History of Letina

The eras below are named and classified by modern Developed East scientists, but not all of the information presented is available in-world. Some sources also use a narrower classification of three periods: the Ancient Period (Eras 1-4), the Old Period (Eras 5-7) and the Modern Period (Eras 8-10). In some circles the Tenth Era is omitted, with the Ninth still considered to be ongoing in the current time.

#### First Era (Age of Construction)

*From 110-200 million years ago to 100 million years ago*

Letina was created by a very powerful space-wandering being, known as the Good Hat due to its physical vessel resembling a huge purple hat and to differentiate from its evil twin which would soon become involved in the history of Letina itself. Good Hat created the original version of the flat realm - much smaller than the current one. It has not been determined when that exactly took place, but has been estimated to have occurred anywhere between 110 and 200 million years ago. Good Hat provided the realm with a sun and three moons: Red, Silver and White. The first version of Letina was mostly covered by lush vegetation and featured one huge lake and one large river. Somewhere in the world-spanning forest, the Tree of Five Winds sprouted in this era. Good Hat filled the forests and waters of Letina with numerous fauna, almost entirely made up of small and intermediate-sized herbivores.

#### Second Era (Age of Change)

*From 100 to 70 million years ago*

It began when the idyllic balanced Letina was first visited by the Bad Hat, who immediately began to modify the world created by its twin according to its own concept. It created the first two carnivorous species, which managed to quickly damage the small ecosystem. Many of the herbivorous species from the First Era went extinct or nearly extinct. Through the rest of the era, some more carnivorous species naturally evolved out of the surviving herbivores as well as the two founding carnivorous species.

#### Third Era (Age of Giants)

*From 70 to 30 million years ago*

It began when Good Hat visited its creation and was not quite content with the changes implemented by its twin. Good Hat increased Letina to its current size and created a mountain range around the edges to prevent the ocean water from leaking into the vacuum. Herbivorous animals exceeding 50 meters in size roamed vast, lush forests consisting of trees which grew well over 200 meters tall. At the beginning of the Era, the giant herbivores had no natural enemies as the much smaller carnivorous species were forced to aim for smaller prey. However, with passing time the carnivores evolved into much larger and more threatening forms, giving rise to the most successful order of predators in history - monsters.

#### Fourth Era (Age of Monsters)

*From 30 to 7 million years ago*

It started when the Bad Hat visited Letina for a second time. It was also not content with the changes which had taken place. He tore off a part of the Sun and threw it into one of the continents, resulting in a global fire which lasted for many years, burning down more than half of the existing forests. Most of the giant herbivores died out due to lack of food, only surviving in some isolated habitats. For millions of years afterwards the atmosphere was filled with ashes, cooling it down and preventing the sunlight from reaching the surface which led to chewy and scarce vegetation. This left a very unbalanced food chain, where the vast majority of surviving animal species were strictly predators. Even some of the largest of the monsters survived and bred successfully for millenniums afterwards, but eventually went extinct and evolved back into much smaller forms as their sources of nutrients all declined. It is also believed that dragons evolved during this era.

#### Fifth Era (Age of Reconstruction)

*7 million to 850 thousand years ago*

The Good Hat made its second control visit and saw its realm heading in a direction completely different than it had planned for. It thrust the White Moon into the world to begin everything anew, causing a global cataclysm and creating a suppression currently known as the Great Hole. Most of the existing animal species died, but still many - especially marine - survived the impact. Good Hat created huge insects cleaning up after the massacre by eating the remaining rock debris from the moon. It also created Letina's first ever sentient race - the Uothians. For the rest of the Era, the Uothians developed their civilization, nearing perfection in concepts such as artificial intelligence, long-haul space travel and nuclear fussion and fission.

#### Sixth Era (Age of Ice)

*850 to 100 thousand years ago*

It began with another arrival of the Bad Hat. Different factions of Uothians tried to kill the Hat and communicate with it respectively, but it had no visible reaction. It dragged the Sun away from Letina, giving beginning to a global ice age. This led to yet another mass extinction and a global ecosystem change. Among the plains of ice, many new animal species evolved such as passes. Despite their advanced technology, Uothians did not manage to find their feet in the new reality. Many of them left the world on their spaceships, while those who stayed behind eventually died out, possibly as a result of some virus. They left behind huge cities as well as some of their creations buried deep underground - mechas using a mix of mechanics and magic, parts allowing for assembly of machines with highly advanced artificial intelligence systems, mining infrastructure and weapons of mass destruction. Towards the end of the Era, three naturally evolved sentient races emerged: pucuks (now extinct), orcs and goblins.

