Age of Titans

The **Age of Titans** (Nesarian: *Tena vi Agnare*), also known as the **Titantic Period**, refers to Inecurian history preceding the Annihilation of 1500BC (0 INC). During the Age of Titans, incomprehensibly powerful magical beings known as Titans inhabited the Earth and walked amongst mortals, and the barrier between the Magestream and the material world was much weaker than in later ages, causing magic to be both more powerful and more widespread.

Archaeological and written evidence suggests that mortal civilisations living during the Age of Titans were substantially more advanced than their successors; they constructed vast cities of stone and brick, said to be kept clean by peerless sanitation systems and where the population drank from running fresh water inside their own homes. Titanic civilisations may have also had access to gunpowder technology and may have entered early stages of industrialisation, though these theories are highly contested as they are based on mere conjecture and are not supported by archaeological evidence.

The Age of Titans was extremely important in the formation of the religions of Inecuria, as Titans who interacted with mortal civilisations usually began to be worshipped as gods. Although followers of Inecurian religions generally believe that there is a clear distinction between gods and Titans - believing that gods are uncreated eternal beings who precede the world, whereas Titans are simply extremely powerful beings who exist within creation - most secular historians believe that every major Inecurian deity, possibly even in Nakkalism (the sole monotheistic indigenous religion), is either inspired by or directly based on a real Titan. This perhaps explains the widespread presence of gods with strong, complex personalities amongst Inecurian religions, where the gods act very much like people and can have complicated motivations and even character arcs; Inecurian gods tend to be persons who are associated with certain aspects of the world rather than personifications of different parts of the world, as is the case in other polytheistic systems.

The most significant fact about the Age of Titans, however, is that it ended in the most destructive war in Earth's history, an apocalyptic event known as the Annihilation. Though the date of the Annihilation is traditionally set at 1500BC, and it forms year 0 of the Titanic Calendar, it is extremely unlikely that the Annihilation took place over just a single year - and it is also unlikely that it actually took place in 1500BC. Historians specialising in the Age of Titans tend to believe that 1500BC represents the *end* of the Annihilation, the final year of a long period of chaos, as opposed to the singular year that it took place in. The true length of the Annihilation is unknown; the most extreme estimates suggest a length of around a century, arguing that such an apocalyptic scale of destruction would have taken a long time to achieve.

## Titans

*Agnare* (singular *Agnar*), translated into English as Titans, were beings of immense magical power who completely dominated Inecuria during the Age of Titans. It has long been debated where the Titans came from and how they came to be - the argument is seemingly as old as writing itself.

Titans were defined by three key factors. First, they were intelligent; not merely sapient creatures, but universally having exceptionally quick minds, with mental capacities far greater than any mortal or demonic race. Secondly, they were immortal; they did not suffer from age and, most likely, were unaffected by disease; they also recovered quickly from devastating wounds. They were most certainly not invincible, however, as a great many of them have been killed over the centuries. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, they were immensely magical powerful, with absolute control over the Magestream; not only could they draw incredible energy out of the Magestream, but they could use it in almost any way they wished, rather than being constrained to a few specific ways of releasing energy as mortals and demons were.

Some Titanologists have argued that rather than merely having power over the Magestream, what defined a Titan was being bound to a distinct circuit of the Magestream held inside their body, enabling the Titan to use magical energy from within themselves rather than drawing it out from an external source as mortals and demons did. However, this is disputed, because of the fact that some Titans are recorded in historical sources as specifically having a Magestream circuit of their own; the argument goes that if this were the norm for Titans, there would be no reason for the sources to point this out, because it would not have been unusual enough to remark on. However, it has been counter-argued that this comes from the sources being misunderstood, or simply feeling the need to state the obvious for whatever reason.

Titans were often very large beings, but not necessarily so; some were recorded as being only a little larger than hominids. Beyond this, they had no common physical characteristics, and displayed a wild variety of physical forms. There is some evidence that Titans were capable of changing their physical bodies to suit their needs and wants, but it has long been traditionally held amongst most cultures of Inecuria that the body of a Titan was a reflection of the being's inner nature rather than a thing consciously modelled by the Titan. In this line of thinking, the only way a Titan's body could change is if they underwent a major shift in personality, which would subconsciously manifest in their outward appearance.

