History of Aurelia
The Age of Myths
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In the earliest days, when gods still roamed the land and shaped creation with their hands, the western continent of Aurelia was wild, untamed, and alive with arcane energies. Mountains towered over the western forests, while boggy swamps lay untouched in the east. The elves were the first to awaken, settling in the far northern woodlands. Known for their mastery of magic and nature, they shaped forests and rivers, making their homeland a place of unearthly beauty. In time, they became guardians of the ancient world, holding vast knowledge of the land’s secrets.
The Dwarves, born of stone and fire, emerged in the southern mountains, where they built vast kingdoms into the mountainsides. They mined deep and forged alliances with the earth itself, creating a network of citadels and fortresses hidden from the outside world. They crafted magnificent weapons, armor, and treasures of rare metals that would become legendary.
Goblins and orcs, born in the harsh swamp lands of the western continent, grew into fierce and cunning clans, competing for territory and survival. Here, the swamps bred strong warriors who learned the ways of dark magic, ambush, and guerrilla tactics, traits that would serve them well in their struggle for existence. Over time the swamps dried up, leaving behind vast plains and fields between the grand mountains.
The Age of Awakening
0-300 AD
No one knows exactly when the first humans set foot on Aurelia—only that the world was never the same after.
They did not arrive by ship, nor through any known arcane gate. The oldest elven records speak only of a sudden presence, a tide of men and women who appeared across the eastern shores like a storm long unpredicted. They came with iron tools, new languages, foreign gods—and an unrelenting hunger.
Within a few generations, the humans had taken the eastern continent for themselves. Their rapid growth was unmatched: villages became cities, kings rose and fell, and entire forests were leveled to feed the fires of progress. Where the elves had once wandered beneath starlit trees, citadels rose. Where the dwarves had once traded freely, taxes and armies followed.
Some say it wasn’t conquest at first—but desperation. A species displaced from some forgotten catastrophe. But whatever sympathy might have existed faded quickly as Human ambition turned to empire.
The First War of the Vale marked the breaking point. Elven strongholds fell in weeks, burned or abandoned as Human warlords seized land and resources. The elves, long practiced in patience, chose exile over extinction and retreated westward, crossing the Greenspine Mountains to lands less fertile, less contested—but still free.
They were not the only ones.
The halflings abandoned their farms, the kobolds fled their mines, and even the beastfolk tribes vanished into the wild corners of the world. Those who remained found themselves either enslaved, assimilated, or erased. Only the gnomes seemed to find an easy home among the humans, settling in the northern foothills in Nerath.
The Age of Dominion
—An Era of Expansion, Empire, and Arrogance (approx. 0–850 AD, After Dawn)
The Age of Dominion is the name given to the long and turbulent era when humanity ruled nearly unchallenged over the eastern continent of Aurelia. It was a time of massive growth, relentless conquest, and golden thrones built on the bones of older civilizations.
It was also the age in which the seeds of today’s disasters were sown.
The Rise of Human Empire
Following their mysterious arrival on Aurelia’s eastern shores, humans spread like wildfire. They were adaptable, fast-breeding, and hungry for land and power. Where elves preserved, and dwarves fortified, humans built, consumed, and moved on.
Multiple city-states rose across the continent—some founded on trade, others on faith, war, or arcane might. These would eventually coalesce into sprawling kingdoms and empires. Chief among them was the Solaris Republic, the Calverin Dynasty, and the Old Red Banner—nations that warred and traded in cycles, united only by their common dominance over the other peoples of Aurelia.
Magic was widely practiced, and divine blessings were taken for granted. Cities floated. Archmages ruled courts. The gods were distant, but their symbols adorned every palace.
Displacement of the Elder Races
This age was also marked by great tragedy for the older peoples of Aurelia. The elves, who once roamed the vast forests of the east, were pushed westward in a series of brutal wars. The dwarves lost several surface strongholds to Human expansion. Many halfling communities vanished entirely, either absorbed or destroyed.
The Treaty of Emberfall, signed in Year 442 AD, officially exiled all non-human peoples from the central eastern lowlands, calling it “a necessary measure for peace.” It was, in truth, the final nail in the coffin of shared sovereignty.
Those who resisted were labeled monsters. Those who fled were forgotten.
The Glory and the Cost
For a time, this was humanity’s golden age.
Art, science, and arcane discovery flourished.
Great monuments were carved from mountains.
The city of Ivessan built towers that scraped the clouds.
The floating citadel of Vorn Hara controlled the skies above three kingdoms.
