The History of Kalarain

File:History.png

## **Hopes, Sorrows and Duck**

In 301 AS, a duck became king. It was the greatest thing to happen in Kalarain’s history, everything before and since has been disappointing.

Everything else is listed below.

## Pre-0 AS (After Shattering)

There’s not a lot to say about the time before 0 AS. At some point, writing was invented. At some point, the first of the six schools of magic, mind magic, was discovered. The people who discovered were elves from the nation of Escaro, and at some point, Escaro took over the world with it.

This is not an exaggeration. Before writing, only very simple forms of spirit magic were usable; no one had any idea that mind magic was even possible. Escaro discovered it, and then kept it a secret. Their ruling council, the Assembly, used it to bewitch and control the minds of foreign leaders and influential figures. The world fell under Escaro’s control. Most places didn’t even know it had happened, there was suddenly just a lot of money and tea being transported to Escaro.

There is not a lot to say about this period, but that’s not because important stuff didn’t happen. It’s because of this:

## 0 to 50 AS - The Shattering of the World

Elves live a very long time. No one’s sure exactly how long Escaro controlled the world for, but it, also, was a very long time.

As the years, decades, centuries rolled on, Escaro’s Assembly of educated, erudite scholars became more and more divorced from the world around them. They fixated on social theories and philosophy and debates of the metaphysical that went on for literal decades. As the wealth of the world rolled in, they sat in their marble hall and mused on the ideal form of society, and what it meant to be an elf.

They largely ceased to see the rest of the world as people. Instead, they were subjects of intellectual curiosity, stuff of endless and fascinating debates. And so many exciting ideas were discussed! How might a country function if children were separated from parents at birth? What philosophy could drive a country where everyone swapped lives every few months? What would that look like!?

They became very, very excited and curious about their ideas. They debated, and theorised, and then Iole, a junior scholar, came up with a scheme that would make those ideas reality. Amongst many of the long lived cultures of the world, he is reviled.

Between 0 and 50 AS, the Assembly of Escaro liquidated the world’s cultures and history. Using powerful spells and rituals, they took their stories and theories and ideas for hypothetical societies, and imprinted them on the people of the world. They made up cultures and histories, and made people believe that was how they lived, that was how they had always lived. One country was made to believe that they suffered terrible dragon attacks every 37 years, with a society built around producing soldiers to fight this menace that would never come. Another placed all authority in children under 10. Theocracy, democracy, divine rights of kings, caste systems, ethnic heritages, creation myths, all of these were taken and shoved into the minds of unwilling participants. The Assembly treated the world like an ants nest that could be moved around with mind magic.

As a result of this, the world does not remember what happened before 0 AS. Most of the world’s population had only oral histories; between the Shattering, and the Inquisition that came after, those histories have been lost. The truth may be out there, but it is impossible to distinguish from the thousand Escaro fabrications that accompany it.

The Assembly’s motivations seem to have varied. Some amongst the Assembly seem to have considered this purely as an intellectual exercise; ‘what would this theoretical country look like in practice?’. Another Assembly faction seems to have taken it as a personal challenge: Can we erase history completely? This group went as far as creating fake historical artefacts, muddying the waters even further. Others felt that the disorganisation and chaos brought by shattering the world’s cultures and societies would make unified resistance against Escaro less likely. Others still seem to have had genuinely idealistic, if bizarre, motives: By removing the ‘shackles of the past’, they theorised, the world could evolve into something better.

And some just thought it was funny.

## 50 to 119 - The Patchwork Era

Everything went completely insane.

Around 50 AS, people had started to figure out something was up. In 50 AS, Escaro was attacked by a group from what is now the nation of Nur, and it kept being attacked until it broke apart mid-way through the Era. Escaran ruins can still be found in East Mosshaven.

The damage was already done, though. Escaro had invented a bunch of nonsense countries, and then left them to function on their own. It went about as well as you might expect. The Patchwork Era was a time of war and chaos and a lot of confusion.

Escaro’s constructed countries are known as ‘Patchwork Countries’ or ‘Escaran Patchworks’. Only one confirmed Patchwork has survived until the modern day, the bizarre nation of Pascaria.

Lenore was founded during this period.

## 119 to 270 – the Inquisition and the War of Words

In 119 AS, the second school of magic, elemental magic, was discovered. It spread rapidly.

At this point in time, the world was only just emerging out of the Patchwork Era. It had become well known, at this point, that the mind mages of Escaro were responsible. A lot of people had died, cultures had been destroyed, and people were very leery about magic.

And then mages all over the world started popping fireballs out of their hands. And that turned fear into hysteria.

