old p:f // Timeline

[Kaez]

1. The Making of the Twelve and the Forming of Qarzeth

Black = extinct
Red = extant

[Kaez]

~1,000,000 years ago, the Making. Ancients, Cosmos, Primordials born.

~800,000 years ago, Dragons, Giants, Gods born.

~650,000 years ago, Dragonkin born.

~500,000 years ago, Primordials dissolve into two distinct groups: Halflings and Brutes.

~200,000 years ago, Dwarves and Gnomes born.
~200,000 years ago, Ogres, Goblins, Trolls born.

~150,000 years ago, Brutes dissolve into two distinct groups: Northern Men and Steppe Men.

~50,000 years ago, Birth of the Elves

~10,000 years ago, beginning of the First Age (Khudul). Small farming communities form.

~9,000 years ago, the Fall of the Moon Elves.

~8,000 years ago, Dwarves distinctly split into Hill Dwarves and Snow Dwarves.
~8,000 years ago, Jyrinx variant of Dragonkin begin adapting civilization.

~7,000 years ago, Steppe Men adapted to Woodlands venture south and east into Rosia.

~6,500 years ago, Orc-Troll Wars

~6,000 years ago, Orcs arrive in Guvrahk.

~4,500 years ago, the First Sun Elf War

~4,000 years ago, Afloer first settled in Rosia.

~3,900 years ago, the Unmade disappear.

~3,500 years ago, Wrought Elves born.

~2,500 years ago, Gnome-Jyrinx Wars

~2,000 years ago, the Second Sun Elf War

1,999 years ago, beginning of the Second Age (Khudul-Rosia)

[Kaez]

The Taming and the Dragons

From the birth of Qarzeth, the planet was wild and turbulent.Joth was anxious and excitable, and the great oceans frothed with turmoil. Terrible waves, as tall as the highest mountains, crashed upon each other and the shores were thrashed violently by their might. Few creatures were made so durable and so strong as to survive the chaos of the sea, and many were torn apart and slain.

Bôhla, too, was undisciplined. Potent storms surged, lightning angrily spat from the thunderclouds. The skies, ferocious as the waters, were inhospitable to all flying things, and the creatures that flew there were chiefly bound to the ground and the valleys.

Ythrador, though tamest of them all, could not offer sanctuary. Her earth quaked and molten rock poured from the crevices and boiled the shallow pools. The mountains were thick with ice and snow and the jungles were dense and wicked.

Atí looked down upon these youngest three, those to whom she promised the gift of life, and knew them to be turbulent and unruly and inhospitable for all that she had granted them. And she called upon Azor and spoke unto him: "Forge for Qarzeth a life from the God Stone, so that unfazed it will be by the weathers and so it, in turn, it might tame them."

And Azor worked long and hard for many ages of Qarzeth in crafting a great race and, when the time had come, sealed them within eggs of the God Stone and lay them upon Qarzeth, in the seas and on the land and in the air so that Atí could breathe into them life. And she did so.

At once the eggs cracked and hatched from them came the Dragons. Glorious crafts of Azor's hammer and tongs, they were clad in scales of silverly God Stone and had within themselves the heart of Azor's forge and when they roared the fire of his bellows came from their throats. And never before nor since would any fire burn so hot as theirs.

He had indeed made them resistant. Their scales protected them from the skies and the seas and the wings and bodies were unrivaled in their strength. They swam the depths and flew through the clouds and ran over the earth unwaveringly.

And Azor said, "For these creatures, age, like the wilds, will be no pain." And within them he hid a key to immortality, for when a dragon grew elderly and collapsed an ancient wyrm, another God Stone egg awaited within them, and hatched a Dragon anew.

Unlike any other that roamed Qarzeth, the Dragons had a language with which to speak, as the Twelve did, and often they conversed with each other. They were both intelligent and wise, and they were loyal to Atí and Azor. They gathered many eggs together and, with their breath, melted the God Stone and reforged from it a great monument to their heavenly parents and sang to them around it.

And Atí and Azor were very pleased by this and Qarzeth, too, began to patiently calm itself as its lands and seas and skies were conquered and humbled. So Azor sent down for them many monoliths of a pearly white God Stone, unlike the chromatic kind from which they and their eggs were made, so that they could make magnificent things with it. In this, the Dragons rejoiced.

