|
Today is Day 250 Year 310 of the City, the Day of the Dream.
It is the Hour of the Sword.
| Beginning again, with cycles of craziness with occasional rays of sanity. |
| The Year of New Hope is marked by a rise in productivity and general confidence among the Antran people. |
| The Year of Cloud Storms marked a manifestation in the change in weather patterns that demarcated the time just prior to the raise in mana. |
| The Year of Cold Starts in part draws its name from the unusual pattern of pleasant days dropping down to unnatural chills soon after dark. While the sun kissed Apzara's fields awake each day, Zelen gazed upon quick frosts as she walked the world at night. |
 Year 304 |
Year of Travel in Strange Places |
| With a lack of events affecting the Majocracy itself, Antra gave itself over to its merchants and explorers, new markets were opened, and strange places on the map investigated and explored. |
| An influx of shopkeepers have opened their doors recently in the City, offering new goods to travelers through the gates. New goods and new vendors are available to serve the adventurer's needs with weapons, armor and fine clothing. New tunnels have been found connecting the lowest levels of the UnderCity with points unknown. This had led to an even larger influx of adventurers, eager to explore these new ways. Stranger creatures than ever are being seen, and the wizards at the Kolej of Majzi report that the mana level appears to be rising... |
| More immigrants than ever before are visiting the City. Not all find it to their liking, and many swiftly depart; still a few are settling, returning again and again to the Gates to check on events and goings-on in Antra. |
| The year the Mutan attacked all civilized peoples. Sweeping south out of the barren hills north of Na-Shiraz, their numbers grew until indefensible villages were abandoned and the peoples driven south. At the beginning of the summer season, it was revealed that the boglins were coordinated by an unseen, powerful Maj. It was told of his purple and puissant majik revealed turning the tide at the Battle for Na Zhiraz, and settling the loss of that northerly city. This was also the year rumors of the Blue Maj circulated swiftly in the Kingdom of Antra, for it was late in the year that Dezper, Bearer of the Violet Ring, was defeated by means of Duel Arcane at the very gates of the City. |
| The loss of the northern capitol of Na Zhiraz took place late in this year. A horde of goblins swept suddenly out of the Unknown Lands and rapidly overwhelmed the defending Humans, leading to the sack of the city.
Although the defenders fought bravely for their home, a mysterious maj whose majiks flashed purple in the smoke of the burning walls stood at the head of the goblin horde when it attacked and sealed the city's fate. |
| Year 296 |
Disappearance of the Yellow Maj |
| While sailing on an expedition across the Azuru, the Yellow Maj's ship disappears and all hands are lost. He is presumed dead. |
| The Lethan Navy, the only deepwater sailors in the kingdom, has its charter formally revoked by the Pretender Feit, now King of Leth. Feit seeks to squelch the activities of the Navy as many of its captains smuggle arms and weapons as part of their regular "patrol" activities and secretly are active against his government. Most notable among these smugglers is the Captain Varya, who refuses to drydock her ship and continues her resistance activities as a pirate daring enough to raid the harbor of Leth itself on regular occurences. |
| The Archpriest of Tlrath, His Eminence Rezther of the Temple of Leth, returns in triumph from exile, his banishment revoked by King Feit. His presence is immediately felt, as the old conservative houses return to the use of terror over their subjects, a practice forbidden under the previous reign. When the peasants of Leth feel the hand of the Temple in every deed of their life, they are seen as much less prone to demand tax relief, labor relief, and to skirt their obligations to the nobility. Thus the temple and the old houses work much together in ruling the kingdom.
