Humanity rose here and then spread through the continent. Civilization rose where they had a lot of leisure time, and this that in the extreme north west of the continent, where there was true tropical weather year round and where the soil was rich with volcanic ash. The civilization spread, many iterations occurred, but eventually the entire western arm was under their control, from the rich tropicals down to the tundras of the south, where the arm was connected to the rest of the continent. Separating the arm was a reach of the ocean that extended on its eastern flank. The empire was the first to develop boats and sailing ships and thus well before the empire extended to the deep frigid south, there were colonies in the subtropical northern reaches opposite the ancestral Capitol of the empire. There they interacted with the still uncivilized natives and exploited their resources.
The empire began to grow very decadent, it's citizens enjoyed great prosperity that rose the lifestyles of all it's people. Sanitation, free for all public bathes and a basic welfare system for the very poor to live on. People devoted themselves to the arts and the sciences, but began to neglect other concerns. The outer colonies were the first to go, the succeeded by rebellion and neglect, they were sometimes left undefended and jealous or vengeful natives attacked and took them over and eventually the southern reaches of the empire began to feel pressure. The push took over a thousand years, but eventually the push became a source of fear in the empire and they woke from their millennial slumber to find that their defenses were not up to the task of defending them, that the infrastructure had crumbled and they began to retreat from their frontiers. Once the retreat began, the retreat became a head long rush to the core of the nation. Three generations saw the lands cut in half and the armies get a reputation for running than fighting.
Through this time thought, the was one measure where the empire did expand and that was in the expansion of their knowledge of the world. They had many brave explorers that mapped the shoreline of the continent and searched the great seas for new lands and new resources. The seas were vast and expansive, dangerous beyond compare; many expeditions were never heard from again. One form of expedition had particular success, fisher fleets: these were grand vessels that spent the majority of their days fishing and hunting sea elves. They found many distant islands and a few new untapped resources. But it was when they stopped hunting the Sea Elves and discovered they were sentient did they gain the most insight to the world. It was from these elves that they learned about the even more distant landmass far to the north and west. A promised land, in the dialect of the sailors, car a nus, lands of promise.
Of Sea Elves. Millions of years ago, there was a primate that lived by the warm seas and increasingly used the seas as a form of protection from predators and as a source of food too. They adapted over millions of years to live closer and survive longer in the oceans, to the point where they could live deep in the seas and never come on land. They evolved in groups and exploited the riches of the warm seas and had leisure time. They build civilizations and discovered great leviathans and fled from them. They discovered, as a race dangers greater than those that they fled from in the geological past and took to living in the shallows where the behemoths could not go. Some took again to land, in multiple locations all over the world. Some took to the brackish waters near rivers, some took to the rivers themselves. Elves are everywhere, but they are not closely related to humans at all, only in the very distant past; the closest match would be a distant ancestor to the lemur, that they look human is just an accident of parallel evolution.
The news hit the dwindling empire as a distant hope, but as hope. Expeditions were financed and thousands of bounty seekers tried and died attempting to get there. They all failed. A few made it washed up on an alien shore to live out the remainder of their lives victims of storms attacks by great sea leviathans. Eventually though the pressure on the empire became too much, the great magical colleges that studied the mysteries of the world were turned against e invaders, they had little destructive power and their foes had much more experience with that sort of magic. However, the empire's sorcerers were much more capable when they turned toward exploration. When they were thrown into the task, to find one last way to escape the fall of empire, they succeeded.
The journey was long, after the true destination was discovered through more trial and error and a lot of death, over a year by the most direct route. The largest ships the empire had would not be enough, they could only transfer a few people and get back. The decision was to send specialists and tools to the new lands and build the appropriate aid there and send it back, building new ships to send the raw resources back. Magical communication and magical guidance allowed the trips to be direct and relatively quick. Magical propulsion cut the journey down considerably, but it was still a year long journey. Fleets of fishing vessels reduced the need to bring supplies, but attracted more dangerous natural predictors. An alliance with groups of sea elves aided theses adventurers, as it allowed them to venture forth and trade with nations further a water.
It took three celestial years for the colonies to become self sufficient, and another before they began to send regular supplies back, but it was too little and the empire was starting to fall to pieces. A plan was made to evacuate the ruling family from the spiraling decay and plans were made. The great betrayal it was called years later, as the people who laboured to insure the great fleet's construction were to be left behind, stripped of even the little protection that royal military provided. The court astrologers, who were to be brought along with the rulers, saw into the future and saw great destruction if this plan came into fruition. Disaster for the future of Caranus and for the people of the empire. They contacted the magical colleges and a second great fleet was constructed in secret, one that would ensure the best possible future for all. A year before the imperial fleet was ready, the plans of the imperial family were leaked, the very eve that the magical colleges left the empire for the New Promised Lands. The resulting riots, destroyed the imperial shipyards and the ruling family was overthrown. The gates of the empire were thrown open and the barbarian hoards that there pounding on the gates rushed in. They rushed in an began looting and fighting with them selves over the riches. The people of the empire dispersed amongst the victorious captors as slaves or were allowed to simply exist, which was better than the seers saw in the stars. The Imperials, died as they would have as the seers saw, but the colonies, they went on to greatness, which if the imperials had reached they would not have.
