CONTENTS
EON OF GENESIS
[1,575,000 B.A. – 1,050,000 B.A.]
The Alekian Realm, also known as the Alekian Plane or the Endless Night to the First Peoples of Alekia, began as all realms do; after The Nothing, there was something. Referred to simply as “Genesis” by most scribes, it is hypothesized this event brought forth unquantifiable energy and elemental matter from older realms. It is unclear exactly what state in which these aspects arrived, nor is it understood when or how they settled into the known Eleven Cosmic Domains:
- Ea: the Domain of Energy
- Favu: the Domain of Gases
- Gox: the Domain of Destruction
- Kiiri: the Domain of Death
- Leje: the Domain of Life
- Muthou: the Domain of Liquids
- Na: the Domain of Space
- Hrobuu: the Domain of Solids
- Saeza: the Domain of Souls
- Ts’ol: the Domain of Time
- Xev: the Domain of Creation
This Time of Great Settling, more commonly referred to as the Dance of Domains, culminated in the creation of the Ts’ol System and its surrounding environs within the Termina Galaxy. Historians describe this system, sometimes called The Great Clock, as including a vacuum (the Space Between), the star Ts’ol, seven planets (Kiiri, Leje, Alekia, Saeza, Favu, Muhthou, and Hrobuu) and their satellites, and a variety of asteroids, comets, and nebulae.
EON OF BEGINNINGS
[1,050,000 B.A. – 1 B.A.]
The Eon of Beginnings is defined by four eras: the Malazoi Era [1,050,000 B.A. – 700,000 B.A.] known also as the Time of Robuu, the Gulamarg Era [700,000 B.A. – 350,000 B.A.] referred to as the Time of Favu, and the Iramagi Era [350,000 B.A. – 1 B.A.] called the Time of Muthou but is often confused with the more commonly referenced final time of the eon: the Era of the First Men [1 A.A. – 86,000 A.A.].
Malazoi Era
Geology unfolded much in the same way on the planet of Alekia as on that of Earth, albeit expedited due to continued involvement of divine forces. For countless years during the Malazoi Era, the surface burned as hot as the Hells. There was no atmosphere, no water, and- save for the earliest gods -no life. It is said Their essences blanketed the world and protected it from entropy, thus permitting the proliferation of a new kind of life: mortals.
The Late Malazoi Period is marked by the formation of a thick proto-atmosphere, a dramatically less stable version of present-day Alekia’s aerial biome.
The First Mortals
The earliest mortals were of an unknown form lost to time, and thus unclassifiable within present-day nomenclature. However, their descendants, or The First Peoples as they collectively refer to themselves, include the Muthouah, Rung, Scalefolk, Tortles, Featherfolk, Furfolk, Athropleurs, Myconids, and Sylva. As each of these racial groups clings to differing legends of origin, it is unknown exactly when, how, or in what order these peoples evolved, but proliferate they did.
Generally, scholars theorize no race was an ancestor to all, instead proposing transitional ‘proto-races’ which diversified in approximate evolutionary tandem from the earliest mortals into the distinctive Nine First Peoples. Certain tenured wizards of the Aurix Kalur Academy of Chronology have taken this theory a step further and describe four hypothetical forms before the First Peoples, those who thrived in the Malazoi Era: Myorcaeia, Florasaeia, Arthrodaeia, and Chordaeia.
Myorcaeia, meaning ‘people of fungi,’ are the proposed ancestors of the Myconids, and they are described as “immotile and faceless networks of root-like structures” which are theorized to have lived near-exclusively in the substrate and subsurface of the planet. Extreme postulations suggest these dendritic bodies could variably express small supra-surface structures referred to as ‘sporophores’ which produced and distributed gametes for sexual reproduction.
Florasaeia, meaning ‘people of plants’ are the proposed ancestral group of the Sylva, and are described with a baffling array of genetic expression and phenotypic plasticity. This is somewhat understandable considering the myriad of documented body plans of present-day silva. However, it is no less frustrating to the Keepers of Ba’leyel, which have debated the true organization of this segment in their ‘Tree of Life’ for eons.
Arthrodaeia, meaning ‘people of joints’ refers to the ancestors of the Athropleurs. They are described with extremely similar morphology to extant groups, “motile creatures with segmented or fractal body plans which universally exhibit a shield-like dermis”.
Chordaeia, meaning ‘people of skeletons’ refers to a hypothetical ancestor for all remaining First Peoples. Due to their anatomically similar quadrupedal endoskeletons, as noted in great detail by the Alchemists of Venaly, it is hypothesized the Muthouah, Rung, Scalefolk, Tortles, Featherfolk, and Furfolk shared a least common ancestor during the Malazoi Era. The Wizards of Aurix Kalur entertain a theoretical description of its form, “a limbless, water-bound, eel of a creature, incapable of breathing air.”