Indeed, the appearance of most recorded Titans aligns with this theory; those who were more cruel and warlike typically displayed intimidating and monstrous forms, whereas those who were more just and empathetic were typically more graceful in appearance. However, there are a few notable exceptions to this trend, most infamously Lusira, the creator of the Dark Elves.

## Annihilation

Exact details on the Annihilation are unclear, because by its very nature it destroyed almost all of the evidence about itself. Written sources on the subject are invariably many centuries after the event and are heavily mixed with religious myth; a common theme with studying the Age of Titans and the Annihilation in particular is that the sources make it difficult to tell apart historical fact from religious tradition.

However, it is well-established that the Annihilation was a war of spectacular and apocalyptic scale, both between mortal civilisations and between Titans. Religious traditions, though they tell extremely different versions of all events, are all in agreement that it was the gods - i.e. the Titans - who brought their mortal servants into war along with them rather than the other way around. This makes it clear not only that the Titans instigated the war, but also that the Titans could and would command entire realms of mortals to do their bidding, either by convincing them or through threats of force.

The Annihilation exterminated every major civilisation of Inecuria and brought all their cities, infrastructure and great works to ruin. Much crucial knowledge was lost in every field, and it significantly set back Inecuria's technological development by centuries - possibly as much as two thousand years. Countless species were driven to extinction, forests and jungles were burned out of existence, and population estimates suggest that between 80% and 90% of Inecuria's population was killed.

The landscape itself was also destroyed and reformed as a result of the war; evidence implies that Kalzuranur was not a desert prior to the Annihilation, that the grey wastes forming the Nesarian Borderlands did not exist before it, and that Inecuria had numerous floating islands sustained by magic (much like those in the Dreadlands) that were either cast to the ground or completely obliterated during the Annihilation. Some scholars have also suggested that Titan's Rift formed as a result of the continent splitting apart during the Annihilation, but this is disputed.

Every religious tradition of Inecuria tells of a great war between the gods which destroyed the old world, though there are numerous competing narratives as to which gods fought in the war, who died in the war, and why the war began. CIM religions, for the most part, present the war as one between the major gods and the evil devourer god and his (or her) servants. Geranism presents the Annihilation as an event named the Starfall, where the evil gods assailed the gods of virtue and slew all but Lord Geran, the god of the dead. Ettimenko believes in a war between the gods, but believes that the Annihilation was not the war itself, but rather the apocalyptic explosion of the body of Töriken, lord of the gods and the god of fire, metal and light.

Elveta is the only major religion that does not present the Annihilation as a war between god and evil, but rather one between two factions of gods who had been building grievances against one another ever since the creation of the universe, showing both sides as having valid complaints and capable of both heroism and cruelty; the war between gods is especially important in this religion, as the guilt of the gods over the devastation they caused informs many key moral tenets of the religion.

Some Christians have linked the Annihilation to the Flood described in Genesis, believing that the Annihilation was Inecuria's "personal flood" and linking the Titans to the antediluvians. This theory has been rejected by the Patriarchate of Inecuria, but remains a fairly common belief amongst Inecurian Christians, and is occasionally found outside of the continent. Some Inecurian Muslims also ascribe to this belief, but it is far rarer amongst them.

## Known Titans

These are Titans which are well-attested to exist through folklore, written records and, occasionally, archaeological evidence. Titans marked with **\*** are ones which are either known to still be alive or are not confirmed to be dead.

* Erasei the Light-Bearer
* Flame-Bearer
* The Frozen Corpse
* Keriso the Entrapped
* Kevalinen the Fiend
* Kuhankhar, the White Flame
* Lusira, Titan of Passion
* Malekar the Primordial
* Shilasha, Bride of the Stars
* Slaaki the Sea-Angel
* The Old Tree, the Grandfather **\***
* Vedan and Elki, the Abominable Twins

The following Titans are ones which are only vaguely attested to in records which are deemed unreliable, and therefore their existence is disputed. Again, those marked with **\*** are ones which, if they ever existed at all, are not confirmed to be dead.

* Acerion the Archivist \*
* Ahika the Deceiver
* Stragos Nightbearer

The Titans which survived the Annihilation by escaping to the Dreadlands are known as the Dread Titans, and are listed on their own page.