So came about the Inquisition, an international movement dedicated to stamping out magic and writing. Founded in 122, the Inquisition believed that magic was an evil force that created Shattering-level calamities, and writing was the key to magic. So they went to war. Mages were run down, books and scrolls were burned in the thousands; at their height, the Inquisition were active in almost every corner of the world. Some of its more extreme elements took things even further; any sort of questioning of the nature or way of the world was evil. For these members, the Inquisition became almost a war against knowledge itself. They were quite zealous, and many of them did awful things.

One group stood to oppose them. The Library of Lenore, an institution dedicated to seeking and preserving the knowledge of the past, had been founded during the previous era. From 180 onwards, the Library mounted a massive education drive. Librarians travelled out into the world, and under great and constant threat, taught the people of Kalarain.

The clashes between the Inquisition and the Librarians is known as the War of Words. It was a war sometimes fought with violence, but mostly a conflict of persuasion and dogma. And in the end, the Librarians won. The philosophies of the Inquisition were rejected, reading was embraced, and the Inquisitors were forced back to strongholds. In 220, the Kingdom of Grut, the de facto center of the Inquisition, fell to the Alabaster Curse and became the Milky Peninsula, and the War of Words came to an end.

Shortly afterwards, survivors from the Inquisition fled across the seas to the Eternal Thunderland, and the Slayer Organization established themselves in the Fractal Mountains to hold back the Curse.

The Library of Lenore ended their education drive in 270. The Library remains still.

## 301 – That time a Duck was King

In 299 AS, a small village in Briola was decimated by a plague. Neither the village nor Briola exists anymore, but nevertheless, this was an event of monumental historical importance. Because one of the few survivors of that plague was the village duck, Quackers. Quackers was beloved by all, and was a good duck.

Two years later, the despotic King of Briola sent a group of men to raise taxes from Briolan lands. These men came to the village, kicked to the villagers around to show them who was boss, and then tried to confiscate the livestock.

One of them tried to put hands on Quackers.

And then his hands fell off.

Two people from that village, two years after their death, reappeared as awakened spirits. And anyone who tried to touch that duck, unless it was to pat it, got attacked. This was not something that happened before. Previously, only worldspirits were able to interact with the world, and only via providing healing to speakers. Weak healing. This was the first time that a spirit of the second or first tier had a clear physical effect on the world. No one had ever seen anything like this.

In the months to come, the ghosts attacked a lot of people. Including Briola’s king, who tried to level the village with catapults. The spirits were concerned only with the success and well-being of the Quackers. In time, he was interred on the throne as King Quackers, and ruled for several happy years.

The world’s first Ectochoir appeared shortly afterwards.

## 380 – 600 – The Methusian Era

In 380 AS, Maya the Great, ruler of the island nation of Methusia, launched a massive military campaign against the rest of the world. She did a very good job of it. Between 380 and 420, the Methusians conquered almost the entirety of the Northern Continent, and just under half of the Southern (encompassing Athaelore, Drewnolas, Rodynia Strana, and most of what is now the People’s Happy Utopia). Methusia lost their Southern territories after Maya’s death, but they held the north, and the Methusian Empire remained the dominant world power for the next two centuries.

Two more schools of magic were discovered during this era. First, spatial magic, the magic of shaping and space, was discovered by an unknown individual who came to be known as the Toymaker. This anonymous mage used it to make gifts and toys, and then teleport them to random cities and places around the world. They also used it to distribute offensive fanfiction about tyrannical leaders. Numerous Methusian emperors fell victim to extremely detailed stories that portrayed them romancing other dictators. The Toymaker was active from 440-507 AS, and in one of their final acts, ported five volumes of magical research onto the front steps of the Library of Lenore. They may have had access to a sigilsite. They were never identified.

The fourth school of magic, illusion magic, was discovered under much grimmer circumstances. Early in the sixth century, Child-Queen Melitta ascended to the Methusian throne. Silent, serious and 10 years old when she ascended, she was installed as a political puppet. And then, over the next decade, three very important truths became apparent to Methusia’s aristocracy. One, Melitta was no one’s puppet. Two, Melitta was actually very good at the power game. And three. Melitta was completely, totally, obsessed and enamored with death.

Between 520 and 527, Queen Melitta orchestrated the Grimm Hecatomb, a campaign of mass killings whose only goal was the death of as many people as possible. Disguised initially as political purges and strategic elimination of threats, all of the resources of Methusia were turned to this task. No one was safe. And it was under these conditions, as a means to hide away from Melitta’s death squads, that illusion magic was discovered. It saved many lives.

Amidst the carnage, there were heroes, and first among these heroes was a Methusian transgender woman named Saraa. A peasant from an unassuming background, Saraa led and coordinated a huge rescue effort, saving thousands upon thousands of people from the Hecatomb. Her resistance effort was entirely non-violent, relying on deception, stealth and bribery, her only goal the preservation of life.

