Age of Discovery

The Age of Light was the first age after The Awakening. Taking place about 3.2 billion years after the forming of the planet, 1 **AB** to **800 AB** on the Aves Belief Calendar OR between the year **3,200** to **3,999** on the core timeline.

Surface world population near end of the age: 500 million

## Themes

#### Chronicle

Age of Wonders, Machine Age, Steampunk Age, Golden Age, Fall of the Moon

#### Flavor

*Chrono Trigger (1,000 AD), Final Fantasy IX, Renaissance Era to circa 1,600 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.

* How personal issues and hangups can cloud one's judgment.
* The contrast between humans/technology and spirits/nature.
* Growth and maturing as an individual, overcoming one's faith.
* Children are reflections of the values taught to them by their parents and their institutions.
* The line between respectable people and criminal behavior depends entirely on the values of society.
* Man's need for companionship.
* The nature of identity, whether people are individuals who can think for themselves, or whether they are products of their environment whose ideas and beliefs come entirely from society, from religion, from nationalism. What makes us different and truly unique?

*(12 Angry Men, Ghibli, Lord of the Flies, Les Miserable, Robinson Crusoe, Ulysses)*

#### Aesthetics

*Classical Rebirth, Venetian and Northern Renaissance, Mannerism*

## Key Events

* The "modern" age of the world begins following the exile of the human empire, destruction of their moon, and the reshaping of the world's landmasses.
* Solpowered steam-engines help shape and connect this new world making basic technology an important part of everyday life.
* Following the last balance, several lith races scattered and hid across the surface world setting up outposts. Within a century they claim territories of these new continents for themselves and for the first time in recorded history sol and lith races begin to live as neighbors.
* The twisted faith of the Primals begins to take grip of the world's population under the guise of the Aves Belief. Using their fear and hatred towards the lith races that have spread across Boreal, the religion focuses on spreading and dividing the people.
* Industry is born and begins to thrive as new inventions are being made everyday. The invention of the steam-powered airship notably allows for the exploration and charter of this new world.
* Explorers would find strange brandings and evidence of dark rituals in places abandoned by the lith races, captured members of the lith race always spoke of dark powers from below, some were on the surface to prepare for their masters, others were there trying to escape them.
* By halfway through the age most of the civilizations of the surface experiences a social renaissance; Races once consider outsiders like the lazuli or lodestar are now considered equal members of the sol races while even a few lith races from the Great Below have been accepted in smaller communities.
* Solstones become spellstones and new techniques are discovered to cut, polish, and enhance the powers of the magical gemstones that power the world. The Sol Trade is reestablished and soon solshards become the standard international currency. Emeralds are especially abundant thanks to the No'Qi, causing worldwide hunger to fall to record lows.
* Roden archivist create the Codex; a sol-powered, interconnected network of knowledge and communication that utilizes the world's leylines to connect the world. This awakening of information caused an alignment with an ethereal plane known as the Wanderer's Library, opening a portal between the library and the small research facility housing the Codex. Soon, the great city of Dirigidale is built around this portal.
* World wonders are built utilizing new discoveries in engineering and powered by spellstones.
* Towards the end of the age several lith tribal leaders, notably the krahki, rootwalla, and groak, make their way towards neighboring sol settlements. To the surprise of many they come unarmed and express their interest to fully cooperate and coexist with their sol race neighbors.
* Once again the balance comes and once again the sol races gather for another battle at the Deneb's Rest. However as their massive army stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the opening to the underworld they were not met with the usual army they had fought twice before, but instead a frail human child who collapses before them.

## 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 AB to 700 AB*

* **1 AB**
	+ **Dawn of the Age of Discovery:**
* **345 AB**
	+ **The Codex and the Library:** Roden archivist create the Codex, an interconnected network of knowledge and communication centers connected using the world's leylines. This awakening of information caused an alignment with a cosmic plane of knowledge known as the Wanderer's Library, opening a portal between the library and an open stretch of land that would go on to house the the Codex Archive and Dirigidale.
* **509 AB**
	+ **The Great City of Dirigidale:** Knowledge, innovation, and technology soar as scholars dedicate themselves to the pursuit of knowledge in the Wanderer's Library. Academics from around the world of all races, surface or otherwise, hear of the otherworldly library and make pilgrimages to the site of the Way Portal. Soon the great city and future wonder of the world, Dirigidale, was built to house the huge population of scholars and merchants that surrounded the fountain of knowledge that was the library.
* **700 AB**
	+ **Dawn of the Age of Silence:**