The vaults beneath Perah—then still a colonial outpost—stored treasures and knowledge from a hundred cultures.
But the peace was never real. Beneath the marble was rot.
The empires grew bloated. Rivalries intensified. Magic twisted and corrupted. Faith grew hollow, and the gods grew distant. The last few centuries of the Age of Dominion were marked by civil wars, plague outbreaks, and magical disasters—most famously the Rending of Stoneglass, when a failed divination spell destroyed an entire capital.
And finally, something cracked.
The Breaking and the End of Dominion
The Age of Dominion ended not with a single event, but with a collapse on all fronts.
The last great singular Human empire, the Calverin Dynasty, fell to an internal rebellion—its once-mighty capital swallowed by wild magic. The Solaris Republic fractured. Perah, cut off from the east, became an independent city-state. Trade faltered. The gods fell silent.
Then came the signs:
- Dragons stirring in forgotten distant shores.
- Orc clans forming strange alliances.
- The Cilese Empire rising from the east with unstoppable might.
- Clerics feeling power again—stronger than ever, but... different.
- The Doomfist banners riding from the north.
Most historians now agree: The Age of Dominion didn’t end peacefully. It was broken.
The Age of Echos
~850 AD - present day
The Age of Dominion is over, though few dare to say it aloud. What replaced it has no name yet—but the world feels it. Something is returning. Many things, in fact. Old powers, old enemies, and old truths long buried.
The Doomfist Horde
It began in the desolate northern wastes, where no empire ever bothered to look. Clans of orcs, giants, beastkin, and worse—once scattered and squabbling—have united under one banner: the Doomfist Horde. Led by a warlord known only as Gorrak the Blackjaw, the horde is not just a roaming army; it is a crusade against civilization itself.
They march with purpose, coordinated with frightening precision, and worse: they wield tactics and magic far beyond what the scattered clans once knew.
Entire towns have vanished overnight. Trade routes from the north have gone silent. And refugees speak of sky-ships burning, blighted earth, and voices in the storm commanding beasts to war.
Some whisper that Gorrak is no mere warlord—that something older guides him. Something that speaks through blood and fire.
The Cilese Empire’s Sudden Rise
As if the Doomfist wasn’t enough, the east has unleashed another storm. From the old heartlands of man rose the Empire of Cilese, like a blade drawn from a long-forgotten sheath.
Emperor Lucious Raventide, once a minor noble, now commands an army of terrifying precision, arcane mastery, and fanatical loyalty. Cities fall without resistance. Kingdoms surrender before battle. The Cilese do not conquer like men—they sweep like fate. In three short years they have conquered nearly all of the Continent of Solhara, from where there were seven kingdoms there are now but two.
Their hatred of magic is matched only by their use of it. They claim to “purify” the world, ridding it of the chaos magic brings. Yet their own soldiers wield terrible spells, and their Inquisitors burn with a power no school teaches.
The elves call it Second Dusk. The dwarves have sealed their gates. The west watches helplessly as Cilese armies near the borders of Perah.
The Surge of Divine Power
For centuries, the gods of Aurelia seemed distant. Clerics prayed, and sometimes they were heard. Often, they weren’t.
That has changed.
Recently, clerics of all faiths—old and obscure—report surges of divine power. Long-dead temples now radiate light. Forgotten relics hum with purpose. Miracles, once rare, now occur with frightening regularity.
But not all gods have returned in peace.
Some seek vengeance for ages of abandonment. Others come with new commandments, strange and sharp. Prophets speak in tongues. Saints rise and are martyred. The line between faith and fear blurs.
Amaunator, god of truth and light, shines brighter than he has in centuries. His paladins call this the Last Dawn. Others fear it is only the first flash before the long night.
The Return of the Dragons
Perhaps the clearest sign of change: the dragons are waking.
They were myths, legends, half-remembered stories. Now, they are real, rising, and reclaiming the skies.
A red wyrm scorched the cliffs of Toren’s Reach last summer. A silver dragon was seen battling a Cilese airship above the Stormbreak Islands. An ancient green, known only as Verethar the Slumbering, now coils around a jungle temple the Thornwood tribes call sacred.
No one knows why they’ve returned. Some say the world is broken, and they have come to claim its pieces. Others say they never truly left—they were merely waiting for the right age of chaos to hatch their plans.
The Balance Fractures
The world teeters.
Three forces rise: the Horde, the Empire, and the Forgotten.
The gods stir, the dragons soar, and mortals must choose—
To stand, to serve, or to survive.