They took the stones to the great nests, where many Dragons made abode, and they sculpted it into towering halls, both tall and wide. And many Dragons passed through them and rested in their shelter and were proud of what they had made. Elsewhere, fantastic monuments were built, to the nature which they loved and to the Twelve, to whom they were dedicated and true.

The love of Atí was crafted into the ivory God Stone and led to greater gatherings of Dragons until, as more wonderful things were crafted, the Dragons that roamed the wilds came more often together, and soon developed cities beyond imagining -- made of nothing but the sacred stone of Atí and occupied by the fair and the just. The cultures they developed were centered around a shared love of Atí and enjoyment in the world. They had no enemy nor threat and Qarzeth, so restrained by their great cultures, flourished only in calm and beauty and the weather was good.

Not one amongst the Dragons was a king over others, nor was any a servant or a child. The elders were revered for their wisdom and the younglings were praised for their energy and both knew as much, for both retained the thoughts and memories of the lives now passed. When crafting a new emblem in their cities, each of the occupants had a thought in what would be done and no one's thought was more valued than any others, for all were of considerable knowledge.

For a Dragon knew when the others felt sorrow or joy or remorse and all strove for contentedness for both themselves and others, and there was little greed or envy or any of those things which the lesser races might have called sufferings. This was life as Atí had hoped it would be, flourishing and pleased and always knowing that she and Azor were to be loved, and doing so willingly and gladly.

And the Dragons lived, it is said, for Nine Aeons, and their numbers never fell. So skilled they were on all three planes of Qarzeth that no outer force could injure them. Their glorious God Stone cities were such a spectacle, so huge and glorious and dedicated to Atí that Joth and Bôhla and Ythrador seemed to kneel themselves down and go calm and gentle. So many lives of men had the Dragons then lived that each had memories and knowledge beyond the imagining of any other mortal before them.

In their most magnificent city, they decided to build something even more spectacular than anything ever built. And so they built a tower as tall as the mountains and all around it they wrote praises and blessings to Atí and Azor and asked for them to bless this tower with a great magic. Never before so pleased with their creations, both obliged.

So within the tower, the Dragons lit a great fire that the magic around it allowed to burn eternally. And in the fire they placed a great boulder of God Stone, not white, but the silver from their eggs. And the molten God Stone would float within the fire forever, and they inscribed into it every name of every Dragon that had ever lived and died so that it was overflowing with a knowledge beyond the fathoming of any single one of them.

They called the ancient census the Soul-Weave, and it held in it the great history of the Dragons and was indeed their grandest achievement yet. So grand was it that Atí rejoiced and unto them sang her most beautiful song, and in each of their hearts that beautiful melody was forever etched.

And toward the end of that Ninth Aeon, for the first time in all their years on Qarzeth, something had occurred that was unexpected by all. One dragon, both elderly and of much respect, called in Rosia 'Ovix the Beholder', called upon many other Dragons in the great city and begged of them to hark. Standing before them, they knew he was in much sorrow and discomfort, more than ever they had recalled another to have felt, and they awaited eagerly his words.

And he spoke to them: "I have seen many places in all the years that I have lived, vast and dense, damp and dry. I have flown through countless skies and seen mountains and rivers and valleys and other things. I have swam great lengths and seen the offerings of the oceans and the great depths within them. And I said unto you all now that I have seen something now that is unlike anything I have seen before."

So Ovix the Beholder told the other Dragons of a place he saw that was black and dead, where the trees had withered and fallen and where the grass was parched and dried. He said of this place that it was as though it had been rotted from within, that the soul of it had died and faded away. The air there stank foul and sour and a taste came upon his tongue with more bitterness than he had known before.

And in saying this, he grew even more solemn.

And the Dragons felt worry in them and asked where he had seen this place, but it had troubled his memory so deeply that no longer could he remember. So they called upon Atí and asked of her what it was that Ovix had seen. And within her she had concern for the Dragons, that perhaps they had been in some way deeply confused. "Nay," she said. "Never did the Twelve craft such a place on Qarzeth as has been described."

And Ovix fell into silence and shame.

