Age of Arcanum

The **Age of Arcanum** was the second age of Exandria, following the Founding. It includes the Calamity and ended at the Divergence. There are indications that it lasted thousands of years. During this time, mortals tested the limits of arcane power, challenged the gods who had created them, and brought about the escape of the once-defeated Betrayer Gods. This era has also been called the "Age of Wanton Necromancy," as there were no laws against it at the time.

## **Migration to new lands**

From Vasselheim in Issylra, some mortal races had migrated across the seas. During the Age of Arcanum a prominent civilization was known to exist in the verdant lands of Marquet, with a religious sanctuary called the Vault of Shumas in the Aggrad Mountains. The Dranassar lived in the lands that would later be called Xhorhas in Wildemount. Artifacts from the Age of Arcanum can be found along the Menagerie Coast and the Swavain Islands.

Migration across the seas continued in the Age of Arcanum. During this age, some rock gnomes migrated from Issylra to the continent known as Gwessar, a continent that would later be known and called Tal'Dorei.

And it was during the Age of Arcanum that a ring of Issylran warlocks is believed to have fallen in with fiends and produced the first tieflings. Persecuted by religious zealots, some tieflings also sailed across the Ozmit Sea.

## **Early Age of Arcanum**

In the early Age of Arcanum, the dwarven Thomara clan dug into the fallen earth titan in the Zenwick Mountains to exploit a precious metal vein cluster and built a vault city there. The society eventually collapsed into madness and cannibalism. This city and Yug'Voril are both described as being "thousands of years" old in 812 PD, but it's possible Yug'Voril was established earlier, during the Founding.

In the first millennium of the Age of Arcanum, an ancient black dragon-turned-dracolich, Guuthal the Ever-Fed, terrorized the world.

## **Arcane ambition**

“
Over time, some of the peoples grew arrogant. Seeing their arcane gifts as proof the gods held no sway over their fate, some began to believe that, with enough understanding, they could become as powerful as the gods themselves.
”

–
The Myth of Exandria
[!h]

As civilization flourished and spread under the guidance of Ioun, mortal mages grew ever more powerful, eventually building entire castles in a day and even learning to create life-forms of their own. Minotaurs were created as living weapons and guardians, and mage engineers built intricate Gearkeeper Constructs to guard their vaults. A handful of crystal-powered flying cities, including Aeor, Avalir, and Zemniaz, traveled across Exandria.. And around six or seven centuries before the Divergence, the greatest sages of the Age of Arcanum managed to experiment with reversing the flow of time without being killed.

Aeor created the aeormatons, incredibly advanced and sentient automatons that, eventually, fought for their freedom and became citizens. At some point after their creation and before the Calamity (although the exact period is currently unknown), Aeorian politicians gave several of those aeormatons to different people around Exandria, as some sort of a peace offering or reaching for collaboration. Those automatons worked as caretakers or helpful companions until they tried to kill those who were gifted to; not all of them succeeded, and some even survived that rebellion, but the event itself, known in history as the Care and Culling, created a precedent from which it was very rare to see Aeorian technology outside of said city (and thus it is now rare to find remnants of it far from its ruins in Eiselcross).

## **The spread of corruption**

Over the long course of the Age of Arcanum, the Kuul'tevir, noble predecessors of the lizardfolk, debased themselves with violence and greed, leading to the ruin of their civilization. They had had a god-empress, but she was succeeded by a mere ring of warlocks.

Centuries before the Divergence, the increasingly decadent and cruel society of the drow began to primarily worship Lolth, the Spider Queen.

Acek Orattim, priest of Tharizdun, made his base in Gatshadow Mountain, under which Tharizdun had been imprisoned since the Founding. Through Acek, Tharizdun's power twisted and elevated the mountain, riddled it with a maze of tunnels, and corrupted the surrounding region.

This apparently contradicts one account of history (improvised by a guest DM), in which the Betrayer Gods had been banished so thoroughly during the Founding that they could not grant their divine magic to their followers, and worship of them was pointless.

## **Aspirations of godhood**

   Driven by the quest for immortality, an unnamed mortal woman challenged and defeated the God of Death, and she took his place in the pantheon (but not his entire portfolio) and became the Raven Queen.