*These terms have yet to be formally accepted by The High Clerics of Leje, who tend to favor less rigidity in their scientific nomenclature.
Gulamarg Era
The Early Gulamarg Period, referenced as simply ‘The Time of Titans’ in the earliest chronicles from the Scalefolk, is characterized by warring divine domains. Clouds and continents raged across horizons; it was an era where primordial forces directly governed mortals.
Although distinctive racial groups are only theorized during the Malazoi Era, geological records may indicate most if not all nine of the First Peoples were anatomically distinct by the Middle Gulamarg Period.
This time of lawful chaos came to a gradual end during the Late Gulamarg Period, during which the first oceans swelled, dispersed, and reformed. It is said that in the wake of these periodic floods, the Fires of Robuu and Gusts of Favu were brought to heed. The magmatic scars of the Malazoi era- those tectonic wounds of the world -were sutured shut, and the great stratospheric gales honed.
Iramagi Era
The Iramagi Era is characterized by the conglomeration of the three lunar bodies- Kusfep, Tamwis, and Letoi -as well as the stabilization of these bodies’ orbits. The geological record contains multiple formations which have been interpreted as recurrent events of mass flooding. These events seem to have progressively lessened in severity as local planetary bodies settled, and the process ultimately culminated in predictable oceanic tides, and a stable- albeit dramatically altered -global environment.
Soils deposited during the Late Iramagi Period exemplify similar geologic properties, suggesting the new climate remained broadly unchanging for the last hundred thousand years of the era.
To the First Peoples, the Late Iramagi Period is collectively referred to as “The Time of Great Peace.” Archaeological records indicate grand civilizations did indeed prosper, although the extent and exact cultural characteristics of these First Nations is still heavily debated. Soon thereafter began the Era of the First Men.
Era of the First Men
At the turn of this era, the First Peoples were diversifying steadily, and their histories describe the first presence of humanoids. Early speciation of the humanoid group is- by official recordkeeping -undocumented. However, there are a few ancient texts attributed to various tribes of Lizardfolk, Tortles, and Aarakocra which seem to indicate a near instantaneous diversification event. Typically, such evolutionary innovation arrives on the heels of mass extinctions, but no evidence of such an event has been discovered in the geological or historical records.
By whatever vector they came into being, there is a unanimous consensus on which races made up the First Men: Elves, Dwarves, Humans, Gnomes, Halflings, Tritons, and Metalmen. However, much like the First Peoples, the races of the First Men arrived with their own legends of creation; all but the Warforged claimed to be the original race. It is during this era that written history is considered to have become widespread, but it is unclear which history offers the most accurate record-keeping.
For nearly eighty thousand years, the Era of Man proved opportune. High society flourished, extensive science developed, and much of the Ts’ol system was explored. Then came the Cataclysm.
THE CATACLYSM
[0 C.]
The Great Dying, the Near End, the Time of Kiiri, the Shiver of Ea, Na’s Reconing, the Death of Ts’ol, Armageddon, Ragnarok, the Turning of the Great Cycle, the Black Comet, the Inescapable Wrath, the Dawn of Destruction, the Day the Gods Forsook Us: this is how Alekians refer to said event. The most specialized of scholars have interpreted these legends as a mass radiance of some yet-to-be-understood inter-realm energy. It is said by the less scholarly that some remnant of this resonance remains. Records of Featherfolk shaman claim to hear this energy, which they ascribe “Askaragox” or ‘The Scream Above the Clouds’.
EON OF THE AFTERMATH
[1 A.C. – 1,655,000 A.C.]
The Immediate Aftermath
Alekia’s surface was ruined, reduced to ash, and those few mortals remaining faced the darkest days of history. Cities disintegrated, empires shattered, and the peoples of Alekia fractured to a million disjointed variants; each clawed for survival in the mud as desperately as the next.
The arrival of goblinoids is remarked by the indigenous Alekian races as the first sign the Eon of the Aftermath heralded a different sort of darkness than the realm had experienced before. The goblins claim to have always inhabited Alekia’s mud, although no evidence of their existence- either in the historical tellings prior to the Cataclysm nor in the geological record in deposits made prior to the Unanimous Unconformity -has ever been found. Dragonkin and Giantkin are recorded soon after, but accounts of their origins are similarly conflicting. Kobolds and Yuan’ti are both known to have metamorphosed from the Scalefolk after their systematic rejection of the Old Gods. Raktok likewise speciated from the Featherfolk, although this new avian-race did not idolize new gods and instead became generally faithless. There was no race among The First People to have not splintered.