|
| Year 293 |
Ascension of Feit, called the Pretender |
| Backed by a coalition of inland barons, powerful noble houses including House Trialeki, and the return of the powerful Tlrathan Archpriest Rezther, the line of Ya was put down from the throne of Leth and the merchant Feit raised as founder of a new dynasty. Called the Pretender by all but his supporters, Feit is unpopular with the people of Leth but holds such power that most fear him and his reign goes unchallenged. |
| Year 287 |
Rikelus Trialeki becomes Head of House |
| Rikelus Trialeki assumes the duties of Head of House Trialeki. He immediately begins to effect plans for which he has laid groundwork for years, plans that set Trialeki on the path to mercantile leadership in Leth. |
| The Archpriest Rezther of the Temple of Tlrath is held responsible after the discovery of a huge ceremony in which nearly a thousand slaves were murdered in an effort to open a gate to Tlrath's realm and allow the dread god to come forth. The ceremony was aborted once the king's men learned of it and forcibly broke it up. The mass murder proved too much for the King to overlook though it had previously been the custom for the throne to ignore the doings of the priesthood of Tlrath in return for the priests keeping the more loathsome of their sect's rituals outside of the city bounds in the jungles. |
| House Waterskimmer funds an undertaking by agents of House Riverbeetle which leads to the ambush of the maiden youths returning from their pearl-collecting feats on the beds of the unique shoals of freshwater oysters special to Punuf. Agents of Riverbeetle with the aid of potions of water-breathing slaughter the hapless children as their breath runs out, after they have plucked the pearls that the oysters will yield only to the pure and innocent of mind and body. |
| Year 267 |
Ekrezda Bazur named Head of House Waterskimmer |
| In this year, Ekrezda Bazur was made Head of House Waterskimmer. How Bazur came to this position is a tale of rumor, scarce whispered in Dok Wobiz itself. |
| The beheading of the Red Maj takes place on 254 Basilisk 357. Huyun, following a series of visits from a mysterious wizard. Contrary to all earlier bloodthirstly behavior he exhibited in personally executing the ruling family of Kwamada, the Regent oddly does not want the blood on his own hands. The Office of the Executioner to is instead created to perform the deed. Huyun deeds a land grant to support this office in perpetuity, reasoning that more such executions may become necessary in the future, his family should not have the stain of further blood on their hands. |
| Wazeruz Wakkam publishes his discovery of the Ethereal Gate spell in the Great Library of Antra, opening the way to exploration of the Ethereal Plane. |
| The trial of the Red Maj ends, resulting in a verdict for execution, and his ring is remanded to the keeping of the Regency of Antra and placed in the Treasury at the Palace. |
| Year 256 |
Theft and Loss of the Violet Ring |
| The violet ring, taken from Rovn by the arresting council, and remanded to the Treasury at Antra for safekeeping, is stolen by a thief named Akkon Hakkado of House Zinjan. Unfortunately, Hakkado is murdered on his return to Zinjan's Tower, and the ring is stolen again by his unknown assailant, presumed to be an insider of the house with prior knowledge of the attempt. This incredible scandal leads to grossly increased security at the Palace and Treasury, as well as many schisms of trust at the core of House Zinjan in the Great City. |
| On the eve of the march upon Kwamada to pursue the traitor archmage Rovn Majre, Regent Akbeb of Antra is assassinated. His son, Huyun, takes the throne of the Regent with an iron determination and leads the assembled forces of Antra in the decimation of Kwamada, executing its ruling members personally by the sword. His ring confiscated, the Red Maj is returned under heavy guard to the Citadel at Antra and imprisoned in the dungeons below the Palace while it is determined how to try him. There is no legal basis for taking his ring from him, as by law the Majzi are inviolable. |
| The Orange and Violet Majzi are murdered by Rovn, the Red Maj, as he finally makes his bid for power. Opposed by the Yellow, Brown and Orange Majzi and the Regent Akbeb, Rovn is forced out of the City and flees to his hidden stronghold of Kwamada, his fallback plan. From here he leads an army against the City of Antra. His intent is to depose the Regency, and take the Throne of Antra for himself. The revolt is put down, brutally, by the much more experienced Regent Akbeb, who with the full support of the outraged Kolej of Majzi, prepares to mobilize against Rovn's stronghold, where he has been forced into a second retreat. |
| The murder of the Black Maj, a powerful sorceror, and all of his retinue whilst staying in his apartments at Dormra Antra leads to paranoia amongst the upper classes and nobility of Antra. The killer must have been a sorceror of some power, but the careful investigation, involving the surviving Majzi themselves, does not turn up a clue to the culprit. |
| The mysterious death of the Gray Maj, a quiet man with few grudges amongst the people, causes immense consternation. Though no one knows it at the time, the Wars of Intrigue have begun. The family Kadiz will continue the honor of the Maj into the future, and remember him well, holding the land largely at peace into the ensuing centuries despite the encroaching aggressions of Dok Wobiz. |
| Year 242 |
Crushing of the Spider Cult in Antra |
| In retribution for the death of Jorun. After a few of the cult's more prominent members are put on trial for the conspiriracy which led up to the assassination, Akbeb leads an all-out assault against the Spider Cult in the City of Antra. The cult's temple is destroyed, and most of its adherents are slaughtered outright. |