The day after the Raven Queen's ascension, three of the Raven Queen's heroes—Clay, Stone, and Dust—were tasked with removing the body of one of the heroes of "the war" from a city. Told by the Raven Queen to follow Melora's instructions, they split the body into parts and took the parts to various locations, and built temples that their families would protect through the ages: the Clay family tended the Blooming Grove, the Dust family tended the Cinderrest Sanctum on Kravaraad, and the Stone family tended the Menagerie.

Though the other gods quickly destroyed the secrets to the Raven Queen's ritual, her achievement would inspire two dark archmages to world-shaking feats.

A century before the Calamity, the archmage Vecna's contributions to arcane theory enabled many of the artifacts that would stoke the flames of the Calamity. He began hoarding secrets, killing those who knew them, and achieved lichdom. He conducted terrible experiments in the Verstglade for many years during this time. He amassed a force of followers and undead, disappeared with them into the Shadowfell to conquer Thar Amphala, and there built Entropis.

From Entropis, Vecna used the celestial solstice, a merging of ley energies, to open portals for his forces to attack his enemies at a whim and retreat to Thar Amphala before retaliating forces could muster. Vecna defeated one old rival, Kas, who accepted an offer of eternal life through vampirism in exchange for becoming Vecna's chief lieutenant. Vecna forged a sentient relic blade for Kas, who used it to terrorize Vecna's enemies for months, thereby becoming Kas the Bloody-Handed. Vecna, who had managed to reconstruct the Raven Queen's rites of ascension, then attempted the Ritual of Seeding to ascend to godhood. He was interrupted when the Beacon of Arms, a holy army of Pelor led by his champion Yos Varda, used a reverse-engineered celestial solstice to attack Thar Amphala. Yos Varda, Vecna, and Kas all perished, and Vecna's forces were defeated and scattered, but only a few members of the Beacon of Arms returned victorious. Vecna had left instructions for his most devoted followers to carry on the work of raising him to godhood in spite of his death; they founded the Remnants.

## **The Betrayer Gods return**

Also inspired by the Raven Queen's ascension, Archmage Vespin Chloras sought to harness the power of the Betrayer Gods. He broke open their prison, where they had been spawning hungry creations of their own, and released them back into the Material Plane.

The flying city of Avalir returned to Cathmoíra for a Replenishment loaded with extra ether just after the Betrayer Gods were released from their prison planes. Asmodeus planned to corrupt the Replenishment to release the Primordials Rau'shan and Ka'Mort so that they would join the Betrayer Gods in the war to come. The Ring of Brass foiled that plan and caused the banishment of the Primordials instead, but in the process they caused Avalir and its massive stores of Ether to explode, shattering the continent, spewing ash across Exandria, and leaving behind an archipelago that would later be called the Shattered Teeth.

Driven by an urge for domination, the exiled gods came forth from their broken prisons, enthralled the mage who had freed them, and founded a kingdom of their own on the far end of the world. The kingdom was called "Ghor Dranas" (which means "gathering of shadows" in Draconic), and was located in the region which would later become Xhorhas.

Torog's followers used the caves beneath Ghor Dranas as torture dungeons, and Torog tortured the Betrayer Gods' enemies at the Bastille of Torment under the Dunrock Mountains. A warrior named Ganix attempted to strike down Torog with his army, but his own forces were defeated instead, and Torog captured and tortured Ganix, twisting him into the Laughing Hand.

## **Assault on Vasselheim**

     From Ghor Dranas, the Betrayer Gods spread their influence and eventually made an assault on the bastion of Vasselheim. The battle lasted twenty days and nights but, with the divine aid of the Prime Deities, Vasselheim and its inhabitants stood triumphant, if battered, at the end.

This assault left both mortals and gods alike shaken. Mortals turned their arcane powers to the forging of heroic weapons, and the gods prepared for war. The Betrayer Gods each forged a sentient weapon with the life force of a greater fiend: the Arms of the Betrayers.

Just before the war to come, which would be called the Calamity, followers of Zehir slaughtered the people in the Vault of Shumas and locked it off. An undead caregiver there watched over the sleeping children of Zehir, awaiting their epoch. Similarly, seers of a serpentfolk empire foresaw the Calamity; to survive its dangers, the empire created a magical stasis field under their capital city of Vos'sykriss (now Visa Isle) where its strongest people waited to one day emerge and rebuild their empire.