In 527, Saraa was captured, having used herself as a distraction to allow ships of fleeing citizens to escape the Methusian coast. On the same day she was executed, in the same city, Melitta met her end by the concealed blade of Vernon-Lament’s ambassador. Within a century, both ascended as Worldspirits. Melitta became a Worldspirit of death. Saraa became a Worldspirit of life, the most powerful Worldspirit the world had ever known.

As the decades rolled on, the Methusian Empire became weaker, more divided, more corrupt. The natives of Methusia’s conquered territories, scarred by Melitta’s Hecatomb, rebelled at every opportunity. In the early fifth century, Kalarain’s orcs had become a diaspora people after losing their ancestral Old City to an unknown catastrophe. An early Methusian attempt to enslave them led to literal centuries of orcish revenge attacks, weakening Methusia’s grip on the world even further.

By the end of the sixth century, Methusia still held external territories, but the Empire had been reduced to a shadow of its former self. It would continue to fracture over the coming centuries.

Traansadoor was founded in this era.

## 630-820 – Runes, Spirit Magic and Varamir

Early in the seventh century, a group of dwarves from the nation of Thur Farim discovered how to cast spells using the magic of spirits, souls and life energy. Unlike the other four schools of magic which had been discovered over the past millennium (mind, elemental, spatial, illusion) spirit magic could be practiced in a limited capacity without being familiar with the relevant sigils. The dwarves were already natural practitioners due to their birth rituals. Discovering spirit magic sigils, however, supercharged what mages could do with it, and allowed mages to cast actual spells. In the 200 years that followed, spirit magic played a defining role in world events, especially on the Southern Continent.

It started with the Vale of Ghosts. In 653, a Traansadooran mage stumbled across a sigilsite, a location of intense arcane potential. This was a momentous discovery. While some historians have linked other events in history to sigilsites, the Vale sigilsite was the first 100% confirmed case, and the first one to go public.

At the time, the area the sigilsite was discovered in was a Traansadooran colony. A group of well-meaning mages tried to tap into the sigilsite and use its power to bind lost, disembodied spirits into new bodies of stone and clay. They certainly tapped into it. The resulting misfire turned the area into an uninhabitable ghost vortex that possessed anyone who set foot in the region. Hence, it was named the ‘Vale of Ghosts’.

The next set of spirit magic catastrophes came around two decades later. The Traansadooran ambassador to Thur Farim, a human named Varamir, made some key discoveries about spirit magic: Techniques to steal life energy from those around him (‘dark magic’), and a secret method to control his repossession as an ectochoir. He then tried to coup the Traansadooran government, multiple times, over a 30 year period (670-699). He also set up numerous death cults to Melitta, whose worship was just starting to take off. He also also taught a number of his followers the ectochoir repossession technique, which meant that every time the Traansadooran government killed one, they just came back and tried again. Varamir actually succeeded in taking power once, in 685, before finally, finally leaving the country for good in 699 after Traansadoor figured out an alchemical method to block the repossessions.

Varamir, by this point known as Varamir the Revenant, then went on a bit of an international spree. He appeared in Lenore, picked up Absinthe (later of the Talons) as an apprentice, and somehow set off a magical effect that turned Lenore into the weather–and–terrain–shifts–every–day hellscape it is today. He attempted to take over Aethelore, and Thur Farim, setting up more Melitta death cults in each, and then he retreated into Drewnolas, before finally being slain by Carrin of Aethelore in 817. Killing Varamir gave Carrin’s line an nigh unassailable right to the Aetheloran throne, and led to a unification of the country under his banner.

This era saw the appearance of the first Anids, and the founding of Nur, the first Anid nation. Aethelore was founded and united early seventh century, split apart, then reunified with the defeat of Varamir. Utopia was founded in this period.

## 990-1070 - Talons, Sorrow and Hope

The most recent era has had numerous defining events. It is worth differentiating them.

Around 990, the Talons, an evil consortium of seven powerful individuals, began a bloody campaign to take over the isolated Isle of Askr. They succeeded, and created one of the cruelest, most brutal dictatorships in history, naming their new nation Camara.

In 1018, the magic of force was discovered by a genderfluid orc named Mogg, hailing from from an orc territory in what is now east Mosshaven. Mogg, remembering some of the disasters brought about by the previous discoveries of the schools of magic, traveled around the world informing people of his discovery in an initiative called ‘please be nice with this’. Nargal, a troll from Rodynia Strana, genius inventor, forger of magical items and Mogg’s best friend, travelled with him.

In 1021, Dancell-Praise-Cesar of the Talons of Camara discovered a massive mind magic sigilsite under the country of Sarea, and used it to mentally enslave the country.