#### Seventh Era (Age of Magic)

*100 to 30 thousand years ago*

It began when Good Hat made another one of its control visits - this time with a much smaller time interval between two visits. It moved the Sun back to its former distance to Letina, leading to rapid melting of the ice blocks from the previous area and significant flooding around the world. Good Hat also planted the Tree of Magic, giving the residents of Letina a source of controllable magic for the first time - earlier Letina featured only a weak residual magic field, left behind by the Hats adding on new elements of the world over the eons. Good Hat also created four new races of sentient beings - two magical and two non-magical meant to be the protected by the magical - elves meant to be protecting dwarves and basuns meant to be protecting humans. This worked out for a while, but factions of magical races then started exploiting the non-magical and eventually slavery became common in some areas. Tensions also grew between the elves and basuns. Thousands of years later the vicious global Basun-Elven War kicked off, fought with significant use of magic and threatening destruction of all areas of the world. At some point during the war, a group of people stole some magic from the elves and founded the Magic Guard on Pole. Eventually the two races destroyed each other, but it was elves who took a pyrrhic victory - there was just under a thousand of them left and only a few dozen basuns. The surviving elves then withdrew to Landio Venera, giving control over Letina to humans and dwarves. Basuns dispersed and went on to become solitary travelers traversing the globe, blending in among humans.

#### Eighth Era (Age of Chaos)

*30 to 22 thousand years ago*

Orcs and goblins had previously been living in the shadow of elves and basuns, and still remained in the shadow of the now-magic-wielding humans and the more civilized dwarves. By about 30 thousands years ago, one of the orcs had become so overcome with anger and the desire to exact revenge that he gradually became the strongest mortal being in Letina's history. Eventually he became so powerful that he had an almost unlimited ability to transform anything into something else. It was mainly this power he used in his push to become the ruler of all Letina, crushing all civilizations that put up resistance one after the other. Eventually the sentient races went into hiding. Elves tried to move their whole continent backwards in time. This was a severe mistake as the continent had already existed in the past and the two continents overlapped leading to a temporal rift. Orcs and dwarves mostly moved underground, while the humans stayed on the surface and persisted with trying to develop their civilizations even though the King kept playing with them as his toys.

#### Ninth Era (Age of Development)

*22 thousand to 400 years ago (0 to 21 600 PCE)*

The Chaos King reigned Letina for about 8 thousand years. But about 22 thousand years ago, or year 0 of PCE, twelve elves usually referred to as the Great Ancients left their continent, found the Tree of Magic on Pole and took its thirteen fruits known as the Balance Jewels to use them to defeat the Chaos King in Wagara. Their first attempt did not work, but then one of the elves ran off and grabbed a calf which had been grazing on a nearby meadow. The elves gave the 13th fruit to the calf and then the fruits became connected by a magic grid, culminating in a huge explosion. The Chaos King was turned into a stone statue and beams of wild magic shot through the continent. Most larger animals residing in a radius of several hundred kilometers from the King's defeat site received sentient-being-level intelligence. A major population of humans located to the east of the explosion received an intelligence boost. The Great Ancients stayed in the areas affected by magical radiation for many more years, coaching the humans and the newly born race of talking animals in aspects of technology, philosophy, magicology and many more. The Wagarian people and animals isolated themselves from the rest of the world and would later come to call themselves Developed East.

#### Tenth Era (Age of Current)

*400 years ago (21 600 PCE) to Now*

The beginning of the Tenth Era is accepted as around 400 years ago (circa 21 600 PCE). It was then that Ogirania, the leading nation of the Developed East, discovered in very deep caves ancient uothian information boards with instructions how to manufacture sentient beings with a very advanced artificial intelligence allowing for the occurrence of emotions and personal goals. Ogiranian scientists worked on them and created a new race called machines, with there being three quite distinct sub-races. Each of the sub-races eventually banded together and entertained the idea of having an own country. For the first created sub-race, Ogirania generously gave away some of their own territory, but the other two earned their territories following some bloody and vicious wars with neighboring countries. Also in this era dwarves and orcs started to more commonly and eagerly get involved on the surface following thousands of years of their civilizations mostly functioning underground. As suggested by the name, this era is the era of current.