The races of the First Men evolved with even more dizzying diversification. Humans, having the shortest lifespans among them, fractured the fastest. Their Tertials Empire, distinguished as the central hub of global trade and one of the most widespread of pre-Cataclysm civilizations, seems to have collapsed overnight, and all that remains today are the crumbling spires of Old Marrow, her remaining hinterland taken back by the sand. The purest-bred descendants of the first humans still squalor under tidal Lordships which ebb and flow in their grasp of power as assuredly as the dunes reclaim the desert.
Within the same geological strata, sits the first evidence of beastials: deformed conglomerations of both man and animal. Many wizarding scholars hypothesize their arrival came as the result of some magical realignment, a response or reaction to the unbound energy of the Cataclysm. However, the druids whisper of a different vector; they propose beastials evolved more naturally and from Humans- in the melding of genomes.
Both Halflings- who call themselves Hin or ‘quick folk’ -and Gnomes- or the Forgotten Folk as they are sometimes known -had always lived adaptably and underfoot. By their accounts, both races already expressed notable, regionally-influenced, phenotypic flexibility by the end of the Era of the First Men. However, this variable expression developed into clear sub-racial division post-Cataclysm, and their widespread web of interconnected culture was torn to cobwebs.
Dwarves are ever hardy and only change in response to extreme times. Already a people of rock, the Dwarves held faith in Orhim Avor Hlindr Zana– their ‘Prophecy of Sleeping Stone.’ As the Cataclysm descended upon the surface, they retreated beneath the Hlindr Urngorr or ‘Sleeping Mountains’, known commonly as the Southern Covert Mountains. As it was written in the prophecy, they believed the tectonically inactive region would spare them from the Time of Darkness, and so they hid beneath the hills. They were wrong.
The Triton, in a similar fashion to the Dwarves, retreated in immediate response to the Cataclysm’s onslaught. In a mass exodus event known to various surface peoples as the ‘Right of the Benthic’ they dove well beneath the aphotic zone in search of sanctuary. It is not entirely understood how well the Triton fared below the waves; in the abyssal zone, there is as much light and clarity as there was on the surface during the Cataclysm, so it is assumed by many that the People of the Seas remain in a dark age. However, there are recordings by a plethora of Tiefling Pirate Lords which tell of encounters with “limbed monsters of the depths” with “terrifying forms of fins and claws.” Such reports have some scholars hopeful that this race of the First Men may have retained civilization throughout the Eon of the Aftermath.
The Elves seemed to face the worst of it. Their scattered history describes two waves of extinction: a primary mass death, and a secondary slow death. Their grand empires, which sprawled the majority of Alekia’s surface, buckled as a result of the primary extinction event. Yet they are recorded to have remained somewhat intact for a time, perhaps aided by their magically extended lifespans. With irony, it seems it was this very trait- the longevity which allowed the Elves to carry on in such capacity as no other race during the era of the immediate Aftermath -which spelled their eventual doom. For among the delicate network of rubbled cities of the Elvish Empires of Old, arose A Gloksliev, translated to common as simply ‘The Blight’. An epidemic endemic to elves alone, it is theorized this sickness, which has been documented by the High Clerics of Leje to have a myriad of symptoms- not all of which deadly, may be divine in origin. In any case, the Elves’ slow reproductive rate worsened their descent to oblivion exponentially, leaving only the most adaptive and splintered of subraces. Today, most of their lands are governed with dragonfire, divided by warring borders of the Great Draconic Empires. The only remaining known stronghold of Elves lies in the heart of the Mantle, in the Kingdom of the High Forest, or Aranie -o i tan Taurë, as they call themselves.
Finally, the Metalmen- perhaps the most unchanging and unrelenting of the First Men -appear to have been lost entirely to the Cataclysm. There are no verified instances of any living individuals on the surface, although sites of their mass death are apparent in geological structures from post-Cataclysm strata known as forge deposits: unnaturally melded mega-conglomerates composed of rare alloys and extra-Alekian minerals such as iridium. In this state, only the composition of said materia recalls their existence.
The Darkness that Followed
Stay tuned for this section…
The Resurgence of Civilization
Stay tuned for this section…
EON OF NEW REALMS
[ 1,655,000 A.C. – 1,658,877 A.C. (present year)]
A notably newborn eon in Alekia’s history and the present one, the Eon of New Realms is characterized by the arrival of races of alien origin. The last several thousand years have brought increasing entities from other realms to the Alekian plane. Those peoples from the Celestial Heavens, Fiendish Hells, the Distant Realms, the Feyglades, and realms yet unknown have in recent centuries begun truly calling Alekia home- though some more than begrudgingly welcome these interstellar immigrants.
Already so soon into the Eon of New Realms, some scholars believe we are at the cusp of a second era, one they are beginning to call the Era of Shifting, named so for strange shifts in peoples, environments, and magic itself.