| Akbeb, son of late Regent Jorun, is confirmed in the Palace of the Regent, after a short but bloody civil schism over an unexpected challenge to his inheritance after his father was confirmed dead of poison the previous year. A year of building support among the Nine Houses, after they initially split the council. Many of the Council had been accused of taking bribes from an influential if shadowy benfactor. Akbeb begins his reign with a general amnesty for both sides participating in the conflict, in the hope of restoring normal civic order in the Provinces. |
| The death of Regent Jorun, after a short but prosperous reign of a mere six years, occurs after a short, unexpected illness many suspect was poisoning. Much speculation as to the identity of the poisoner rages among the Court while Jorun's son, Akbeb, twenty-seven, prepares to take the throne. |
| The Green Maj, while performing a majikal ritual which must have been of great power, commits an error and blows apart the top of his tower and everything in it is destroyed. He had moved from the City to Eyrmidia a decade earlier, for reasons known only to himself, and become the patron of the City of the Red Sands. His passing was a great shock to all of Eyrmidia. |
| Jorun, son of Akliz I, ascends to the Regency. He is twenty-four, as was his own father when he took the mantle. |
| Jorun, second Regent of Antra, is born in this year. |
| Year 200 |
The Undertaking of the Causeway |
| The building of the Grand Causeway commences, its layout and engineering planned over several years previous. The Causeway is meant to be a grand road, linking Antra and all the towns and villages between the City and Leth. |
| The White Maj, after inexplicably naming a non-Maj from the Ak family of Zerezme to seat his throne, takes his leave of the Majocracy he founded. The Akzi, previously respected but of little note politically, see their son Akliz I placed upon the throne in the stead of the only ruler they have ever known. Akliz I becomes the first of the line of those who bear the title Regent, and who will hold the reins of power and rule in his stead until he chooses to return. In his absence of the White Maj, much will change in the coming years, though at first slowly. |
| The birth of the man who will become Akliz I, first Regent of the City, occurs during this year. |
| The fall of the ancient Kingdom of Palataz, after the abrupt disappearance of the ruling family. The city of Palataz was sacked in a series of attacks by assailants that to this day remain unknown. It is rumored that these assailants were the ancestors of the Barbarian tribes, other rumors have it that the Palatani who survived the fall of their kingdom were themselves the ancestors of the Barbarians. |
| The Embassy of Sarthen was founded this year, its foundations outlaid upon the stone in white chalk, there to grow at the whim of a dispatch of Majzi from the incipient Kolej. The occasion was the recent arrival of an entourage anticipating the arrival of the Leaf Elv ambassador. The good company of the Leaf Elvani leads to many further alliances between Antra and Sarthen. Unlike the Tree Elvs, the Leaf Elvs are only too ready to enjoy the company of their new neighbors, with each learning from one another. Of particular interest to the Elvs are the metal technologies used by the Humans, such as the smelting of ore and the casting of metal, which the Dwarvs would not teach or share. |
| Year 10 |
Founding of the Nine Houses |
| The Great Houses are founded, and sent to settle in the designated territories for each family commissioned to rule in a Maj's name. |
| Year 9 |
Occupation of the Palace |
| Nine years after construction began, the Palace of the Majzi is deemed complete, and Znub Majzi leave their temporary housing. Expeditions are sent forth to find suitable lands to found the Nine Houses of Antra. |
| The Elvbane, that most ancient and blackest of dragons, scion of Aztrakallides himself, having slept long after seeing the Great Elvs come to grief in the Dwarvan Cataclysm, which satisfied him and allowed him to seek his rest; awakes and sees the Elvs again making progress.
Enraged, he comes to punish the Tree Elvs of Mount Fruznok for the betrayals of their ancestors. The Nine Majzi, hearing reports of the sighting of an enormous black dragon in the east, with wings so vast as to blot out the sun, follow and arrive in time to challenge the creature when he begins to wreak havoc among the unrepentent Elvs.
The resulting battle levels a valley and changes the course of a river, but the Majzi are triumphant and set the stage for diplomacy with the reserved, yet grateful Elvani, opening up Human-Elvan relations for the first time. |
| Year 1 |
The Building of the Great City |
| The construction of the city begins apace after a short, mild spring. The streets are laid out and defined, and the foundations raised for the Palace, Library and the Pyramid. The Majzi use their rings to do much of the work, permitting it to proceed forward at a much more rapid pace. Because of the scale of the construction, however, it is anticipated to take years before the city is much more than empty lots. |
| The arrival of the Majzi unto Antra. The Majzi establish the location for what will become the City of Antra, and begin settling their retainers in preparation of commencing construction of their ideal palace, where they wish to live and in which to study and learn for eternity. Great majiks are wielded by the Nine to raise the huge stone plateau upon which the City will stand, well-defended by position alone. "Still vulnerable to attack by dragons," more than one Dwarv has pointed out, then and over the years, but the Majzi did not desire an underground stronghold for themselves. Instead, they pushed their City into the sky. |
| The men known as the Ancients seem to decline in these years, their empires and kingdom beginning to fall for reasons unknown. They will be entirely gone by Year 250.