## **Possibly before or after the Calamity began**

Given that the Calamity lasted for centuries, some events may have occurred before it started or during the war.

* During a celestial solstice, elemental rifts burst open across Exandria, causing fires, earthquakes, and an outpouring of elemental monsters whom the people of the world struggled to combat. The Ashari, up to then a nomadic people, divided into four tribes to seal and watch over the rifts to the Elemental Planes of Fire (Pyrah Tribe), Water (Vesrah Tribe), Air (Zephrah Tribe), and Earth (Terrah Tribe).
* Corellon banished Artagan to the Feywild for tricking an elven culture into worshiping a whale carcass.
* Leylas Kryn was present when the first Luxon beacon was found.
* The city of Shattengrod was destroyed.

## **The Calamity**

*Main article: The Calamity*
The war that came to be called the Calamity destroyed most of civilization, and only one-third of Exandria's population survived.

## **The Divergence**

*Main article: The Divergence*
With the Betrayer Gods defeated and banished, Melora planted the Arbor Exemplar in the Barbed Fields. The Prime Deities imposed self-exile and created the Divine Gate. Thus ended the Age of Arcanum.

## **Trivia**

* Brennan Lee Mulligan, the dungeon master for Exandria Unlimited: Calamity, described Matthew Mercer's view of the Age of Arcanum as highly technological, saying, "It's much more like a modernist version of this ancient past, where again, magic is like technology, meaning that it is simultaneously deeply taken for granted, but absolutely essential. It is everywhere, and completely disregarded, but at the underpinning of all things, really."
* Although this historical period was famous for its great supernatural deeds and impressive arcane achievements, there was also notable classism and inequality in the distribution of resources, so that, below the glorious flying cities, on the surface of Exandria, there were areas of the planet that had no access to magic at all.

