The following is an overview of the history of my personal D&D campaign setting.
The World
The people of the world have never been so unified as to name the world as a place. Although there are many material planes, the only race who acknowledge the world as a plane, (elves) simply call it "the material plane". The world is a vast, wild, unpredictable, dangerous place, hundreds of thousands of years old since its creation by the forgotten elder gods. It is an old world, having gone through many violent changes. Its surface is scarred by millennia of civilization and war. Its people live among ruins, and relics of the past can be found around every corner. The sun, once a happy and bright yellow, has dimmed since the forgotten age, now to a golden orange, painting the skies with dazzling twilights.The Ages
The ages of the world are periods of time spanning approximately 10,000 years apiece. Since the dawn of recorded history, with the rise of the dragons, there have been 4 ages, and the world is currently in the 5th. It is currently the 3067th year of the fifth age, which means that elves who live today will indirectly remember the beginning of the age through their great grandparents' generation. With only 33 generations of elves passed, they have a detailed record of the entire history of the civilized world since their arrival in it.The Forgotten Age: The Antediluvian Age
Before the dawn of time, and unrecorded by historians. This was the time before the gods claimed the world. The world was variously ruled by eldritch beings worshiping elder gods, aboleths, ilithids, and beholders. It ended with the rise of the pantheon as they arrived on the material plane.The gods purged the world of these sinister far-realmers in an event known as the deluge, which is commonly described as a great flood or war. Indeed, it was a flood, during which almost the entire surface of the world was covered in water. The agents of the gods, the angels and fiends; and their weapons, the krakens; slew these aberrations and drove them from the surface, into the depths and other planes of existence.
The only ruins which survived the deluge can be found deep in the underdark or at the bottom of the oceans, where the purge did not fully reach.
The First Age: The Dragon Age
The first intelligent race upon the world were the dragons. They formed a global empire, called the Council of Wyrms, which stood for 10,000 years, setting the standard by which ages were measured. During this time, they held the few, primitive, intelligent wildlife, such as kobolds and lizardfolk, as servants. The dragon age ended with the arrival of the demihumans.The ruins of the first age are few, but colossal. Whole mountains were hollowed out to be the lair of great council wyrms. However, their great size did not help them survive through the years, and most are little more than etched fragments among great heaps of nondescript crumbling stone. There are still some elder wyrms from this age who have survived to contemporary times.
The Second Age: The Age of Elves
The demihumans, (Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, and Gnomes) all arrived upon the world around the same time, with such proximity that it is hard to distinguish the order of their arrival. Most historians agree that the elves were likely the first, as they developed written history and civilization first, despite their very long lives, implying they were probably around for several thousand years before the dwarves and gnomes. Additionally, they are native to the Feywild, which means their arrival on the material plane would have been the result of great effort to colonize another plane on a grand scale.At first, the demihumans were either slaves to the draconic empire, or small civlizations in out-of-the-way places not ruled by any particular dragon. (The old shires of the halflings, the deep forests of the elves, and the subterranean mountainhomes of the dwarves) Together, the demihumans were eventually able to unite against the dragons, and topple their global empire, primarily by stoking the flames of unrest between the inherently evil chromatic dragons and inherently good metallic dragons.
This was followed by 8,000 years of great prosperity and relative global peace. This was the golden age, and there was advanced technology and magic during this time. The vast majority of important ruins hail from this second age.
The Third Age. The Age of War
Then the orcs, ogres, and other goblinoids arrived. Their arrival was due to the divide which formed in the pantheon, where the gods factioned into alignments of morality and ethics. The evil and chaotic factions made a point of creating their own living kin.They joined with the savage beastmen of the world, such as lizardfolk and gnolls, and washed over the world as a tidal wave of violence. The demihumans were able to break this tide, and after weathering the initial storm, managed to divide the "greenskins" into warring factions, much as they had done with the dragons.
The war ended with the casting of the single most destructive spell in history: the Almaghest Spellbomb. This spell reshaped most of the world's geography and buried or destroyed much of the splendor of the second age. In particular, the last standing dragon kingdom acted as the focal point of the spell. The crater that remains is today known as the thunder rift.
In the wake of that massive conflict, there were many power voids, and the demihumans themselves began to fight over newly open lands and powerful artifacts. The wars were not only between race, such as the great wars between the elves and dwarves, but also within their ranks, resulting in geographic factioning which would ultimately produce the various subracial ethnic groups.
The drow formed during this period, and claimed the underdark to be their own, driving out the insideous lifeforms which formerly dwelt there. The remainders of the aboleths, ilithids, and beholders began to return to the surface, and seeing a world unprepared for their return, took the opportunity to reassert their former glory.
The most diverse ruins can be found from the third age, showing the sudden cultural diversity of every race, and the myriad of civilizations which rose in its wake.
The Fourth Age. The Age of Decline
Of course, 10,000 years of nonstop war cannot be sustained. Eventually, as resources and manpower dwindled, deals were struck, and borders drawn. With new common enemies rising from the dark, former enemies were given reason to unite to fight back against the darkness. Over the course of this age, the demihumans, now on the defensive against dragons, aberrations, beastmen, greenskins, and the simple danger of the wilderness itself, could not hold their own.Civilization has been steadily losing ground for thousands of years, and the living people, lacking the resources to reclaim former settlements, have been losing their history, their culture, and their technology. Famine, pestilence, and plague ravaged the people, while natural disasters rocked the countryside.
There are almost no significant ruins from the 4th age, as there was practically no expansion. What ruins were built in this time typically belong to forgotten cults, the early Yuan-Yi, the fallen Tiefling empire, and former aberration fortresses. This is the dark age of the world, ended only by a single divine spark: humanity.
The Fifth Age. The Age of Light
Seeing the sorry state of the world, the gods came together to try and stem the tide of chaos and evil. They cast into the world the first humans. Humans are the combined good qualities of all of the demihuman races who preceded them, though the meaning of the word "human" is still unknown to all. Humans are intended to be able to fit any role, and any culture. They have short lifespans, but a high reproductive rate, and can produce viable offspring with any demihuman or greenskin. The vision is for humanity to bolster the numbers of civilized people in the world, and reclaim the former glory of all the lost empires.You have been born into this age.
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