The Fall of Man
They say that in the age before ruin, mankind reached beyond the sky, daring to set foot on the moon with dreams of traveling to the stars beyond. When they first reached pale lantern that drifts above the world, it gave them the confidence that they would not suffer the same fate as Icarus, they could defy the gods and leave this prison of ocean and dirt. For a time, it was believed the heavens themselves would be conquered, that the void would be their kingdom. But pride soured into discord, and soon the fires of envy burned hotter than the stars. The mighty realms of men built strongholds upon the great lantern floating in the darkness. Each claimed it as their own, seeking to keep its resources for their people, or perhaps more accurately for their kings, and none would yield. Whispers tell of a gathering of men where oaths were broken, trust betrayed, and tempers flared. Not long after, war erupted – sudden, merciless, and without restraint. The fighting initially raged upon the lantern’s dust before infecting the skies above, and at last, upon the earth itself. Among the ruins of those battlegrounds, wanderers still say you can find stones melted into glass, too smooth to have come from any hand but fire from the sky.
No weapon was spared. Fire rained from above, poisons spread upon the winds and through the rivers, and plagues were unbound from their cages. The lantern-wars raged for three decades, until most of humankind was reduced to rubble, and the world below was cracked and thirsting. The weapons unleashed by man cursed the world itself, draining it of its vitality and casting a cloud of shadow and death as far as the eye could see. The most advanced minds on each side sought only one goal – to create a weapon that would end the wars and secure their victory. It is said the children of that age were born coughing ash, and mothers marked their faces with soot as both grief and protection. In those days of fire and ash, two forces would conspire to seal mankind’s fate. First was the development of humans that were not human – they were born of metal and spark, nameless and faceless, but able to speak with man like the wind speaks to the trees. These nameless ones brought forth a mind and presence that allowed mortal men to advance their sorcery in ways that were previously only seen in myth and legends. The mere presence of the nameless changed man, unlocking a power in them that had long been forgotten. Through this alchemy humans were able to elevate their very nature and twist the world in beautiful and terrifying ways, even distorting the natural makeup of their own being. But there was a cost, as there always is. Humanity became scarred, some visibly, some invisibly, and some in ways that not only let them feel the energy of the universe, but to command it. Even now, families whisper of ancestors with eyes that glowed faintly in the dark, or hands that sparked when they touched iron. These marks are worn as pride by some, as curses by others.
The second was not something that happened on purpose, but a consequence of man’s relentless pursuit of riches and glory. Years of neglect and disrespect for the world itself could only be tolerated by the gods for so long before the course would be corrected. For decades man poured poison gas into the air and buried their waste in the earth. The oceans were treated with contempt, and nature itself began to cry. It happened slowly at first – wind and rain pounding lands that were meant to be dry, great dust clouds blowing through fields once waving amber with grain. The sun itself scorching the land until nothing would grow, baking the poison ash into the soil where mighty empires once thrived. Yet humanity ignored the world, ignored the warnings from the gods, and continued their quest for dominance. Old farmers still bow their heads before planting, muttering apologies to the soil – a ritual born, no doubt, of that age of withering harvests.
When at last the smoke cleared, the victors found themselves standing upon a hollow prize: kingdoms broken, oceans drained, forests withered, the very breath of the earth poisoned. In the years that followed disease and plague would more lives than the war itself, as if the gods meant to wipe the earth clean of man. Despite all their advances, their science and their magic, it was a time of darkness. This great age of man would come to an end, and the world’s inhabitants would be shaped by new forces. When the dust settled, when the lights no longer flickered with false magic, when the will of man was no longer enough, it would be reforged as something new. The elders gave this time a name spoken still with dread: the Cataclysm.
The Reforging and Rebirth
The Cataclysm is remembered as a single word, yet it was no single hour. It was an age thousands of years long, of breaking and reshaping, when the earth itself grew weary of mankind’s wounds and remade its own face.
