The Previous Age (5000PA)
The period of civilization during which the cities of Vaiackuria and Durkarr were built and prospered. Not much is known of these times except that magical experimentation was a central concern in Vaiackuria.
Strange artworks found in these cities suggests that the landscape was far different from the current mainland geography.

The Stillness (1000PA – 0CA)
Little is known of this age except that any attempt to glean information on this time with divination magic is met with nothing but darkness and feelings of cold.

Age of the Saints (0CA - 2000CA)
The most complete legends and mythologies come from this age. By most common reckoning, the Saints (the original members of the Vishnari Pantheon; Hessa, Pandemos, Denaii, Sefar, Sylph the First and Dodregaar) arrived on Ere in an event known as Saint’s Landing, seeding the world with colonies of most of the common races or creating modern common races from lesser stock in order to tame the world of wild places and monsters they had found.

In this time, the Saints were said to walk among their followers in mortal form and hold court in the great, now ancient cities of Spinar and Kinos. Most myths paint this age as a time of peace and plenty for all that sought it and of grand adventure and glory for those that sought that instead.

Legend varies as to the reason that the Saints removed themselves from the world, but all agree that the Dragons were left behind to teach and guide the races in the stead of the Saints. The first mentions of the Well of Souls and the Court of All Souls date to around this time, but it accounts vary as to whether their creation came before or after the disappearance of the Saints’ earthly forms. There is no reference to the Goddess Sefar after this age.

Draconic Control (2000CA – 2290CA)
This era is the first where written accounts (Some dating to as early as 2100) from people living the events can be found. Some scholars call the last generation of this period the Heroic Age, though this has been argued endlessly in the halls of learning.

For a time, the Dragons fulfilled their covenant with the Saints, teaching and guiding the races of mortals. But without the Saints, many mortals grew dependant and even worshipful toward their draconic guardians; heaping more and greater social and political power upon them.

As naturally as the setting sun, this power corrupted the hearts of the dragons. It is said that it was at this time Dragons secretly tapped the Well of Souls to create the dwarven and kobold races.

It began with philosophical arguments between neighboring dragons and soon devolved into open war between ideological Nations of Dragons with mortals as the foot soldiers and slave labor. The cults devoted to the Dragons became state religions and the old Pantheon was all but forgotten.

In these hopeless times, the first whispers of a new god or gods swept the places hidden from the dragons. Cults of the God Kayda of the Threefold Moon and of Sylph Aneivene began to spread. They were the only fragments left of the memory of times of freedom among mortals.

The factioning, however, took it’s toll on the Dragon Nations’ control over the world, however. On the Southern peninsula that is present day Taunuan, the Black and Green Dragon Nations maintained the old way of respecting and teaching mortals.

As wars drew on, the Nations of Red, Copper, and Silver too began to succumb to internal decent over the issue of mortals. Rebellious factions of these joined with Black and Green to rally the common races to fight back against the other Nations.

In the end, Draconic Control was broken by a coalition of mortal heroes; most notably, elven and hailene contingents who fought despite their own homelands not being under draconic rule.

Vishnari Empire (3321CA – 3617CA)
In the decades after Draconic Control, the Dragon Nations that survived the war exiled themselves in shame to the Southern Peninsula, leaving mortals to rebuild and fend for themselves for the first time in their history on Ere.

This process was complicated b the emergence of spirit beasts and other discarnate creatures, theorized to be the result of the Dragons’ tampering with the Well of Souls. Small villages, which never even needed fences suddenly needed stone walls to achieve even a measure of safety as divinity sparks transformed often innocuous animals into unstoppable monsters.

The panic forced cooperation among the peoples of the former Dragon Nations, culminating in the formation of the Vishnari government (Vishnari being taken from the Imperial word for Unity) in 3321CA.