There was much discussion and rumor and many others went out to search for the plague-scorched place that the elder had described whilst others feared that Ovix had been dangerously mistaken, for Atí assured them there was no place to be found. But it was not long until another came, much younger than Ovix, and said that he, too, had witnessed this place and the other Dragons felt his thoughts, and his sorrows were genuine.

The confusion and the debate strengthened and many grew concerned and thought to speak with Atí again, though knew to do so meant to doubt her wisdom. Never before had anything alike this arisen before them and they, even in their ages of wisdom and knowledge, knew not how to ease their own concerns nor investigate further.

And so many of the wisest amongst them sent requests to the far reaches and asked for all Dragons from all the great cities to convene there around the tower of the Soul-Weave so that they might all voice their thoughts and ideas.

Tens of thousands of Dragons, from each of the four directions, from the seas and the skies came gathering to the great city. Ancient wyrms, in the final days of their lives, and newly hatched younglings all flew together to heed the call until the city was filled to the brim with dragons and all of their thoughts were filled with trouble and many lamented in worried voices.

Many thoughts and ideas were shared and great parties of Dragons, hundreds strong, declared that they would search for places while others thought that they would further inquire to Atí. All the Dragons of Qarzeth shared concerns and thoughts for many days there before they felt it was time to depart. And they turned away from the city and looked out to depart, and before them the land was swallowed in darkness.

Beings stood upon the desolate lands and in their wake all vegetation was dissolved and a curse followed. So horrible a sight to behold this was that many of the Dragons wept and screamed, and the beings that brought the death furthered the curse upon the city. And the Dragons turned to each other's thoughts for guidance and insight, but they found something foul instead. Each saw the thoughts of the others as gruesome and sickening, as though all of the wise and knowing beings that they recalled were unveiled as traitorous and horrid. The illusion, it seemed, was lifted, and beneath it was the greatest of all horrors. The thoughts they saw were of hate and torture, the gruesomeness of which were too despicable and disheartening to be repeated through history.

So ill were they made by the thoughts of their brethren, so disgusted and hateful they had become, that conflict erupted everywhere. Creatures that had never before faced a threat began to slaughter themselves by fire and claw and tooth until the whole of the great city was soaked in the dragonblood. Some thought the others to be no longer worthy of their cities, and began to tear apart the God Stone until even the Soul-Weave tower came crumbling down. All knew then, in their hearts, that they were pure and the others were deceptive, and they felt a great ego and greed and a will to dominate all.

Atí watched in anguish and confusion, for she knew she had not crafted such beings, nor had any other. The darkness was wrought by the Unmade, those who arose from elsewhere and were not a part of the shaping nor Atí's plan. Azor watched as the God Stone crumbled and as the Dragons, filled with wicked thoughts, made their own undoing. And from his cheek fell a single tear.

The tear fell upon Qarzeth as a storm more mighty than even that which had shook the planet at the beginning of its creation, and it would come to pass that it would be known as 'The World-Thunder'. The Dragons then were nearly all dead and the God Stone of their slaughtered corpses turned a deep black. The earth beneath the cities shook, the clouds burst with fury, and the seas roared.

The World-Thunder pulled the Dragons from each other's grasp and, in doing so, saved those few dozen that had not yet been slaughtered. All of their grand and pearly monuments, more grand and strong than anything had been before, collapsed into jagged ruins, and the Soul-Weave spilled and was destroyed, their history lost. The bodies of tens of thousands of black-clad Dragons were limp and dead upon the shattered plain that had once held their greatest achievement.

In the storm, the Dragon's telepathy was lost. All went silent and uneasy and they sealed themselves away in caves and valleys and stayed there for as long as the World-Thunder continued. Atí looked down at Qarzeth, engulfed in storm and chaos, and thought of the pride and the happiness that had filled her when she saw the constructing of their glory. Now was the downfall of everything -- all these Nine Aeons passed were for naught, and the proudest culmination of all Atí's making, fell.

She had no understanding of the Unmade nor from whence they had come, and in her heart she felt both pity and regret, for it was in her word that they trusted, and she had led them astray. Few Dragons lived on. Many that did were so despaired and hopeless that they flew off into the unknown to meet whatever fate the storm would have of them. The rest, ashamed to call themselves the Children of Atí, went into recluse and fostered their hatred and disgust for their brethren.