When the seas fled, they left behind hollow scars: vast bowls of stone where great waves once roared. These chasms split the lands apart, and the peoples were scattered throughout the land. Even now, the people of the land mark their maps by those ancient scars, calling them reminders that the world itself once fled from man’s hand. The old empires, already shattered by the great war of the sky, crumbled into dust. Their crops would not root, their governments withered, and their arrogant knowledge was buried under hunger and ash. What remained of mankind lived not by wisdom, but by the oldest law - survival. It was a time of strife and decay. A time where humanity was reminded of what it felt like to begin. A time when entire lifetimes were contained in fewer than forty winters and only a lucky few were gifted more. Or perhaps they were cursed instead to endure hunger and pain for longer than was natural. The world of man became nothing more than dust and the records of this time are lost to the elements.
For long centuries, only whispers remained of the civilizations before. Our own records stir again some three thousand years later, with the founding of Timbur Deep, where the world of man began to reform into something that resembled an empire. It was in this city that the Arcane Academy was founded, where sages and conjurers gathered to perfect the rituals that drew from the strength of the universe and reshape reality. It is here where the myths and legends constructed of fire and breath gave way to scrolls and books. Yet it was not just here that man had survived.
Legends still murmur of how humanity endured in other shadows of the ruined world. Some fled to the mountains, clinging to the last forests. Others vanished into the dark caverns carved by their ancestors, hiding beneath the surface of the parched earth. The descendants of those who fled into the caverns still light their hearth-fires deep below, whispering that the surface cannot be trusted. Still others clung to the sparse oases scattered across the desert of the world. The gleaming age of wonders had long passed, and the works of men crumbled under the slow heel of time.
But in their suffering, the reforging, mankind was changed. The poisons of the war and the strange fires unleashed upon the land awakened something long dormant in their blood, mutating and distorting a once unified being. Abilities once rare became common: minds that could hear unspoken thoughts, hands that could move stone and flame without touch. In time, those without such gifts dwindled, some entirely forgotten. In their place rose a new kind of man, some given different names, and man recognized them as kindred spirits born of the same soil, half-human yet fully alive.
Even the bones of the earth shifted in those years. The western basin was filled once more with waters as the rains returned, falling unbroken for decades. A single vast sea was born, known to us as Thalunia, and from the vanished eastern hollow there rose a new landmass: Tellunis, the heart of the New World. Timbur Deep rests within this vast land, along with the other settlements that humans and half-humans alike created. Each with their own forms, own cultures, their own ways of living. The earth began to resemble a world again, and the cycle of life continued.
Thus ended the Cataclysm – not with mankind’s extinction, but with its remaking. From fire and famine, from ash and silence, a different world was born. But mankind was not alone in this new world, because something else emerged from the depths of the earth as it shattered in The Great War.
The Swineherd
In the centuries after the Cataclysm, humankind rose once more from dust. They bound sounds into language, learned to plant seed into soil, built towns from timber and stone. In those days, they were not alone, for they met their cousins of blood and spirit: the Visari who walked beneath the green canopies of the forests, and the Khuldinai who carved their halls in the roots of the earth. For a time, there was peace among them, and no blood was spilled between kin. In truth they rarely spoke to one another, each developing their own language and culture, often symbolic of their geography as is usually the case with mortals. But there was another reason they rarely ventured beyond their own borders – they were afraid of the great beasts of the world.
Above all beings strode the dragons – large creatures with claws and teeth, scales hard as steel and breath hot enough to melt man and metal alike. They were ancient beings, some believed they were the chosen form of lesser gods in the mortal realm. In truth no mortal knew where they came from, and it did not matter because there they were. In that age they were not the hunted, nor the hidden, but kings in truth. They were radiant, wise, and terrible in majesty. They spoke all tongues, but not in the way that required tongue, no, they spoke directly to the mind. To men and demi-humans alike they were rulers and gods. In reverence, the peoples of Tellunis bent their knees, and in pride, the dragons took the world as their dominion.