Perhaps their ancestor-worship and elaborate tomb construction overtook the economy of their time, or perhaps a plague or other natural occurrence wiped them out.
In any event, what remains behind are the tomb-complexes, still being found, in the Garnet Desert, such as the Tombs of Karkophagus. |
| The city of Eyrmidia is founded by descendents of the Ancients, rising about an oasis in the red sands of what is now called the Garnet Desert. The land is open for claim as no Elv or Dwarv is interested in living in the wastelands left by the Dwarvan Cataclysm, and the Humans are left in peace barring the occasional hostile creature to develop their culture. In a strange parallel with later times, the rulers of the city are known to have been majicians of some considerable power, worshipped by their populace. For several centuries, Eyrmidia thrives and expands, building throughout the Garnet Desert and littering the countryside with elaborate tombs to honor their dead dynasties, some of which survive even to the present time.
|
| The Ancients were the first Human-kin to walk Erat, centuries before the Majzi would found their City.
Apparently, they were brought to Erat at the same time as the Elvani and the Dwarvani.
Small in number at first, their history is shrouded in mystery. What is known is that their civilization flourished for a time, and that they numbered wizards among their kind. The Ancients built many cities, temples and other constructions now fallen to ruin and forgotten; and followed a form of ancestor worship which caused them to construct many monuments to their deceased--monuments which today are still being discovered and explored for their rich treasures and majikal artifacts.
|
| The Dwarvan hero Ebeldraz, whose deed is still sung of today, leads a company of the finest, most doughty of all the Dwarvan armies all the way back along a passage captured in a recent skirmish with the Mellonkompiel. The passage leads to the underground fortress of Taer Lowys, a Dark Elvan stronghold strategically essential to their stranglehold over the underrealms. Ebeldraz and his cohort seize and destroy the fortress, though he dies in the attempt, reducing Dark Elvan power and influence to a flicker of its former self for nearly a thousand years. |
| This terrible year became known as the Year of the Drawn Knives to the nascent Mellonkompiel as they found the deeper levels of the caverns they thought abandoned and had sought to occupy in the Dark Forest to be inhabited by surviving remnants of the Snakewomen. |
| The migrating people who become known as the Light Elvs found their solace on an island far to the North in this year. They named the city Cythere, meaning "Solace." Using the abundant crystals found on that rare island, they commenced to build their new home. |
| Houses of Cybehre and Mellon begin the conflicts that will lead to the final collapse of the remnants of Great Elvan civilization and the branching of the Great Elvan people into the Tree, Light and Dark Elvs. The Dark Elvs seek to rule as a means of preventing such catastrophe as the Dwarvan Cataclysm from happening again, and wish to mount a genocidal war against the rumors of a newly founded Dwarvan stronghold at Khazkhad in the Stone Bowl Mountains. The House of Cybehre, led by a young and idealistic Elv named Gloriath, does not want the blood of another war on the conscience of his generation of Elvs, and strives to prevent the massacre. Gloriath succeeds in garnering a large number of followers as most Elvs of the day, having lived through the horror of the Long Night of ??-1200, will do anything to avoid repeating the horrors of that event, which is still vividly alive in their memories. |
| The establishment of Nyarthspiel-Escap (now called the Old Gate) marked the first organized retreat point for Elvan refugees making their way across the shattered lands left by the disaster of two years earlier. Five powerful Elv mages had managed to survive the destruction of their respective towers and brave the hazards of the next several years, and at Nyarthspiel's ruins they somehow chanced upon another. Working together, they were able to pool their majik and stabilize a small area well enough to establish a gate, a portal which led directly to the slopes of Mount Fruznok. This gate was to serve for years as a beacon for hundreds of Elvan survivors and allowed them to escape the terrible upheavals of the land they had endured, though they left behind forever most of the high culture that had defined their lives. |
| One hundred and fifty years since its founding, in one eventful evening came the destruction of both the Dwarvan Empire and Elvan Great Kingdom in an accident of which the true cause remains a mystery to this day. The enormous wave of shaping majik which exploded out of the heart of the Empire of the Dwarvs rolled southward, contained in the natural channel formed by the sandstone of the Sarthenobog plateau to the West and the granite roots of the Fruznok Mountain range to the east, devastated both the Dwarvan Empire itself and the Eldar Forest to the south, where nestled the Great Kingdom of the Elvani. Few, if any, of either people were left alive.
