The Age Beyond Remembrance

As I already stated, I can tell you nothing of this age, of the period during which life itself bubbled up from the cosmic stew and the gods began picking their way through the universe . . .

The First Age of Dragon

-50,000 to -45,001

So let’s content ourselves to begin with the First Age of Dragon, the period in which humanity was born to the world’s surface at the heart of the Sacred Grove.  For five thousand years, the fledgling race thrived under the benevolent guardianship of the Father and Mother of Dragondom - Palladium Behemoth and Leviathan, Ever Pure.  Elves descended along Yggdrasil’s high branches, making their way from Alfheim to the mortal world, and the dwarves hiked from the earthen depths, making their way up the World Tree’s roots. Further, a host of metallic dragons were born to Leviathan and Behemoth, included amongst these, their devoted first daughter, Tievrasa the Bronze.

It was an epoch without flaw, save for one thing - it was during the First Age of Dragon that Loki and Angurboda bred their foul brood - the Fenris Wolf; Jormungandr the Serpent; and Hel, who from the moment of her birth was more dead than alive . . .

The Second Age of Dragon

-45,000 to -40,001

I can’t say exactly what led to it, but at some point humankind started to clamor about tasting the world beyond the Grove, and after much debate, Leviathan and Behemoth led their own draconian children on an exploratory journey. Some years thereafter, mankind issued forth, and though I can’t prove a causal relationship, Leviathan’s purity began to slip. 

As to progeny, whereas Leviathan and Behemoth had many glorious children in the First Age, in this, they had only one, and it wasn’t even a dragon, it was Sphinx.  And as this epoch drew to a close, Sphinx proved his import by fathering some of the most influential beings in the universe: Greyl the Gray, the three Norns, and Pzoeliar the Binder.  Again, I don’t know enough to suggest causality, but following the birth of these grandchildren, Leviathan’s purity continued to slip  . .

Third Age of Dragon

-40,000 to -35,001, April 13th

Thus did it come to pass in the Third Age of Dragon that Behemoth and Leviathan’s new children were born not with their usual metallic sheens but with a variety of drab colors that marked their spiritual decline into creatures of evil.

At the same time, with Loki’s monstrous children growing more threatening by the day, Odin called for a council of the gods. The results: the Fenris Wolf was bound at the cost of Tyr’s right arm and the Midgard Setpent was imprisoned in the divine Ouroboros, which she still haunts to this day.  Then there was Hel, who voluntarily descended to the underworld so she could become the Goddess of Death.

All the while, mankind was struggling to find its place in the world and losing faith in its draconian guardians

Fourth Age of Dragondom

-35,001, April 14th -31000

On Ascension Day, the 14th of April, -35,001, Loki connived to have Baldr the Beautiful stricken from the Heavens, and so began the Fourth Age of Dragon, one of the darkest epochs our world has ever known.  Loki was eventually captured by the other gods and chained to a rock where an immortal serpent was to drip venom in his face until Ragnarok came.

In addition to losing Baldr, the world stood helpless as Leviathan continued to spiral toward evil.  This culminated with the Dragonmother’s descent into the underworld where she consumed Loki’s daughter Hel and staked a new claim as the Abandoner of Humanity and Defiler of Souls.  Leviathan then gave herself to Nergal, fortifying his position as the ultimate Lord of Death and bearing him Drithe the Putrescent, the Destroyer of Civilization. When this gargantuan beast coupled with Lilith the Widow, one of the ultimate threats to our world took seed, that of Cytouhl, the Insoluble Thorn as my master often calls him . . .

The Age of Honor

-31000 -  -30000

What came next, perhaps in answer to this overwhelming surge of darkness, was a miracle of sorts.  Greyl and Pevoraille lay together and produced their first son - Lovenius the Ponderer, known too most as the Golden Bard. And shortly thereafter, though I’m not sure exactly how it came to pass, Greyl replaced Lilith as the queen of the witches coven..

