Ages

## THE FIRST AGE OF THE GODS

After the Kingdom of the Ancients was formed by the mortals, they began to seek favour with their divine creators, worshiping and thanking them for all that they had, and of course, praying for their holy protection from the cruel realities Drakortha in his divine wisdom had left upon the world, Temples were built to all the Holy Ancients, and the Lands of the Shire became rich in culture and wealth, other settlements began to be built within the blessed lands, and soon those settlements became thriving cities, all the prosperity within the holy lands of the Ancients overshadowed a terrifying threat however, and a malevolent being known as Terth unleashed its fury upon the land of The Shire, volcanoes spewed death upon all who did not escape, and the once grand cradle of civilization collapsed overnight, the ashes barely fallen upon the ground before many more events happened across the world, thus, the Age of the Gods, the Age of Worship and Peace ended, and The Age of Rifts Began.

## THE AGE OF RIFTS

The Age of Rifts was an Age of Terror and Death, no man was prepared for the carnage and destruction that would ensue over the hundreds of years the ceaseless onslaught of the Rifts would bring, entire cities disappeared over night, entire cultures over weeks, and the more terror and destruction wrought, the more Rifts would appear upon the earth, feeding off of the despair, a few groups stood against the rifts, The Templars of Cossin, the Red Cloaks of Arkadya, The Ironhammer Dwarves, The Countless armies of the City states and Nomadic Tribes, and the vengeful survivors of the Shire had all developed techniques to fight the rifts, and once again the nations of the world were united as it was in the Age of Gods, and for a time the Rifts seemed to be beaten, the Mortal races, aided by their beloved Gods, had defeated Terth, until their brothers in arms began to rise from their graves, and the hundreds of thousands that died in the horrors of the Age of Rifts, took vengeance on their kin, and countrymen.

## THE AGE OF UNDEATH

The hordes of the living dead proved to be too much for the city-states and Kingdoms of the world, whereas a rift arm can be brought down with a well placed volley of trebuchets, or a heart be torn to pieces by arrows or crack troops, the morale of the dead could not be broken by heavy cavalry, their advance could not be stopped by arrows or boulders, even walls could barely hold them, the plague would set in, and take thousands of lives, and they would come back, and take thousands more, hordes would wander through quarantined sections of cities, they would wander the countryside and dismantle cottages and keeps to get to the meat within, many cities fell, but through decades of starvation, death and disease, the dead began to rot away, and the few survivors inherited the ruins of the world, surely it was another gift from the Ancients, and a new age of Zealotry began, with New Ironheart becoming the center of the World, the largest most prosperous nation, a temple on every street corner, the strongest walls the tallest towers and the most battle hardened soldiers protecting it all, the New Age of the Gods had begun.

## THE SECOND AGE OF THE GODS

With the wave of Zealotry settling across the land, the Gods began to meddle with the affairs of the mortals, and throughout the Age of Gods this would cause massive amounts of bloodshed among the different Kingdoms spread out across the lands, The God of Light and the God of Darkness quarreling a great deal over The Shadow Tome, The God of Light gave the Mortals a Divine mission, to retrieve the shadow tome at all costs, to win the favour of Still, and to win the favour of still, many followers of Still began to kill each other once the tome was recovered, to all that gazed at its pages misfortune would come, and the dusty book switched hands for centuries until the book fell into the hands of a powerful Kingdom far out of the reach of any others, who safeguarded it against numerous invasions from desperate Kingdoms trying to gain glory and please their wondrous God of Light, but it would seem that The God of Light was not as Wondrous as many thought, for one day the sun did not rise, and it did not rise again for a century, as if to punish the Gods for playing with the fate of the mortals, Terth arrived again, and the center of the world was the only light left, until the flames died out, and the Kingdoms of the world were left in Darkness.

## THE AGE OF DARKNESS

Another Age of Death began, and like the Shire before it, the center of the world was destroyed in a single night, hundreds of thousands died that night, and quickly the Armies of the Mortal Kingdoms began to mobilize their entire strength to combat the foe, centralized to the Heartlands, the Terthic Invasion was opposed by every nation that could get men to the front, and a worldwide Alliance would form that would shape the world for  millennia to come, in the beginning things were going well, the Ironhammer Dwarves opening the gates of their mighty stronghold to take in survivors and become the center of the resistance, Nihilians, Volkovians, Templars, Gossans, Parans and Crusaders of every stripe united under the Ironhammer banner, all chanting the same thing "Remember Ironheart", the crusade that followed the destruction of Ironheart was as brave and courageous as it was foolish, thousands died in the advance, and those that remained retreated to Ironhammer, and their repsective homelands, to defend them and theirs, Nihilians and the Volkovians were spared the brunt of Terths wrath, the hordes moved north, Ironhammer was the site of hundreds of battles, the bodies of rotten meat piled higher than the snow, which caged the starving and outnumbered defenders from escape, The Brave Souls of Ironhammer stood to the last man, few escaped, but Terth suffered greatly for every step inside the impregnable stronghold until it wasn't snow that caged the defenders inside but the walls of corpses they made in every hall, but no matter how brave they were, Ironhammer fell, and with it went the hope of all who remained on the Mainland. Although a few Kingdoms stubbornly refused to surrender, most intelligent people left the scarred lands in search of new lands untouched by Terths Wrath, thus the Age of Exodus began.