The center of the disaster, the Imperial Palace built by the Kingfather Dworin at the very heart of the old Dwarvan Empire, was destroyed instantly. The surrounding hills were stripped of their soil and left with their rocky spines exposed in the terrible wind that followed the cataclysm. The underground halls were fused to glass, but luckily held most of the energy of the cataclysm within and contained it underground. What the magnitude of the disaster might have been had the laboratories and facilities of the Empire not been largely buried far under the surface of the earth is unguessable.
The vast expanse of woods then known as the Eldar Forest was laid waste, the trunks of trees snapping like twigs for hundreds of miles to the south of the disaster. The region that would become the Garnet Desert was drained of its moisture and began the process of mineralization that would eventually lead to the formation of the strange crystal ranges of the Garnet Hills.
One particular majikal eddy swept south and established the tiny desert of the Dyikon, apparently attracted by what had been a large, thriving community of Treemen, another race nearly eliminated by the cataclysm.
|
| A major conflict between Elvs and Dwarvs occurs this year, as the Dwarvs constant need for fuel begins to encroach upon lands the Elvs regard as sacred and wholly their own. The ancient Dwavan custom of dwelling underground does not lessen their need for wood for heat and cooking, and the forests near to their own ancestral lands have long been too little to meet the needs of the vastly expanded Dwarvan population. |
| The First Kingdom of the Dwarvs by this year had grown to be of an immense power, highly skilled in the most profound of majikal arts and with a military that had put to rout even the Mellonkompiel. Political pressures and a desire to consolidate the reins of power drive King Martebules to remake the First Kingdom as the First Empire. He arranges to have himself nominated Emperor Martebules I, and sets about consolidating power in the heart of the Deep Delve, located at the center of what a thousand years later will become the region called the Barrens. Martebules succeeded this year in being coronated, beginning the chain of events that reshape the world due to the excesses of those who will be Martebules' descendents. |
| Aztrakallides, Lord of Dragonkind, called the Necrodrakon, chose this year to make known his long-thought revenge against the Elvs for their treachery of millennia ago. He was the guardian of the dragon nurseries, and he feels betrayed most personally by the Elvani. Awakened from the long slumber he entered following the fall of the Dragon City by a contingent of Elvs seeking to plunder the treasures they believed lay amongst the ruins, the Nekrodrakon takes flight on a mission of terrible revenge. His black wings blot the stars from the sky as he seeks out Elvan communities and razes them, leaving nothing but greasy stains behind in place of trees and homes. Eventually he is driven off with severe wounds by the hero Josavaniel of the Feathered Blade, leaving behind a black talon as a prize from which the Elvs will craft many artifacts of dragon defense in years to come. |
| The Gods of the Elvan Kingdoms reign this year, walking amongst the populace and producing the greatest inspirations of art, music, law and other pursuits of Elvan history. |
| From the smoking ruins of the slave dorms of the dragon hatcheries, a young Dwarv named Dworin, now called Kingfather, strikes out bravely at the head of a small band of 250 fellow slaves, striking southwards to the region which today is known as the Barrens. There he founds the First Kingdom of the Dwarvs, beginning the first of many great Halls with his bride Dworotea. He lives with the aid of Dwarvan sorcery to the ripe old age of 606, to see his people thriving and well on their way to eventual empire after a long life filled with the first encounters and eventual hard-fought wars with the Goblins, Snakewomen, Dark Elvani and other dwellers in the underrealms. |
| The Fall of the Dragon Kingdom was not as enormously cataclysmic as the Dwarvan Catastrophe which followed it in ? -1200 and reshaped the continent; but it was an endeavor of similar magnitude. The revolt of the Elvan servants of several of the greatest dragons, their awe and respect for their masters grown dim over their centuries of servitude, wiped out the dragon hatcheries. These hatcheries were huge underground labyrinths that wound among the roots of several active volcanoes.
The caretakers of these hatcheries were the most powerful and ancient of the dragons, charged with raising the hatchlings in the venerated and most hallowed of draconic traditions. To these ancients, dragon dams would bring their eggs, and surrender them for the honor of seeing them raised in the best of care. The enormous majik the Elvs spent two hundred years surreptitiously creating blew up this sacred nursery, and the ancient dragon city, center of dragon culture, which surrounded it. |
| This was the near-mythical Age of Wyrms, when the dragons enslaved races to build cities of stone for them. A great city of the dragons stood proud, and its golden aeries reached for the sun. The flights of dragons darkened the sun with their wings. Elvs, Dwarvs, and Trols first appeared in the True World, brought here by the dragons to serve them. Although these primitive peoples would spend centuries in awe of their awesome masters, serving to construct ever more glorious testaments to the dragons' might and power, the Elvs, in particular, would begin to chafe under the lordship of the dragons. |
|