Another miracle for the age: Tievrasa the Bronze - the first daughter of Leviathan and Behemoth - gave birth to a pair of twins with semidivine potential: Gleerane the Bronze and Aviticus the White, the very pair who eventually crushed Cytouhl’s skull, drove a spear through his sternum, and sent him from the world of man . . .

The Age of Subjugation

-29,999 - -27500, Dec 24th

With Cytouhl’s death, there was a fracturing of the enormous land mass that had once housed most of the world’s population.  In the ensuing chaos, a peculiar race of tiger-like beings reached a critical mass and proceeded to take over the world.  The breed, which became known as rakshasas, was a vampiric, flesh-eating race whose powers of wizardry were beyond compare.

Ishkata, the most powerful of the rakshasas, actually reached divinity at one point, and he probably killed more people with his own claws than any other figure in the world. It was amongst the bleakest periods our world has ever known, one that reached its depths when Lilith - who’d been more widely known as Kali Ma at the time - used her magical necklace to wipe all paladins from the face of the planet 

The Age of Hope

-27, 500 December 25 - 25,001

On December 25th, the Day of the Saint, -27500, it became apparent that Lilith had failed, for Tievrasa’s twin boys, Gleerane the Bronze and Aviticus the White, stormed Ishkata’s throne room and handed him his death, breaking the Ramasar Dynasty and ushering in the Age of Hope.

The Age of Chaos

-25,001, April 14th - -20,000

Following the collapse of the Ramasar dynasty and the extermination of the predatory rakshasas, you might have expected a golden age.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t in the Weave. Instead, it became evident that Cytouhl - who’d been resurrected as a lich - had sired a child with his mother Lilith. The child was Maereilius the Albino, and from his seed came the lilin, a brood of watery, thin-boned mortals who proceeded to worship Lilith right into the Heavens. 

With Lilith gaining a perch on the divine rung and Cytouhl threatening to truncate both the Velandran and  Menzarelian Lines, one can see why Odin the Allfather would have been distracted.  And I’d not be surprised if this played a part in Loki’s escape.  It happened on the 14th of April, -25,001.  And in the chaos that followed - though the details on this are worse than murky - Aviticus was struck down by Odin’s spear.
 

The Age of Splendor

-20,000

Now, since Baldr’s death, Lord Okuveurr (Thor, as you may know him) had been hitching the sun to his chariot and piloting it as best he could.  With the Widow’s ascent and Loki’s escape, the Elven Lord Vanadia Moertholl reluctantly stepped to fore, agreeing to watch over the heavenly bodies so Okuveurr could devote his his attention to shoring up the defenses for the Virtue Lords and their people.

This action seemed to trigger a cascade of good fortune, for shortly thereafter, Greyl mated with Gleerane the Bronze and conceived Adarahil, who became the Lord of the Silver Dragons, a friend of dwarvendom, and a demigod in his own right.

Greyl then mated with Adarahil and conceived her second golden son, Glesvengion the Mage, a wizard and warlock whose talents for the arcane were surpassed only by Cytouhl’s. Gifted with Futuresight - or cursed, some would argue - Glesvengion realized that the world was sprinting toward destruction, and in a desperate attempt to resist the Norns’ Weave, he gathered in two special souls - that of Pevoraille the Wise, who’d been there from the beginning, and Aviticus the White, who’d recently lost his mortal life.  Three Pillars they were, and their body was the Triad of Light!  And under their direction, such relics were born to the world as gave the virtuous reason to hope: The Sword of Justice; the Hammer of Truth; and Vengeance, ever malleable.  So too did they see to the making of the dragonhelms Devotion, Liberty, and Faith . . .

The Age of Redemption

-15,000

With the Triad standing as champions for the mortal world, the Age of Redemption was at hand.  Not that this epoch was devoid of its dark stretches, but each run ended with the virtuous being redeemed, even that of the dwarves, who having been driven to the brink were prepared to commit racial suicide rather than serve the dark forces.

