First Age
Long ago, the races of men were divided; dwarves, elves, halflings, gnomes, humans, and a hundred other races lived apart on their own worlds separated by the empty and unfathomable astral wastes.But then, the gods made war on man and one by one set their worlds ablaze.
An order of powerful psionic elven mystics known as the Archons designed a moon ship, the Ark, to traverse the astral wastes and serve as a refuge for what life they could save. Some went willingly, others were coerced. Over a hundred years the ship's interior became a diverse zoo of plants, animals, and sapient creatures, each sequestered into miniature habitats suited for their survival.
Then, their mission complete, the Archon set course for a distant secret location, far from the ravages of the gods: a mysterious point in space emanating divine innocence.
Second Age
Mankind spent nearly 900 years on its exodus. Races previously ignorant of each others' existences endured forced cohabitation, all under the watchful eye of the near omnipotent Archons. It was impossible for many to preserve their unique cultural identify under such conditions.The most notably changed were humans.
Of all the races of man, they had resisted the exodus the most. The Archons had found them embroiled in an endless war of self-destruction, fueled by totalitarian narcissism. Rather than liberators, humanity saw elves as a unifying target for conquest.
Defeated, and as refugees aboard the very ship they had intended to conquer, humanity recoiled at its heritage and discarded its fascist ideology and culture of hate.
Exodus end found the refugees at a strange sunless world that physically reacted and transformed while explored. The Archons soon realized this world was imbued with a strange consciousness, hovering in a state between dream and awake.
They named her Aedra.
Third Age
The Ark discharge its occupants and settled into a slow orbit around the world as an artificial moon; its eternal engine fashioned into a small sun and moved into a quicker orbit.While the Archons fashioned great meditation halls to probe the Aedran mind, the rest of mankind went about the business of creating a new home. Decades were spent creating suitable environment for all the various lifeforms that journeyed alongside man.
This process was not without its challenges. What Aedra dreamed could take on its own reality and as she was exposed to the legion of experiences mankind offered, so too did her dreams take on new forms. Strange beings appeared on the fringes of settlements.
These creatures were not bound by biology. All shapes, recognizable and monstrous were possible. Many were no more than harmless oddities that dissolved as quickly as they had formed. But others were the literal stuff of nightmares, the actualization of Aedra's fear, pain, confusion, and anger.
These beings became known as the Unreal, and much of the third age was spent trying to communicate, placate, or destroy them as mankind etched the boundaries of his domain.
But then it all fell apart... and from the most unlikely sources.
Without warning the elves descended into civil war. A new elven faction known as the Seelie had splintered from the Archons and desperately fought to prevent them from realizing a dangerous plan.
High Archons had constructed a powerful artifact, the Maan Sarka, that could emanate a worldwide energy field antithesis to magic and beings made of magic - an impenetrable defense against attacks by the gods. But the Seelie argued to activate such a device would damage or possible destroy the psyche of Aedra, a crime equivalent to the atrocity it was trying to prevent.
But the Seelie could not overcome the power of the Archons. The artifact was completed and waves of anti magic washed over Aedra. The planet rumbled and tore at itself as waves of pain washed over her.
Their conflict over and the planet now toxic to beings such as themselves, both factions withdrew; the Archons to their moonship and the Seelie to the ethereal Feywild.
After thousands years of being the wards of elven, mankind was back on its own.
Fourth Age
However magic was not destroyed. As the anti-magic field enclosed the planet, small pockets of land were unaffected.It was soon discovered that a particular gemstone was a counter force to the Maan Sarka, able to create regions of space where magic functioned normally. Called wishstones, they were coveted by wizards and often found in the lairs of magical creature. Aedra was not to be so easily defeated.
Chaos reigned for centuries. Kingdoms rose and fell. Men withdrew and carved up the world into small petty borders, fiercely guarded.
