The Shit Everyone Across Argentii Knows

Now, no one is saying that all of this is right. But, there needs to be a baseline explanation of the general points of world history that every common person knows, the same way that we know the Pyramids are in Egypt and the Great Wall was built by China to keep Mongolian invaders at bay.

Of course, the highly educated will know much more of the context around these points. They will know the deeper, more precise truths behind what is factually true, and they will know the hidden grain of truth in each misconception, misunderstanding, and misrepresentation.

The Big Picture: Counting Time Counts

A generation is 19 years. A generation of generations is 19 x 19 -- or 361 -- years.

An "age" is 6,859 years. There is much folklore concerning why this is. Those who think they know the truth will say that it is because that was the length of time between the marriage of Tige the Uniter to Talla of Smouge and The Conflagration, and so modern historians count all "ages" backward from that, and fudge the details of the dates on more ancient history.

There's a lot of deep info behind this. It might be more than you want to know.

The most educated scribes and bards know that it is because dragon mating only happens during a certain lunar alignment that only happens every 6,859 years. Because dragon mating and the hatching of their eggs tends to have dire and world-shattering consequences for everyone on Argentii, resetting the calendar seems to be a universal way of welcoming a wholly new world. Given Argentii's history, this is as likely to be a literal transformation as it is a metaphorical one.

The Celestial Calendar: Seasons by the Sun, Months by the Moon

The year is measured from the winter solstice and is made of 364 days. The calendar's 13 months follow the 28-day lunar cycle, as the winter solstice is always a new moon. While local culture determines what events are celebrated throughout the year, across Argentii all islands and peoples celebrate the solstices and equinoxes. Many of these celebrations claim to have roots older than Tige and Talla.

The Time of Talla: Naming Days and Months

When Tige and Talla set about remaking Argentii, the counting of days and years became one of the first foundations of their new society. The 28 days of the lunar month break nicely into 4 weeks of 7 days. Those seven days were named by Talla, according to how she organized her weekly routine: Readay, Builday, Fielday, Chanday, Preserday, Finiday, Playday.

The names of the months came some years later, once Talla had the necessary time to make observations on how nature and the landscape changed around her during her first few years at Library Palace on Crossroads Island. (These will be worked out when I redo the calendar to reflect the changes I've made here.)

The First Age

During this time, the continent was a single landmass, and all peoples were one people.

Dragons and People shared the land, and wars raged rampant among all creatures.

The dragons sought to dominate the people, until U the Chaotic shared the secrets of the deep magics with the people. As a result, the people began to unite against the dragons, using the deep magics to combat the mighty dragon lords and their clans.

This ultimately led to generations of conflict known as the Last Landbound War, the end of which marks the end of the First Age. This end came when the dragon lords united and ripped from the ground the ley lines -- deep veins filled with powerful crystal matrices -- and took away the source of the deep magics, leaving deep scars in the land that divided it into seven separate regions, thus beginning the Lost Age.

Oooo, this just occured to me!! Make sure you want to know the deepest secrets before continuing.

It was these crystalline latices that made it possible for dragon eggs to incubate without the constant vigilance of a parent or other caretaker. When the ley lines were removed, it also made it impossible -- or at least very, very difficult -- for dragon nests to go unattended and still produce viable offspring. And so, it wasn't until the development of Iwhute that the dragons had the ability to retreat back to the moon.

The Lost Age

The Lost Age is so named because not much is known about it, only oral tradition from the time of Tige, as well as some bits that modern science has put together.

Yeah, you've probably already guessed this, but I hid it anyway.

Almost everything that everyone thinks they know about this time is wrong. The only thing that is certain is that the regional boundaries led, over thousands of years, to the genetic diversity displayed in the different ethnicities. It is only in the later United Age when Ancient Sailors begin appearing due to genetic reconvergence through random mutation, that scientists made the connection between all ethnicities back to a single united people. The other bit is the formation of the Caldera and the rising of the sea, because again, modern geology says this was the only way it could have happened based on observable evidence. Y'all...don't forget that 6,859 years is a REALLY long time, and we can't even agree on what happened 2,000 years ago!

After the Last Landbound War, travel between regions was made impossible. The reasoning for this is remembered as twofold: the iron-claw grasp of the dragons and the treacherous tides of shallow and rock-strewn sea floors between regions.

No one knows what started the conflict among the dragons. Shiv's theory is that dragons, being an intelligent, feeling people of their own, must therefore have their own strife and conflicts the same as any other intelligent, feeling people. This conflict came to be known as the Last Continental War

The end result came when the lava vent that would become the Caldera erupted for the first time and, in the process, completely obliterated a subterranean glacier. The resulting melt, as well as the displacement caused by the formation of a new volcanic island, caused dramatic sea rise that decimated the population and further divided the continent from seven regions, to scores upon scores of islands.

This devistation brought about the peace between the dragons and their retreat back to their homeland far, far away.

The survivors that emerged from this time were each a people unto themselves, for the effects of limited travel enforce a smaller population to reproduce. Separation bred genetic characterization and slowly, the forms of the people changed to suit their surroundings.

Spoilers, darling.

Dragons live on the moon and breed on Argentii. Argentii is dragon for "clutch" as in...a clutch of eggs or nest.

In their narrow, focused view on surviving, over time many of the people had forgotten that there were, in fact, other people across the waters that separated each region from its neighbors. When the dragons retreated and people began to explore the waters once more, they were shocked -- and often appalled -- to encounter other peoples. Different in skin and stature and overall feature, different in coloring and manner and style, different in language and communication. But also similar, like looking in an enchanted mirror showing some different, alternate path.

The result was a generations-long period where both war and trade evolved, seemingly in lock-step.

It was these generations of conflict that made the emergence of a unifying force -- Tige the Uniter -- such a turning point in history.