The Age of Reaping

-12,500 to -10,000

But the Reaper will have his due, as the ancient proverb goes, and an insidious corruption of values gradually allowed Nergal the Reaper to increase his hold on mortal man.

The Plague of Monsters

-10,000 - -7500

Then came the Plague of Monsters, which might have erased the world’s civilized races had it not been for the great mage Elsinar who called forth a magical chalice that you’d have heard of as the Holy Grail,  This led to a sub-age dubbed the Third Age of Chivalry, which in turn gave way to a new stretch of darkness.

The Age of the Race Wars

-7500 - -5000

The Race Wars - 2500 years of brutality in which even the elves and dwarves were frequently drawn to the brink of slaughter.  But there’s something you might not know about the elves and dwarves - they’re not like humans, not a mix of good and evil, and these two great people resisted the urge to shed one another’s blood at every turn, no matter the cruelty of their circumstance. 

This changed at the end of the epoch.

First came Razing of the Green, where a massive group of dwarves, having been provoked beyond their limits, set fire to an elven forest - their weapon, the Axe of Incineration. Whether it had been a calculated burn or not, it resulted in the worst conflagration to have ever struck the world, and an elven forest hundreds of miles thick and deep was burnt to the ground. That was when the dwarves left the main of the Thalesian continent and settled entirely in the Bloodstones to the north - fled, many have claimed, because they were afraid of what they’d do next time the elves took their jabs, afraid, that is, that they would hoist their axes and butcher the Fair Folk to a man.

Razing the Green paved the way for the atrocity that closed the Age some decades later - Treachery at Pointed Stone.  In this, a small band of elves refused to leave the Bloodstones.  When pressed by the dwarven commander, a faerie queen who’d been amongst the elven contingent released the magic of the Bow of Immolation. The arrow pierced the earth and released a torrent of lava, erasing over two-thousand dwarven warriors in something shy of a minute.

Many of the goodly dwarves wanted to march to Sullandria and annihilate their elven foe, and it might well have come to pass had it not been for one man - Axil Bellrock, Third Drachlar of the dwarven people. Like a number of great champions, this hero was scorned for taking an unpopular stand, and so far as we know, he was the only Drachlar ever to be cast from office.  But the world owes him a debt, most especially the elves, for the dwarves never made that fateful march . . .

What’s that, you say?  You’d have me hold for a moment, and explain how two weapons born of fire quite nearly set two goodly people at each other’s throats?

Ah - so you’re beginning to understand.  And since you’re the one to have brought it up, I have some additional leeway to give a few words of explanation.  To start with, there weren’t really two weapons; the Axe and the bow were one, a malleable relic named Vengeance, better known as the Tongue of Darkfire. And though we’ll discuss Vengeance more fully when we speak on Relics, for now let me say this: there are many who wonder if this blade was tainted during its formation.  Her forger, after all, was Ezrael the Efreet, son of Loki, the Master of Strife, he who ended the age by convincing the other gods that the world had to be divided in two to prevent a catastrophe - divided temporarily, of course, though now, seven thousand years later, it seems that temporary was somewhat of a lie . . ..

The Age of Barbarism

-5000 - 0

This was, as the name implies, another savage age, and toward the end, it seemed that those dragons who came of Leviathan’s stock from Third Age meant to subject the world to something akin to the Ramasar Dynasty.

The Age of the Lords

0 to present, 1984

It didn’t happen though, this threatened subjugation of the world, because Behemoth gave up part of his divinity to enter the mortal world and tilt the scales of the universe, putting an end to the draconian reign of terror and ushering in our present age, the Years of the Lords.  And in these years, which have been easy by no stretch, we’ve at least begun to see a thawing of relations and a slight degree of connectivity reforming across our divided nation. Indeed, it seemed we were building toward something of a future. Then came the 1st of May, when they went after our First Pillar, and I can’t imagine our world will ever be the same.

All right, I think we’ve covered enough for now.
Use the chart below to tell me what you’d like to discuss next . . .