The Continent of Aramik

Aramik, the most southerly of the continents of Ezharim.

## The Official History

### Ancient History

Aramik was initially the home of the demihumans of Ezharim.  Initially, the only races on Aramik were the pregenitor Elf species and the pregenitor species of the Halflings, Gnomes, and Dwarves.

In ancient times, immediately after the creation (AC 0), all the peoples of Aramik are recorded as having lived in relative harmony.  Over time, the Elves, having a naturally longer lifespan than the other races, accumulated a disproportionate amount of the wealth of the continent.  This effected politics, as the Elves came, over time, more and more to dominate discussions on state policy, and also more and more to craft policies that were of greater benefit to themselves than to the other races.  By AC 600, the Elves had manipulated the systems of government to such a degree that the other races were effectively enslaved.  This situation remained in place for five hundred years, as the Dwarves slowly changed from halflings, being forced by the Elves to work in the mountain mines and developing a burly physique, while the Gnomes changed from Halflings as well, becoming smaller and thinner to subsist on the starvation rations the elves doled out to them as they worked in the cities in a menial capacity. The Halflings also continued, as the elves enslaved them to serve as an agricultural base.

### The Coming of Men

In AC 1200, Human outcasts from the continent of Itrapa crossed the Long Sea and began settling in the northern portions of Aramik.  The elves did not often come to this area, as there was little use for the desert land, and they had no reason to think that there were other continents - their knowledge did not span that far.  The Humans had landed on the continent on the basis of rumors and wild tales of a land to the south with an ancient, immortal people, and they were physically close enough to elves to pass at a glance for and even to marry and interbreed with elves, so upon their discovery in the northern lands, the elves did not treat the humans especially badly.  However, as the shortness of the human natural lifespan was discovered by the elves, racism developed, with elves beginning to see humans as closer to halflings than to "true" elves, and half-elves as a corruption of their bloodline.

The humans, having much larger population growth than the elves, soon began to need more land.  The elvish Emperor, Moindir II, began to fear that if he did not take action against the humans, the "racial purity" of his people would be irreperibly damaged.  He mobilized his forces against the humans, and thousands were slaughtered before the Humans could mobilize and fight back. Thus began a bloody conflict that would last two hundred years, and take the lives of over two hundred thousand humans and elves.

### The Prophet Mura-Din and the Great Revolt

As war raged on between Men and Elves, the elves began to grow desperate.  They could not replace their soldiers as fast as the humans, and with the war stretching into its seventh generation of humans, elvish diplomats could not even broker an end to hostilities.  Desperately, the Elves pushed every race in their massive empire as hard as they could - Dwarves were forced to mine for days on end to supply materiel, gnomes to work on ever-grander designs for weapons and armor, halflings worked all the harder to supply for the needs of these new exertions, and the elves even began using magical experimentation on themselves, producing a new subrace, the Dark Elf, with a greater magical potential than baseline elves had.  This gave the elves a weapon to even the playing field, but these Dark Elves were treated only marginally better than the subraces of the Halflings.

Using this advantage, Moindir II sued for peace with the Humans, and terms were hammered out.

While this redoubling of effort let the elves push the humans back into a stalemate and eventually terms ending the war, there were other consequences.  The dwarves began following a religious figure named Mura-Din, who claimed that the god Bion had decreed that the elves were to fall and his chosen people, the dwarves, would rise to replace them, as Bion built power and eventually became as great as Lord Aeon himself. Mura-Din claimed that Bion was desirous of a covenant with the dwarven people for their ingenuity and hard work, and that together they would solidify their power. Whether Bion truly favored the dwarves is largely irrelevant - in the end, Mura-Dins cult burst forth from the mountain mines like a storm, crushing and destroying all in their path.

Mura-Din and his cult spilled into the elven cities, slaying as many as possible and fracturing the empire, splitting it in twain.  They saw, for the first time in their lives, the small halflings and even smaller gnomes, and presumed that they were traitorous favored servants of the elves who would betray the new compact with Bion given a half a chance.  Over a hundred thousand gnomes were outright slain by Mura-Din's onslaught, and many more halflings.  Elvish losses were even more staggering.  Moindir II was slain upon his throne by Mura-Din himself, his skull smashed to pulp with a great hammer even as he begged for peace.

The dwarven extermination of the Elves was halted, ironically, by human intercession.  Humans, now at peace with the Moindri elves, began trading, and as dwarves came upon them, they were presumed to be other, more favored servants of the hated elves.  The dwarves fell on the human trading caravans with fury, and as word reached the human lands of these attacks, the humans moved their armies through the fractured elven lands to engage the dwarves, picking up assistance from their old enemies, the elves, along the way.  At the same time, the gnomes mostly fled to human lands, while the legendary halfling ruler, Lepro Kahn, developed a cavalry system for halflings using riding wolves and shortbows, allowing them to skirmish with the dwarves while taking few losses. Simultaniously, the Dark Elves overthrew their elven bretheren in Qun Tan Las, and began coordinating with the Lepro Kahn to push the Dwarves back.

The dwarves strategy was to push east, attempt to crush the halflings and their dark elven allies, whom Mura-Din claimed were marked for their evil by Bion, before turning to deal with the new human-elvish alliance.  Eventually, Mura-Din and his forces cornered Lepro Kahn and his men, and during the battle, Mura-Din and the Kahn were slain by each others hands - Lepro Kahn's chest was crushed by Mura-Din's hammer, while the Kahn's arrow pierced Mura-Din's throat. By the time their bodies were recovered, neither could be resurrected.

With Mura-Din gone, his lieutenants pulled their forces back and sued for peace.  Borders were redrawn, and have remained mostly the way they are today.

## Geography

Aramik is a long continent, three times longer, Northwest to Southeast, than it is at its widest point Southwest to Northeast.  Splitting the continent neatly in two across its width are the Mountains of Mulah-Din, named after the first son of Mura-Din, who brought peace to the dwarves after the death of his father. The northwestern half of the continent is mostly forest, with some far northern steppe and desert areas, and a peninsula to the far south which contains some tundra, and contains the remains of the Moindri Elven Empire and the mostly Human Confederacy of Erok, seperated by an inland freshwater ocean called the Sea of Sorrows, where some of the most pitched battles between the Moindri and the Erokis took place in the Great War.  On the Western Slopes the Dwarves have a nation of their own, named after their Prophet, Mura-Din, which stretches into a massive expanse of desert, the Varos-Kar.  Further to the west, the Halflings control the Khanate of Yerba to the north, mostly consisting of seaside mountains and a massive stretch of steppe, the Lepro Plains, while to the south, the Dark Elves have created the nation of Qun Tan Las, which consists largely of desert, forest and a span of frozen tundra called the Qun, reaching to the southern end of the continent.

## Political

Aramik has five major political entities extant on its shores: The Erok Confederacy, The Moindri Empire, The Mura-Din Sultanate, The Yerba Khanate, and the Qun Tan Las Empire of the Dark Elves.