties banished to the void for time immemorial, as Uthaine was also separated from hsi blade. This legend of the Titanlords mastery of space only second to Lirokof himself would spread to all mortals of the northern hemisphere, and some of the southern as the Devoeans mentally communicated across the Sanus belt.

These Banished of the Compact, chose to reignite its ideals and fled to rebuild and regroup and replenish their forces on the far south of Zokkacota, from which of their towers they could see the Men of the West, of the new regimes they had constructed and communicate with using vast mirrors and shining lights to form messages, although nearly no replies were met. They had felt abandoned in this time by all they had held their oaths to, forsaking family and home for the neccesity of overthrowing the tyrannical Arcktemperthae, and now found themselves in a world somehow more corrupt and divided then before, such is the sorrow of the stone sleep.

Those few dragons, some score of hundreds that survived to the fleeing back to Numen were beset with similar sorrows for they were with eggs and few females amongst them to lay more. They flew to the muchly abandoned ruins of Siwen-bleth some time after the Brassborn had retreated from the world, and made some attempt at living again, eventually regressing into a state of semi-bestiality over generations.

The Rise of the Zidhae

I*n the wake of their large delivery over the insults of Lirokof, the Zidhae nation, as they came to call themselves, retreated with what survivors remained cooperative to Muspel, to rule over their extenuated realm, leaving Kovol a desolate wasteland barren of life.*

*The titanlord and his kind took to using the spatial powers of the gates to shape and build impossibly large and twisting constructions, forming the basis of a city for titanic proportions; Skygrasp. It is said that the city at its height covered most if not much of Muspel's surface, a single hallway taking up leagues of space.*

*The Zidhae became master craftsman in this time, using their skill with stone and metal to fabricate great masterworks of art and war, sized for giants and titans alike. although much less commonly in the latter.*

*After their excavations revealed the corrupted Chaos dragons their city was ravaged in the ensuing onslaught, and the Titanlord was forced to banish them with a portion of the ice-realm into the void, to be imprisoned there with scores of giants caught in the scathing blast of planar energies. From this loss, the Titans and Giants never truly recovered their population centre on Muspel, although their continued to maintain a presence and rule over much of northern Numen.*

The Lost ones

The last remnants of the Compact and the Arcktemperthae's mortals who refused to leave muspel out of spite eventually retreated to the deepest recesses of the ice caverns deep beneath its surface, the dark and corrupted energies from the resting places of the Chaos Dragons twisting them in the darkness, creating something else. These creatures and begins, collectively known as the 'lost ones', became blind and pale, tall and lanky, and fed on the flesh of the cave things that had never known the light of the surface above. In the deep cold they found the few warm places on this ice world, near its heart, and created tribes and countless fiefdoms of savagry and brutal survival - against all odds. Sometimes a stray body is found near the surface by the Zidhae, othertimes purges are lead to tribes becoming particularly strong, once or twice an age, but mostly the Lost ones have passed into myth and legend, as the beasts and boogeymen of the mortals of civilized realms, some say their numbers are in the uncounted thousands of thousands, outnumbering all of the lifes of the civilized realms combined.

The Opscadium Build-up.

In most recent years and ages since the rise of the Zidhae, the Arcktemperthae had re-emerged as a power in the northern hemisphere of Numen, forging themselves a mercantile power against others, claiming sovereignty in technicality. In the hard places of rock and stone beneath the earth they had discovered a substance, known to most mortals colloquially as 'ink', in reality it is the remnants of the old elder dragons from ages past, fleeing or killed during the original wars with their imperial draconic oppressors. This oily black substance holds untold potent magical potential, and is sold by the Arcktemperthae to the Zidhae for handsome profits and certain laxing of restrictions on holding land, this is to not also mention their use of it to amplify the natural powers of the dragons of the Arcktemperthae regime resurgent, allowing them to cast greater magicks over the land like in the elder days. In this act against their ancient ancestors and predecessors, the Arcktemperthae resurgent have defiled the name and memory of their ancient enemies and in doing so given themselves greater power, a fulillment of their fell ideologies pushing for order over all things.

The compact, as they were born of neccesity and desperation, became guerilla and rebellious to the natural law and order of the Zidhae's occupation over the norther hemisphere, creating rebel groups and cells across the continents of the north, hidden away from the prying eyes of giants and dragons alike, always opposing and striking ocasionally to strategic effect, they stand at the precipice of striking across multiple fronts to try and stop the dragons from achieving a new imperial dominance.