Thus began the great and long lasting magical empire began in the Promised lands. The timeline for the prologue was thousands of years; the empire was not one empire but a series that ruled a region. The last empire was the last for thousands of years to gain as much control for various reasons including interventions from outside. What I did not say was that the empire was Black. The tone of their skin was black. That matters to us, but not to them.
Like the arrival of a the Orc horde and the rise of humanoids, but that is part of the grand history.
Long ago, the first settlers arrived in the Promised Land. They arrived on the Eastern shore which was a vast virgin forest that stretched from the deep south to the temperate north. There were no enemies to fight except for those that they brought with them and they had a strong alliance with the Sea Elves who dwelt in the shallows. There was a whole continent to explore that was fertile and open to them: paradise.
The Magi quickly rested the colonies from the Governors sent by the empire and used their magic to make choices for the people. The choices were good and the planning was long term in nature, so although initially the people had difficulties with the rule, later generations enjoyed it greatly. Still morale was high in the early years, the production was not being sent to a far away war and could be used by the people for themselves and to expand the colonies. The colonies were separated greatly, as much as a thousand kilometers apart, but with the mages, communication was near instantaneous and that helped keep the colonies cohesive. There were no hinderances to humans on the continent and this was a mixed blessing. No foes meant that people were relatively safe alone in the forests and could go and establish freeholds if the mages let them, which they did not, because there were dangers that they could not see. This caused some resentment, until Dragons and dragonkind were discovered.
The key to the successes was that the Sorcerer Kings controlled how large the settlements got and how wide spread they got. They spread, new Sorcerers meant new settlements and they followed their rules about working within the environment.
Much is clouded about these times and this may be a generous rewriting of the early days considering how The Second Great Empire came to an end. What the history says is that each town grew around a school that raised sorcerers to rule and to explore the mysteries of the land and the cosmos. The outskirts expanded only to meet their own needs and nothing more. They expanded slowly and were far enough away from each other to keep their impact on the world small. As the schools expanded the towns around them expanded. After years they would become cities. The expansion of the cities into a true empire, with many city states connected together, took many centuries and were the work of many generations of mages. This state of expansion lasted until one or more of the city states achieved enough power to challenge the might of the powerful dragons who controlled the skies and the land between the cities.
The rise of the mightiest of the sorcerers occurred as the search for immortality rose amongst them. As they lived longer they wanted to live longer still. To live longer they had to gain more power. It became a never ending cycle. Longer lived mages were not the issue, it was that longer lived mages ceased to be connected to the people they protected. They became self centered and neglectful. At a certain point they began to research necromancy and extension of their life beyond what was natural.
The city states had spread through the jungle regions of the south east, they spread to the extreme south in to the areas thought to be too hot and there they flourished. In the east the the rule of the Lich Kings solidified. The liches sought out more and more power and their city states broke from the collective rule of the Council and began to form larger nations. They infringed upon the realms of the dragons and there were fierce territorial battles fought, many cities fell, but some prevailed. Those that won against the dragons gained greater control, often taking control of the recently fallen cities.
On Dragons.
They never stop growing. When they are born, in the seeds of rain, they are small and numerous, but as they canabalise their brethren and grow, they hunt in a larger range. Like soap bubbles in water, the space between larger bubbles is filled with smaller bubbles and so is the territory of dragons. Large dragons have large territories that exclude all other dragons, smaller dragons fill the spaces between, as the bubbles merge the smaller become bigger and push out the smaller. When a bubble bursts, the space slowly fills with smaller bubbles. In Caranus, the city states flourished in the spaces between the bigger bubbles, where the bigger dragons ruled. When they pushed into the larger spheres of influence, conflict ensued. Dragons after a certain size is reached become like a force of nature, their firery breath is like a firestorm, the wind from their wings like a gale, and their tail hits the ground like a landslide. Those are the dragons that the Lich Kings fought; they still avoided the dragons whose breath was like a raging volcano, winds like a tornado and whose tails knocked over buildings one hundred meters away.
Where the cities were in more temperate climes, the physical dangers outside the city states were lesser and when rulers became liches, the people sometimes rebelled and fled the cities and into the wilds. It was this way that the great plains became settled with people. Besides the dragons, there was not too many dangers roaming wild in the world. There were the dragon kin and not much else, besides the lions, the tigers and bears. There were advantages too. The dragons while dumb and wild when smaller gained quite a lot of intelligence when they got big and many humans negotiated with the dragons giving them tribute from their herds. And there were Elves.