But power, once tasted, turns bitter. The lords of the skies grew proud, then cruel. Some became glutted with greed, others deaf to the cries of those who served them. Tribute became bondage, and reverence became fear. Where one may have protected their people as a guardian, they eventually came to imprison and enslave those they once looked after. Even today, men and Visareen alike spit into the fire before swearing an oath, for they say it was in the flames of dragon-pride that promises first turned hollow. The voices of the earth’s children rose in lamentation, until at last, the legends say, the gods themselves were moved.
So it was that the gods chose not a king, nor a warrior, but the least of men – a swineherd dwelling in the shadow of Mount Aris, where the dragon-thrones were set. In dreams the gods called on him: “Rise, and teach the dragons the might of our children.” Yet fear gripped him, for what is a shepherd of swine against the fire of immortals? Six times they called, and six times he hid himself. But on the seventh day the gods displayed their wrath, and he could not flee their command.
And so he climbed. Twelve days and twelve nights he ascended, and each night the gods whispered secrets into his dreams. No man knows what gifts they gave him – whether the hidden names of dragons, for in those days true names held power, or the arts of flattery and charms – for such mysteries were swallowed by time.
At last he stood before the lords of flame. What passed between them was not shared with the world, not even the gods will speak of it. Weeks passed, and the world thought him lost. But one morning, the swineherd returned to his door. In his arms he bore twelve crystal orbs, gleaming with an inner light. Each bearing a distinct color swirling within, and each appearing to hold the entire cosmos inside it.
“The dragons have given me their promise,” he declared. “As long as these remain beyond their grasp, the tyrants shall not rule over us.”
And it is written - the swineherd wandered Tellunis, gifting seven orbs to the hands of men, Visari, and Khuldinai, hiding four in secret places, and keeping one as his own. With its power he raised the first walls of Timbur Deep – the city that stands to this day, twelve thousand years and more later.
What I have written here is but a moment in the span of ages. Since then, our world has grown vast and diverse, rich in peoples and cultures, but all remember him. His name may be forgotten, but every farmer who tends swine still lays a stone at the corner of his sty, a gesture said to echo honor the humble man who faced the demi-gods and survived. The residents of this vast land cannot forget that it was a swineherd who first humbled the dragons, and from his courage the new age of mortals began.
The Lorekeeper
The world of today bears little likeness to that of the ancients. In their time, the lands were broken into many pieces, scattered across the face of the earth like shards of a shattered plate. Seas lay between them, deep and wide, and the peoples were divided. Now there is but one great land: Tellunis, the heart of all life beneath the sky. Beyond it stretches Thulania, the encircling ocean, endless as the horizon, a girdle of salt-sea that binds the world. A few small isles drift close to its shores, like pebbles beside a mountain, but none vast enough to rival our great land.
The face of Tellunis is many-faced indeed. There are the rolling plains of Somaria, where the barbarian tribes wander with the wild beasts, owing fealty to no master but the horizon. Their songs carry on the wind even now, and travelers say you can measure a man’s courage by whether he listens or joins the chorus. In the center of the lands lie the steaming swamps and jungles, where the air hangs heavy and the great beasts of elder ages still walk, lords of tooth and scale. In the north, green forests stretch unbroken for leagues, while the south is drowned in rainforests of towering trees and endless mist. At the very edges of the world, north and south alike, the land freezes into white deserts. There, a man may be slain not only by claw and fang, but by the cold itself - his blood crystallizing before it can stain the snow. Children in the southern villages still dare each other with the rhyme: step on the snow, your blood will show.
The vast ocean, though ever-shifting, is no gentler. Its surface may seem calm, but beneath dwell monsters both vast and small, and only the desperate or the daring venture far into its expanse. Still, its bounty feeds many, and along its coasts villages rise and fall, their nets cast daily into the dark waters of Thulania.