Over the three hundred year reign of the Vishnari Empire, the old Pantheon resurfaced, becoming commonly known as the Vishnari Pantheon in part because of it’s endorsement by the state and in part because of its acceptance of Sylph Aneivene (Historical Note: Sylph the First and Sylph Reborn are historically different Goddesses. Sylph the First was also called Sylphinia and was a deity of sea and air. Mentions of Sylph the First ended some time prior to Sylph Aneivene, a deity of nature and growing things).

By 3600 CA, the Vishnari Empire stretched across both continents and was making attempts at peacefully assimilating the dwarven halls of the northeast and the eastern minotaur tribes.

The Hailene War of Ascension (3618CA – 3631CA)

While the Vishnari Empire was expanding on the mainland, the hailene homeland in the Illium Archipelago was growing more insular. Bitterness over a lack of due respect and inclusion in the Empire festered and grew into distrust and disdain for mainlanders and non-hailene in general.

Things only became worse when the god Dodregaar ceased answering the prayers of his hailene clerics. Bitterness became jealousy and hatred and cultists of Kayda were swift to turn dismay at Dodregaar’s abandonment into wrath toward the entire Pantheon and the Empire as a whole.

In 3618, a hailene aerial armada laid waste to an Empire naval installation, starting the thirteen year War of Ascension.

Over the course of the war, the hailene’s superior air power and vast slave labor force pushed the Empire as far west as Kinos, nearly taking the entire Eastern Continent before the Empire, bolstered by initiates of a new Goddess called Dey wielding stolen hailene warships held the line and slowly began to push it back.

In the last half of the war, the Dragon Nations entered the fray on behalf of the Empire as well, downing dozens of hailene ships and nearly crippling the adversarial air navy. But in the final year of the war, as Imperial forces pressed in upon their home island, the hailene unveiled the pinnacle of their technological and mystical might; the D-slayer class airship.

Hundreds of dragons of all colors and thousands of mortals lost their lives as D-slayers struck dragon and ship from the skies in droves.

And then Dey intervened. Accounts vary as to why. Some say a renegade hailene prayed for her to end the conflict. Some say that at the moment Dey struck was the same in which the last gnome, the then favored race of Dey, breathed its last. Whatever the reason, Illium was smote into the ocean by a great, great hand that fell from the sky. The resultant tidal wave forced all parties to disengage and devastated the eastern coastline.

Age of Tragedies / Western Wars (3632CA – 3996CA)
The land was left devastated following the War of Ascension. The hailene war machine had left dozens of cities and hundreds of towns abandoned and in bad repair. These became lairs for spirit beasts and savage races like kobolds, goblins and ogres. Many and army and adventuring company was formed to take back these sites and drive the savage races before them. In the process, the orc race was exterminated.

The rush for fortune and glory soon led to conflicts between the common races; minotaurs clashed with dwarves and humans in the northeastern mountains and were soon driven out to fight for new lands in the hailene destroyed east; the surviving hailene formed tribal societies, trying to carve their own piece from the wild lands; Western nobles struck out with their armies to found their own nations and city states.

Dozens, if not hundreds of nations formed in the east and fell within single generations in multifaceted wars on all sides. The old Vishnari government collapsed under the strain of unending war, which soon embroiled the Western Continent as well. It was in this age of conflict that the Imperial tongue fell into disuse in favor of the less formal Common derivative.

The Academy of the Arcane Mystery schismed; the rebellious faction relocating to Mon Sulus Kime to continue the experiments not sanctioned by the Academy. A sect of the Denaiian Church called the Right Makers rose up in what is now Calderia to make holy war on their neighbors for suffering the church of the Threefold Moon.

In the North, the Draconic Control era outpost, Harpsfell began to take on refugees from the rest of the world, fleeing what quickly became known as the Age of Tragedies. Sylph Aneivene herself took earthly form in the Great Eavesings Wood of the northwest and called her followers to her to avoid loss of those most precious to her.

