Broad Strokes of History

The world of Rulainn is vast, ancient, and full of mystery. Even the advanced scholars of past ages, when people were strongly interconnected by magic and knowledge exchange, were able only to glean small hints of the nature of the planet and its place in the universe. It was once hypothesized that the world was part of a system of elemental planes. However, even the most stringent and arcane experiments were only able to reveal the existence of a single overlapping plane: Ethereum, or the ethereal plane. In the third age, this revelation, or anti-revelation, as some proclaimed, caused a planet-wide existential crisis. These tests had shown two disturbing truths: first, the gods (and their associated domains) were not as near as had been preached, if they even existed at all. Second, the proof of the afterlife showed the dark, wispy mirror of a bleak world that death promised. No blissful eternities had been found. Thanks to this discovery, the search for meaning turned outward. Scientific progress lurched forward as scholars shifted their gaze to the stars, searching for any indications of the gods elsewhere in the vast inky expanse. In comparing the planet of Rulainn to other celestial bodies in earnest, scholars made several important calculations. Rulainn was found to have a circumference of about 263,000 miles (just about the size of Jupiter, by real-world measurements), in a system with six other planets. Though it was plain to the naked eye that there were four moons that circled each other and the planet, calculations of the time showed that there was a fifth moon, orbitally locked behind the pale face of the the largest moon. Though astronomers searched the reaches of space, they never found the divine proof they hoped for. Calamity struck too soon for that.
Throughout the seven ages, the stars and moons have been paramount in religion, navigation, and magical applications. Some of the earliest forms of magic in Rulainn drew power from the constellations. Many constellations haunted the skies, each with their own cultural significance varying from region to region. With a planet of Rulainn's size, many of these early cultures did not have matching constellations to draw from. Ritual was more important than the shapes themselves. Despite the regional differences, all around the world shamans learned to trace their shapes in rituals, and when the stars were right, the will of those shamans manifested in bursts of arcane energy. Constellation tracing became the basis of somatic gestures for spell casting independently in many cultures across the world. With time, eventually early magicians would string together constellations for more specific and powerful spells. Lunar positions seemed to amplify or diminish these effects to some small degree, depending on which moons' faces graced the skies. Four visible moons orbited each other and the planet, gazing down in a complicated dance. With the predictable phases of the moons, rituals took place in anticipation of their placement. Little did these shamans know that the more power that was drawn from the moons and stars, the more magic lingered upon the earth. Magic accumulated and flowed, giving arcane power to other tracings, such as glyphs, runes, and other writing. When scholars of later ages learned this, they realized it also explained the innate magic of certain creatures; migration paths, habits, and instinct all played a similar role to the tracing of constellations, giving some creatures strong ties to the natural magic of the world. Even without ritual, pools of magic sat long enough in many places to imbue many locations, sometimes even whole regions, with bizarre traits borne by this lingering magic.
Scholars had learned the power of the stars, but it wasn't until the moons were ripped out of orbit that they began to understand the magnitude of lunar influence upon the world. Tradition showed the pull of the moons on the tide, and the distinct creatures each of the moons lured out into the open. Vague connections between the moons and different rituals were known, and generally ignored in arcane research. But it took academics too long to realize these creatures were tied closely to the types of magic that each moon influenced. In the Third Age, when most of these discoveries took place, the focus of academia was too fixated on watching the heavens. They forgot to watch the natural world; ignored the signs that the moons provided, failed to notice the subtleties of lunar magic changing the path of evolution for beings that lurked where stellar magic pooled. In time, it was revealed that each lunar presence weakened the separation between the world and Ethereum, allowing the ethereal plane to warp the material world's magics. Each of the four known moons broke down a different type of planar membrane or filter, as some scholars described.

The Ages of Mankind

Recorded history of people began around 100,000 years ago, with the earliest known signs of humanoid habitation appearing across most of the continents concurrently. Paintings in cave walls, carvings in ancient trees, even fossilized petroglyphs in bone have been found scattered across the continents. The oldest surviving recordings all come from the same period, give or take a couple thousand years depending on the location. This period of prehistory to the invention of written communication is known as the First Age. Despite advances in academia, no one knows just how far back in time the First Age stretches. All that is known about the time before history is that humanoids across the world had many dread beasts to fear, and relatively few places to shelter. Some scholars posited that it was the discovery of magic that allowed early peoples to advance from survivalists to nation-builders.
After the invention of writing, civilizations began appearing all around the world.