In 1030, the first of the Heralds of Midnight appeared. This was a group of seemingly unconnected entities unified only in their seeming purpose of causing cause destruction, and that they burst into shadow when they died. The more bestial Heralds were midnight black in colour. An enormous black dragon terrorized the coast of Athaelore, a swarm of black beetles ripped through pre-Mosshaven grain supplies, a Traansadooran preacher sprung up in the country’s south, urging them to war against the rest of the world. These were all Heralds.

By 1033, people started putting the pieces together about the Heralds of Midnight. With significant status and prestige as the discoverer of force magic, Mogg (and Nargel) began another initiative. They attempted to bring together a group to fight this mysterious threat, fearing the concerted attacks on civilisation heralded something terrible for all. The group they put together was known as the Camarilla of Mice. It started small, but as time rolled on more people were drawn to the banner, and an international effort began to battle and root out the Heralds.

In 1037, the People’s Happy Utopia enthroned a new king, King Bae. King Bae is a whining, entitled child of a man, and a cruel one. He took the position through the wiles of his advisor, Malvarzand. Utopia began quietly getting ready to expand. Malvarzand was later discovered to be a Herald of Midnight.

In 1042, the Sorrow came.

The night the Sorrow appeared is known as the Arrival. As it appeared, the entire population of Sarea turn to stone. Then, the entire population of Vernon-Lament died in a single instant. Across the Provinces of Ash, the six massive sigilsites flared to life, and no one could approach them. The next day, the population of Vernon Lemont rose again, the worlds first undead. Invisible, all-powerful and monstrous, the Sorrow ravaged the world. The psychotropes, the Warped Ones, the undead, the Drained, all were born during this period. The People’s Happy Utopia took the chance to invade their neighbours, massively expanding their borders.

In 1043, Mogg and their Camarilla of Mice made their stand on the uninhabited Black Isle. Nargal had been working on an immensely powerful ritual, which he believed might be able to defeat the Sorrow. It was incredibly dangerous.

Mogg asks for volunteers, and they got them, in their thousands, from all across the world.

The Battle of Black Isle took place over seven days. The Sorrow beat against the immense magical defenses of the Camarilla’s wizards and speakers. A legion of psychotropes, caught up in the Sorrow’s rage, came to fight against the Camarilla’s martial defenders. On the fourth day the defenders almost fell, but were saved by the surprise appearance of a figure thought long dead, Varamir the Revenant. He arrived to their rescue.

On the seventh day, a veil of shadow fell across the island. Inside, there was silence. No one knows how the final defeat of the Sorrow happened, but when the shadows cleared, it was defeated. The Sorrow was gone. The defenders had passed as well. At the very center of the island stood a ring of stone figures. Mogg, Nargel and members of the Camarilla from all across Kalarain and all walks of life, holding hands.

The sacrifice of the Camarilla inspired the creation of Mosshaven. Many of the heroes who gave their lives on Black Isle came from the Northern Continent, and in the aftermath, around five formally fractious countries and many smaller states came together, in peace, to form a new nation in Mosshaven.

In the south, the stone people of Sarea woke up. A few remained petrified. But most were freed, and they woke freed from the mental enslavement of Dancell-Praise. This brought the creation of the Sunstone Sisterhood, the brave, benevolent order of heroes who travel the world doing good deeds.

The appearance of Varamir at Black Isle threw an already tense Athaealore into a civil war. Varamir had been missing, presumed dead, for centuries. His motivations in hiding and reappearing have been the subject of great debate; some believe it was part of some centuries long scheme, others suggest he may simply have grown tired of his cruel pursuits and sought out a simple life. But whatever the reason, the royal family’s claim to the throne was substantially built on being of the bloodline that had finally killed Varamir the Revenant. His reappearance has caused issues.

While Malvarzard exploded into shadow when the Sorrow fell, King Bae remains in power. With the gains carved out from countries ravaged from the Sorrow remaining in Utopia’s possession, they remain a powerful threat indeed.

## 1072 onwards - The Present

The year is now 1072. Thirty years have passed since the Sorrow fell, but we are not free of it yet. The Lamentations of the Sorrow, the malicious magics it left behind, are still very much here. And they show no signs of abating.

This is an era of heroes. The Sunstone Sisterhood stands against evil on an international level. Mosshaven, the largest country of the era, devotes itself to its people, and the Slayers of the Fractal Mountains continue to put everything on the line to guard the world from the Alabaster Curse.

It is also an era of darkness. Within their twisted iron fortress of a nation, the Talons of Camara plot and scheme to expand their reach. Utopia hungrily eyes the rest of the Southern Continent. Dark shapes move in the shadows.

And through it all, the Lamentations of the Sorrow continue to spread misery and death. Time has not weakened them. The cruel magics of the monster cause suffering on an international scale, and there is nothing that anyone can do about it.

At least, not until now.