The cities in the extreme south were the last holdouts to necromancy. They built fantastic cities with large regions under cultivation, they were in the space between three very large dragons, where there was a fourth, that the others removed. Terrible wars were fought between these holdout cities and the great Lich Kings, but slowly something unexpected happened.
After many centuries of rule the Lich Kings and their city states began to disappear. The extreme of the climate that kept the populous from captive in the relative safety of the cities had a price on the dead bodies of their rulers, they decayed faster. The power of the liches held the jungles and the wildlife back when the lich's power broke, the wild flooded in. The jungles were home to much worse than the temperate plains, poisonous snakes and reptiles, lizards that could eat a cow whole. First thought to be dragon kin, but later proved to be not, they never-the-less tore the inhabitants and the cities asunder.
Investigations into the heart of the cities found most of the buildings reclaimed within a few short years by the jungles, and they also found a deep and darker evil shard of the lich's power deep in the heart of the city. Best to be avoided entirely. The eastern forests have been avoided ever since.
Fear of necromancy made the practicing of magic a rarely studied thing, but eventually, it's powers proved to valuable and important to be permanently avoided. That and there were so many good examples, the Elves used it, the dragons used it. Dragonkin even use it. All things in the world use it with corruption coming with it. So the mantle of magic was once again hoisted upon the shoulders of man. And the societies of the plains once again flourished.
To be clear, the histories show that it was not paradise, that there were conflicts and wars and great empires rose and fell, but due to the size of the continent and its fertility, wars were not common. It seems though that magic was its servant for many years, it was its curse as well. There rose a great empire in the dry rain shadow of the Eastern mountains, north of the great bay of Storms. The nation practiced summoning dimensional portals to bring in water and resources from far away. They brought in mineral resources too. Soon the empire in the sands was more prosperous than any time before or since and they turned the southern deserts into paradise. It was said that distant kings envied the wealth of the poorest person in this land, but as these stories so often end, tragedy occurred.
It happened suddenly and the destruction was total. The ripples of that day are felt everyday across the world. A mage summoned the most powerful thing in all the multiverses that would fit through his portal. He summoned an intergalactic colony-ship from an alternate world. The space ship tumbled and rotated in the sudden gravity well and the populous was ejected as the spaceship tumbled down to the city and exploded. The explosion vaporized the empire, and turned the sands to glass, pushed the land up into a mountain chain and polluted the waters afterwards with radiation. The escape pods from the ship landed all over the planet, most on or near the continent. Several thousand all told. They were not exactly human either, they were what became known as orcs.
The settlers landed in the old world where they fought many inconclusive wars. They landed in the plains and they fought more conclusive wars. They landed in the water and they quickly moved back towards the continent. The obliteration of the empire and the wars that broke out were on a scale that no one had seen before, the technology of the survivors of the colony-ship was great, the simplest mining tool, to the simplest cooking appliance could be turned into weapons that sundered kingdoms and in addition to those they had actual weapons. Within a few months most of the wars had ended, the few thousand had killed millions before the bulk of them were defeated. The lands were defeated smoking ruins and the dust from the first explosion turned the skies grey with ash and an unnatural winter descended upon the entire world.
It was in the midst of this disaster that hope died again, a force larger than the one that wracked havoc in the continent, approached from the sea where they landed and they were mostly part of the defensive force the spaceship deployed and almost a million colonists. The people's were mostly unaware how close they came. The humanoid troops landed on the west coast and were resoundly defeated by a much smaller sacrificial force that became known as the Protectors. They used chain magic to cast a spell that removed everything down to the bedrock to another dimension where they were cast in stone. The sacrifice by the force of Protectors went unnoticed as everything suffered this fate in that land. The land continues to suffer from the effects of this spell. There is no soil, no plants no life. There ARE shadows that are cast upon the surface from figures that are not there.
On the Protectors
About the same time as the devastating explosion there was another magical experimentation occurring. The city states in the south were still extant and much research was being done. It was being done in many fields at once, but one proved to be more promising. Time magic. The Mage who researched it needed more time to do research away from his bothersome students and created a room to do research. The Mage entered the room and studied far days and came out to discover time had not appreciatively passed. His research progressed quite quickly from then on and after a matter of a few weeks had perfected his chamber. The devastation in the north occurred at this time and a large tsunami threatened his entire civilization and his solution was to remove them all until it was over. But there was an error and an unexpected glitch occurred and the city and it's people we're lost.
Then they came out alive. But changed. They were different. They were evolved and they were incomparable in every way to the people that went in. Longer lived and more magically attuned. They ceased to be human and were more than that.
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