The common agreement among scholars as to the end of the age, is the ascension of Geistrom Nov to the throne of his father’s kingdom of Novrom in 3996, as it was Nov’s policy of road building and strategic alliances that eventually stabilized the Eastern Continent’s political climate. This was achieved by the twentieth year of Nov’s reign, but the end of the Western Wars did not come until eight years after that and it was called…

The Ashing of the Green (4024CA)
By 4000, the Right Makers had cemented its base in a region they dubbed Calderia (‘crucible’ in Imperial) and were fighting a three front war with the warrior tribes of the Calleni Steppes, the wizard’s enclaves of the Te’ran Mountains and the agrarian societies on the region known as Rizen (‘plenty’ in Imperial).

As the Calderian advance become more brutal and their troops conduct more craven, Sylph sent warriors to aid her neighbors, fearing that if they fell, her domain, now commonly called the Green Expanse, would be next.
The addition of caterid warriors, elves, miare and other sylvan creatures managed to turn the war into a stalemate from some sixteen years.

But Calderia was not idle in that time. From captured and ritually tormented eladrin elves, they learned the secrets of teleportation and improved upon it.

The secret of what was actually done on that day; the 9th day of Winter, Rising 4024; is unknown to all but the High Regents of Calderia. The official explanation from the Right Makers is that they prayed to Denaii, who smote the Green Expanse. The Denaiian Church denies such. Some suggest that it was done with a magical device from the era of Draconic Control, delivered by a party venerated in Calderia doctrine as The Sacrifice.

Whatever the cause, however, a pillar of white light erupted from the Elfhame Amon’ru that night, rapidly expanding to encompass the area around it for 124 miles and turning night on all of Ere into day.

When the true sun rose, once one hundred thousand sentient lives had been lost, the land itself corrupted and twisted. The Green Expanse had become the Ashed Lands, a black scar upon the land where unspeakable horror dwelt.

Sylph took those of her peoples that she could save and fled to the moon Azelia when she created a new home for herself and her followers.

The action galvanized the world against Calderia and the now united nations of Callen, Te’ran and Rizen beat the Right Makers’ army back across the mountain ranges bounding Calderia. Pacts were made to gift the border swamps to the Black Dragon Nation and a great wall constructed on the Calleni border to prevent Calderia from ever pressing out of bounds again.

Present (4033CA – Present)
By 4030, the last of the wars had ended, the Kingdoms of Nov united under now Emperor Nov and skirmishes in the still wild East dying down.

Talks began to cement a lasting peace among the people of Ere, but vast cultural rifts made unification impossible. In the end, the solution was the Treaty of Thirteen Nations. In it, the nations of Novrom, Callen, Chordin, Te’ran, and Rizen were recognized. Vini Tresolm, a jungle region north of Novrom was gifted to the survivors of the sylvan races. Taunuan, long the home of the Dragon Nations, was officially given sovereign status.

The remaining islands of Illium was given to the hailene tribes and the mountainous northern nation of Genmide to the dwarves in order to stabilize the eastern regions by pacifying two of the major instigators. The remaining portion of the Eastern Continent was divided into counties under the sway of an installed government of the old spellcasting nobility and dubbed Minde Forme.

The Ashed Lands was named a nation in it’s own right, effectively lawless so that it did not have to fall to any nation to take responsibility for it. Both Calderia and Mon Sulus Kime were recognized only as enemy states.
The current date is 4055, more than twenty years after the signing of the Treaty. Calderia has resumed attempts at aggression against Callen. The hailene continue to rebuild Illium. Territorial disputes and banditry are rampant in Minde Forme more so than anywhere else in the world.

Harpsfell is the most populace and most wealthy city in the world, with Chordin itself existing mainly to feed it. The Church of the Threefold Moon is once more on the rise even as schisms form in the Hessan and Denaiian Temples.

Spirit beasts still pose an imminent threat to even the most well prepared townships and the Ashed Lands spawn their own monstrosities.

The pages of history from this point forward are blank, awaiting brave individuals to make their marks on them and bring Ere into it’s fifth millennium.