Eras

The past Eras of Noxerra are now, in the post-war wasteland, mostly lost to time. While a handful of ancient texts and artifacts remain to help historians fill in the void, the ancient history of Noxerra runs deep - with echoes of the past still casting shadows into the wasteland that remains.

### **The Eras**

The eras or ages of Noxerra's history are divided into the following time periods:

* **The Lost Age:** An ancient period before modern civilizations came into being. Prehistoric beasts and people roamed the earth before the influence of the gods and cosmos found their way into guiding the hands of those ancient wanderers.
* **The Thousand Year Darkness:** A time of great strife that befell Solerra just as the first cities and kingdoms came into being. A dark age from which little remains - save for grave legends and the foundations upon which ancient religions would come to be built. Out of this shadow, civilizations truly spring into being. Some consider the current Post-war Era to be an echo of this period.
* **The Time of Swords:** A period of war, famine, and the birth of longstanding cultures. It is known as the Time of Swords because of the great wars fought across the wasteland left behind from the Darkness. The greatest of these wars were fought between the elves and the humans. The elves emerged the dominant power, ushering in a new age of advancement and tentative peace.
* **The Old Empire:** The five-hundred year reign of the first elven Empire. Ruled by the wildly varying Cathyrion Emperors, the elves ambitiously set out to conquer the known world, but only truly managed to rule the northwestern part of the continent. Still, it was under this banner and during this time that the first true foothold of modern civilization found it's way to Solerra - before the Empire's collapse that led to another period of great war.
* **The Shattered Kingdoms:** A forty-three year long war. Called the Shattered Kingdoms era because of the great divides in the territories of the Cathyrion Empire.While the Shattered War itself was limited mostly to the northwestern territories of the Empire, the east and the south were not without their own conflicts in the aftermath of the Empire's fall. Out of this conflict rose the Kingdoms of Sol, Valtoria, and Yarmouth - among other powers that would last until the War of the Nine Knights.
* **The Great Romance:** A time that was mostly peaceful and bereft with stories of gallant heroism. Lasting a little over one hundred years, the Romance - also called the Golden Age - was a time of prosperity, with the few wars that broke out in this period being framed by later generations as noble and glorious battles and stories. It was during this time that the first great dragon hunt began, though dragons still remained in Solerra long thereafter.
* **The Reckoning:** The Romance was ended by a series of political assassinations, leading to another brief continental war across Solerra. While not as extensive and bloody as the Shattered Kingdoms, the illusion of peace established by the Romance was broken, and for the next few eras, the tensions between nations would rise to a new kind of boiling point. This war was known as the "Reckoning War."
* **The Holding:** A time of tense peace - marked not by open warfare but more subtle methods of subterfuge and espionage. Known for a generals sense of unease - and the rise to power of the some of the most influential people that would become to affect Solerra forever.
* **The New Imperial Era:** Ending the Holding by the kickstarting of the open Sol Rebellion, this era saw the rebellion through to it's completion, and the fulfillment of the original Cathyrion Emperors' ambitions. The new Sol Empire was founded, and the known world united under one flag. This unified peace however was short-lived, and the Mage-Emperor himself was deposed with his lieutenants warring over the Empire in the War of the Nine Knights. This conflict would plunge the world into another dark time thanks to the cataclysmic effects of powerful supernatural forces.
* **The Post-War Era:** The time in which Solerra - now called Noxerra - finds itself now, also simply called the Wasteland era. A near dark-age of some two hundred something years in which new civilizations and cultures have grown out of the ashes of the Empire. The distant past is little more than a long-forgotten memory. It has seen many wars fought, and many new kingdoms rise and fall. The world still has not truly found it's footing, and there is little hope of recovery - with many seeing Noxerra as a doomed hellscape - a world that is already dead, and swarming with supernatural - and mortal - evil. The main story of Dead Evil takes place here.