## THE AGE OF EXODUS

The Age of Exodus, often called the Age of Continents, was an age of man made destruction rather than the carnage that took place on the Mainland, with many refugees fleeing Terths Onslaught, the natives of the Continents were quickly either integrated or killed to make room for the Kingdoms of the Mainland, many Alliance Kingdoms creating a loose Confederation and dividing the continents among themselves, immediately causing conflict to break out between member nations and non member nations, and quickly everyone was forced to pick a side in the conflict or, Some chose to Side with the Nation of Lemar, however many more chose the Alliance, however the sheer tenacity of the Lemarian people kept the war going for decade upon decade, more and more land being swallowed by both sides until a natural disaster caused many of the continents  to become unlivable, A cruel punishment by the Gods, but one that ultimately ended most of the conflict, as both sides were too damaged to carry on to any meaningful degree. After generations of living on the continents, they began to look more and more like the Mainland they left behind, and many of the nations that survived on the continents dropped any notion of going back to their ancestral homes, however some explorers did occasionally make their way to the mainland to see what was going on, many did not return, but the few that did told stories of some Kingdoms surviving, of an end to the Age of Darkness, so many who wished for a better lot in life decided to come back to their forefathers homes to rebuild, many were still poor, but at least they were participating in the glorious reclamation of their Ancient lands from the grasp of Terth.

## THE AGE OF RECLAMATION

​The Age of Reclamation was an age of great conflict between nations returning from the continents and those who stayed on the mainland, massive amounts of people began settling land in claimed territory and on top of that nations came into being in mere months as tens of thousands crossed the seas and settled in to the un-colonized land, upsetting the already fragile balance of power between the greatly weakened and cautious nations that stayed for hundreds of years on a land that was by all rights in hospitable. Wars broke out rather quickly, and the massively weakened once great powers of the mainland could barely defend their territory, thousands of men died, risking rifts with every drop of blood, the stalemate continued for centuries as civilization spread across the land once again, the newly found tradition of exploration helped greatly in the recovery of the world, and had other benefits, colonies from many of the great powers began springing up in strategic locations making the nations rich and ensuring that interests in key locations were secure, wars between the great nations had mostly gone cold allowing much of the worlds explorers to go on undisturbed, and soon the hundreds of explorers found a titanic landmass known as Orrostar, untouched by the horrors of Terth, the inhabitants of Orrostar were rich beyond measure, and in one way or another all known kingdoms on the newly discovered continent had pledged their loyalty to the new world superpower, Valcrest.

## THE AGE OF ORROSTAR

With the discovery of what many called "The New Mainland" the great powers of the Old began to worry, and with their worry came massive conquests of the smaller nations on the Old World in order to match the colossus that was Valcrest, colonies were attempted on the coasts of Orrostar, but almost all of them were destroyed or failed on their own, the allied nations of Orrostar unwilling to help the colonists of the Old World, thats not to say that the entire continent was unified, a few holdouts remained that refused to Accept Valcrest's hegemony, Trinity Reach, a large city state, stood against the superpower largely alone for decades, both sides wishing to control the whole of the continent, and with the oppression of The Ordinators, a highly advanced continental police force who brutally punished anyone who stepped out of line, pushed many individuals to fight alongside the rebellious city, carrying on the conflict even further until the first Rift appeared on the untouched landmass, destroying the proud city-state and a gigantic swathe of the continent as well, many inhabitants of the fallen continent of Orrostar claim that it was due to the colonists, that their mere presence brought Terth wherever they went and caused the destruction of their wondrous land, not knowing how to fight the rifts as the Old World did, the nations of Orrostar quickly collapsed, and the Great powers of the Old Mainland successfully set up Colonies, the once great nation of Valcrest no longer strong enough to stop them, disappeared into obscurity, maintaining control over its capital Archwind and little else, the age of Orrostars dominance began and ended in a century, but with the continents discovery, the nations of the old world would pick at the carcass for centuries to come, and maintaining control over colonies in Orrostar became a prominent focus in the many wars during the Age of Stagnation.

## THE AGE OF STAGNATION

A span of time lasting nearly 500 years, an age dominated by war, societal collapse and general unrest, a time dominated by nihilism. Nations would be there one day and be gone the next, in the nations that lasted through it, rebellion and religious persecution were rampant, rifts were common place, but even they didn't seem quite right, like the world around them they were sickly and weak, writhing and dying at gusts of wind, as if to compensate or maybe just because of the ever present feeling of hopelessness at it all they were numerous, but the once great threat that unified the land became nothing more than a way to profit, instead of vast armies, drums and horns of war and rallying speeches, a few hundred men got together, toppled them effortlessly and mined the hardened carcass for resources, instead of soldiers marching in to the once prosperous city it engulfed and desperately trying to get people out, to save just one life from Terths onslaught, many became simple scavengers, looting the ruins as women and children starved to death in their buried hovels, a true age of moral decline, the heroes had died long ago. What were once proud nations devolved into city states, and those quickly devolved into wandering tribes, before they disappeared forever, the last nations on earth, hemorrhaging under the pressure, began to show cracks long forming, and deep in their foundations, The last vestiges of civilization, Vildeer, Voska, Prussia, and the City state of The Spire began to ask the same questions that led to the downfall of so many other nations, heroes turned into enemies of the culture, religion turned into a joke, and the morals of the state were torn down for the sake of it. Wandering tribes settled on land and people refused to uproot them when their rulers attempted to maintain sovereignty, the rot of Terth worship became an open and celebrated thing, the Gods of old had truly left them, those who had not lost faith since the beginning, those who stayed strong in the face of impossible odds those who stood firm as the world crumbled around them, the final straw broke the camels back, and the last civilizations shook hands with their fate, fading into nothingness, betrayed from within, from without and utterly abandoned by their once beloved Gods.

## THE AGE OF CORRUPTION

An Age surrounded in mystery, records of this time are largely lost or destroyed, some tribes claim that the destruction began when Man attempted to steal the power of God, however others claim it was a massive war that occurred between the Mortals and the Gods, whereas some say the Age was caused simply by the Gods leaving the world to its fate, all sources agree however, that the Age was not one of prosperity for any party involved.