From the east arose dark forces. Powerful technology had kept alive a small group of human engineers and scientists from the first age, fanatical and bent on rebuilding their old empire. They had remained hidden while magic was dominant, but now, with the users of magic in disarray, they made their move and slowly dominated much of the continents. Ancient feuds were rekindles and for a short time humanity divided again along racial boundaries.
In response, a second force emerged: the Ascendant. Psionically empowered humans, they made war on the antimages and slowly beat their advancement to a standstill.
But as with all things, these great empires too did recede and fade from history. Exhausting their resources against each other, the antimages retreated to jungles of Achea to the east, and the Ascendant simply vanished.
Chaos reigned again. Kingdoms rose and fell.
Fifth Age
The gods arrived.Maybe they had always intended to come, or maybe Aedra's psychic cries caused by the Maan Sarka had attracted their attention. Maybe it was random. No one knows.
Invisible, massive, and formless, they slid around Aedra in cold embrace and prodded her defenses. The Maan Sarka held. The gods howled, but they were not so easily defeated.
The gods could not reach Aedra, but their servants could. Powerful emissaries descended to Aedran cities seeking followers, granting them mystical abilities and promising power, wealth, knowledge, and eternal life. In their wake was so great an improvement in quality of life, it was impossible to deny them, even by those quite aware of their master's destructive past.
The cultures of modern times took form.
In the west, where magic was ascendant:
- Great learned men of the arcane arts pooled their resources and created the largest repositories of wishstones, establishing Espora and the island nation of Immerria. So great is their power, they can be faintly felt as far as Baatar, 4000 miles away. Here the presence of the Unreal is strongest and part of its population daily lives.
- In the great plains east of Espora, the sorcerer kings began an endless war over the capricious boundaries of their small kingdoms. This region became known as Yorr.
- Exiled warlocks, after a failed attempt to fill the political void created by the Ascendant's disappearance, fled to blasted wastelands of Infilland and Cith to practice their demonology.
- The peninsula of Slace became home to merchant lords and pirates, its geographical position allowing them to dominate trade between the west and central kingdoms.
- The forest of Roak became home of the various fairy folk, its ancient magical trees a refuge from the destructive antimagic forces of the Maan Sarka.
- Slave races overthrew the last antimage fortress in the west and created the island nation Numia. Once an ancient arboretum of exotic life, its inhabitants live in a purposely primitive manner.
- Canton and the Hun formally separated into two distinct cultures. This region had been the most affected by the turmoil created by the Maan Sarka, with large sections of land literally being ripped apart into thousands of islands. The area of largest land mass became known as Canton, and transformed into a xenophobic agrarian feudal state, while the island region became known as the Hun Archipelago, where disorganized clans of pirate lord made war on each other, Canton, and the coastal cities of nearby nations.
- The antimages fortified their positions in the jungles of Achea. Incapable of competing with the forces outside the dead magic zones, they sought to secure what little they had left. Like mad scientist, Achea became a laboratory of failed experiments gone awry.
- Further east, Zoa, where the Maan Sarka resides, all signs of civilization disappeared. Here even intelligent thought is suppressed and the giant reptiles that thrive here reign uncontested.
- A collection of local lords along the lands south of Trader's Strait formed the Vindr Commonwealth, in attempt to improve trade and jointly defend against cultures from the north, but this cooperative slowly disintegrated until it exists in name only.
- Along the valleys and mountains ranges north of Trader's Strait three major clans of semi-barbaric cultures, the Vanar, Goeth, and Ost staked out claims. These clans were remnants of the old antimage culture and maintained its fascist beliefs of superiority while simultaneously forgetting its technology.
- Far to the north, the icy plains became known as Ostborea. Its inhabits are mostly a motley group of displaced immigrants from the constant wars of the 4th age.
- A group of patriarchal warlords claimed the lands between Vindr and Achea and called it Baatar. The land is divided into many smaller principalities. Over time, a culture of espionage and subterfuge has developed that centers around royal houses and rules of honor.
