Mendolin
Mendolin was the ancient kingdom of the grey elves. It was one of the global superpowers of the long forgotten golden ages of mortal civilization, covering most of the region now known as the Heartlands. Mendolin was brought to ruin by the Empyreal Gods in the Divine Calamity.
Imperialistic Conquest. Like all the other great nations of Amanor, by the end of the Arcane Age circa -1,000 ER Mendolin had fallen from the grace of the Empyreals. The world was plagued by unremitting war as titanic nations warred with one another for supremacy, scarring the face of the world itself with their destructive application of runemagic. Mendolin expanded its borders aggressively across the world, treating other peoples as fundamentally inferior. The elves of Mendolin subjugated and exploited any primitive cultures without mercy. And their cruelty was not limited to foreign races -- the elves murdered, enslaved and otherwise wronged their own kind as well.
Divine Wrath. The end of the Arcane Age is a time now shrouded in myth and legend, for little historical knowledge survives from those times. Modern scholars believe that an period known as the Black Age lasted for a thousand years as the rulers of Mendolin and other superpowers grew ever more black of heart. Slavery was universal. Millions died in pointless wars. The natural world suffered before the fires of progress. This millenium of strife and war ended with the Divine Calamity as the gods themselves descended from the skies to punish their creations.
Total Annihilation. The wrath of the Empyreals was terrifyingly absolute. Mendolin had been a nation that spanned two continents, its cities marvels of engineering, the might of its magicians inexhaustible, and its libraries bursting with knowledge the likes of which modern sholars cannot even dream of. And yet after the dust settled, nothing remained but a handful of ruins. Like the other evil nations, Mendolin had been annihilated utterly. Its cities were gone, its libraries demolished, its dynasty broken -- as if the gods had removed the entire nation from history. Of the few million elven citizens of Mendolin only some thousands remained, deemed perhaps by some merciful deity to be worth saving. They now found themselves in a world where they were terribly outnumbered by those they had once oppressed, for the enslaved "lesser peoples" of the world had been spared the Empyreals' wrath.
Emancipation. The sordid survivors of Mendolin eventually faded from the world. The grey elves that remain in the world today, scattered across the globe and living as minorities in the nations of other races, are the descendants of slaves. Indeed, the evil elves of Mendolin mistreated also their own kind. It was these emancipated elves, numbering perhaps in the millions and distributed across the world as a result of global slave trade, that formed the ethnicities that make up the elven race.
Burden of Remembrance. In the current age, the grey elves of Amanor still remember the stories told by their great grandparents of the darkness of ages past. It has only been several elven generations since the Black Age, and although other mortals might have forgotten, the elves have not. Ever shamed by the terrible deeds of their ancestors, the very soul of the grey elves as a people will be darkened for many long years to come by the shadow of Mendolin.
Type
Geopolitical, Kingdom
Location
Comments