## **References**

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 See *Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting*, p. 7.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Guuthal terrorized the world "during the Age of Arcanum in its *first* millennium," said in a way that implies multiple millennia.  See "Curious Tides" (1x89) at 3:12:45.
3. ↑ The lore places the fall of the Thomara clan "thousands of years ago" in the "early Age of Arcanum".  See "The Ominous March" (1x109) at 1:40:50.
4. ↑ More modestly, members of Vox Machina understand the early Age of Arcanum to be 1500 years ago, maybe longer.  See "The Climb Within" (1x110) at 0:21:05.
5. ↑ See "What Lies Beneath the Surface" (1x81) at 2:20:04.
6. ↑ See *Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting*, p. 98.
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 See "CelebriD&D with Joe Manganiello" at 15:08.
8. ↑ See *Explorer's Guide to Wildemount*, p. 173.
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 See *Explorer's Guide to Wildemount*, p. 57.
10. ↑ See *Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting*, p. 26.
11. ↑ See *Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting*, p. 28.
12. ↑ See "The Ominous March" (1x109) at 2:25:42.  See also 3:09:52 for narration that it was a "Primordial earth titan."
13. ↑ See "The Ominous March" (1x109) at 1:40:48.
14. ↑ See *Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting*, p. 71. "Thousands of years old" may imply something earlier than what was described as "early Age of Arcanum." The Crypts of Thomara are "early Age of Arcanum" and alternately described as "thousands of years" old or "well over 1500 years, if not longer."
15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 See *Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting*, p. 6.
16. ↑ See *Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting*, p. 16.
17. ↑ See *Explorer's Guide to Wildemount*, p. 12. See also p. 282 on Aeorian hunters.
18. ↑ See also Aeormatons.
19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 See *Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting*, p. 123.
20. ↑ See *Explorer's Guide to Wildemount*, p. 290.
21. ↑ See "A Storm of Memories" (2x46) at 1:12:00.
22. ↑ See "Dinner with the Devil" (2x110) at 3:52:14.  Zemniaz was the name of the city; Zeidel was the name of the society.
23. ↑ See "Excelsior" (E3x01) at 1:50:35.
24. ↑ In Quen’pillar 835 PD, Caleb read about sages who experimented with reversing the flow of time, and those who were not killed in the process existed "close to 1500 years ago."  See "Commerce & Chaos" (2x31) from 1:38:40 through 1:40:18.
25. ↑ See "Hidden Truths" (3x26) at 3:47:03.
26. ↑ See "A Stage Set" (3x32) from 1:53:20 through 1:56:14.
27. ↑ See *Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting*, p. 23.
28. ↑ See *Explorer's Guide to Wildemount*, p. 19.
29. ↑ See *Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting*, pp. 63–64.
30. ↑ See "Bitterness and Dread" (E3x02) at 1:57:20.
31. ↑ See "Duskmeadow" (1x57) at 57:07.
32. ↑ See "Causatum" (2x70) at 3:31:06.
33. ↑ In 836 PD, Eremis Stone said this happened "a millennia [sic] ago."  See "Family Shatters" (2x96) at 2:35:29.
34. ↑ See *Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting*, p. 17.
35. ↑ See "The Endless Atheneum" (1x106) from 1:17:39 through 1:18:44.
36. ↑ The lich Vecna misused the Verstglade for terrible experiments for "countless years" during the Age of Arcanum. See *Explorer's Guide to Wildemount*, p. 147.
37. ↑ See "The Endless Atheneum" (1x106) from 1:18:44 through 1:22:10.
38. ↑ Pike recalled that only a few returned.  See "Denouement" (1x35) at 0:54:58.
39. ↑ See *Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting*, pp. 38–39.
40. ↑ See "Fire and Ruin" (E3x04).
41. ↑ 41.0 41.1 See *Explorer's Guide to Wildemount*, p. 142.
42. ↑ See *Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting*, p. 99.
43. ↑ This happened "during the Age of Arcanum." See *Explorer's Guide to Wildemount*, p. 99. It must have happened after Vespin Chloras released the Betrayer Gods from their prisons.
44. ↑ See "Between the Lines" (2x78) at 3:21:22.  It's hard to say for certain whether this took place before the Calamity, given Halas Lutagran's ability to manipulate time, but he discovered the Permaheart Chamber floating in the Astral Sea, studied it while the gods warred with each other, and learned the heart's provenance from "his tomes," suggesting it probably happened some considerable time before this human discovered it.
45. ↑ See *Explorer's Guide to Wildemount*, p. 30.
46. ↑ See "CelebriD&D with Joe Manganiello", especially at 49:58.
47. ↑ See *Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting*, p. 97.
48. ↑ See "Fire and Ruin" (E3x04) at 6:01:02.
49. ↑ See *Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting*, p. 30. This happened "a dozen generations ago" as of 812 PD.
50. ↑ In 810 PD, Keyleth says this happened "about 900 years ago or so, roughly a thousand years ago."  See "Aramente to Pyrah" (1x22) at 1:17:27.
51. ↑ As of 835 PD, this happened "a millennium ago." See *Explorer's Guide to Wildemount*, p. 32.
52. ↑ As of 835 PD, "a millennium ago." See *Explorer's Guide to Wildemount*, p. 40.
53. ↑ See "Lingering Wounds" (2x89) at 41:02.
54. ↑ See *Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting*, p. 5. The Calamity is described as "a terrible war that wiped out most of civilization more than a thousand years ago" (as of 812 PD).
55. ↑ See *Explorer's Guide to Wildemount*, p. 11. The Calamity is described as "a terrible war that wiped out most of civilization nearly a thousand years ago" (as of 835 PD).
56. ↑ *Twitter Post-finale Chat with the Exandria Unlimited: Calamity Cast*, Twitter Spaces Q&A session held 22 June 2022. Full transcript here.
57. ↑ See "*4-Sided Dive*: Kiss and Tell" (4SDx16) at 0:49:32.

**Art:**

1. ↑ Official art of a flying city during the Age of Arcanum, by Robin Olausson (source). Used DM response with permission.
2. ↑ Official art of the soon-to-be Raven Queen, by Jessica Nguyen from "Exandria: An Intimate History" (Sx61) at 3:26. Used with permission.
3. ↑ Official art of Vespin Chloras, by Jessica Nguyen from "Exandria: An Intimate History" (Sx61) at 3:37. Used with permission.
4. ↑ Fan art of the destruction of Avalir, by Nosnexus (source). Used with permission.
5. ↑ Official art of Erathis and Bahamut battling Asmodeus and Gruumsh at Vasselheim, by Kent Davis from "Exandria: An Intimate History" (Sx61) at 3:53. Used with permission.