Recent Ages of Sharitarn.

     

 NECESSARY CONTEXT 

      The Universe of Sharitarn is "identical" in Astronomical Scale to ours. On account of that you find the same stars and planets, of same size, at the same relative distances, moving at the same speed, in their stelar maps. So, their year has the same duration our year has, and you may transfer your knowledge in Astrology and your Zodiacal Map to up there without worries. It all will be just as true here as it was on Earth. 
      Is not that all Universes in the Multiverse are that way. The fact is that the Vortex only reaches Universes that are that way. Those are the meaning of the expressions "Parallel Universe" and "Parallel World" in our context. 

      Parallel Universe is a Universe with the same Astronomic configuration of Sharitarn Universe. Parallel World is the planet equivalent to Sharitarn in his Universe. 

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     Ages Last on average 100 thousand years (100.000 years). They may be divided into periods when the Vortex is tuned on one Parallel Universe, of about 400 years each, and transitional periods, which take about 100 years.  However, those values are approximations and reality can fall far from them.
     Some Schollars say we should revise the numbers to 700 years, and 300 years respectivelly. Considering their theories about cyclic changes. Others believe that there are no cycles in the Vortex and the theories are based in the human desire of see order in what is ramdom.  

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0. Current times. This Age is near to it end but not yet defined by the Scholar Castes.( 657° Age of Civilization)

     The State Cities became the dominant paradigm for the beginning of this Age, and became more important as the interruption of almost all commerce by water caused the dissolution of most alliances between cities. 
      A war bellow the oceans took place and in that the merfolk people slowly forced the octopuses out the Sorrowful River. The city of Gnamat Port was build on South Pole by the Dau race, recently arrived from planet Daugnar. The Dau are centauroid walruses well equipped to deal with the labyrinthine system of shallow waters and islands between the peninsula where their city is located and the South Continent.
    The octopuses retreated to deep waters of Open Sea and humans began to build ships again. Took a few thousand years and a lot of negotiation with the merfolk to regain the expertise in shipbuilding and make trade by see a viable option once more.
     City State of Guadlu was essential in this process, representing the union between humanity and the merfolk. On the top of a high natural wall a gorgeous system of lakes and rivers was build, feed by magically enchanted fountains that created pure fresh water, salt water pulls constructed inside the stone and connected by a complex net of canals that needed no magic to work completed a gorgeous exuberant basis for a dream nation be added.
     The proximity to Piwag Desert was reason for concern, but powerful magical defences protected the Dream City from attacks coming from the west.
     A conflict involving the Mages of Guadlu and Urshawa begun when the first group accused the last of hide information about the Vortex and Teleportation Ways to take control over all planet by force. Guadlu began a movement to change the power inside the Brotherhood by accepting a large number of non-humanoid students. Urshawa formed a alliance of Human Cities, that included Shirshan, and attacked Guadlu with heavy magical power.
     Mimbao was the only large power to side with Guadlu, and that war ended with the Dream City under martial law and the alliance between humanity and the merfolk broken around the globe. Guadlu lost its Mage University, had its mage tower destroyed, and became a village too weak to defend itself.
      The Dau closed their waters to human ships, successfully expelling all attempts of invasion, and the only route between the East and the West Coast left for humanity was the Sorrowful River. Where the remaining merfolk where hidden but lacked the strength to continue fighting. A few human families on isolated islands, and some on Mimbao, forged a contract of mutual non-aggression with the Octopus people and regained the capacity of travelling the Open Sea, but the costs of such travels force them to stay rare.

1. Oceanic Age (656° Age of Cvilization)

     A time of federations, confederations, and pirates. A lot of pirates.
      Ends with the octopuses having their capacity to deal with Xar destroyed by the Mage’s Brotherhood.
     The sea levels grew far above the normal transforming most Main Continent in archipelago. The State Cities whit Mage Universities, and those which could afford to hire the services of powerful mage groups found ways to survive. Raising the ground under them, or raising magically their walls to keep water out, or moving their populations to floating islands anchored to the city left on the bottom of the ocean. The costs of those contracts between nations became so high that in some cases entire populations sold themselves into servitude, a lot close to slavery.
     Brave men born into this kind of almost slavery in many cases escaped to a life of nomadic banditry, looking for temporary refuge among the nations in war against the one hunting them.
    Many collectives of pirates grew large and powerful enough to found nations of their own, and even federations.
    The conflicts on sea led to a higher level of interaction between humanity and the intelligent races under water. Some ancient empires of sea people pressed the Mage’s Brotherhood for the chance of be accepted in Magical Universities.
      The tension escalated and became a global war when an octopus race with powerful magic arrived from the Vortex.
     Is not entirely clear if the sea levels dropped by human magic or that was just a fortuitous coincidence. What is clear is that the human mages completely destroyed the octopus capacity of depurate Xar inside their bodies. They could still make spells, but only by stollen Xar from sigraxes and mages of other races.
    Why exactly the Brotherhood did that instead of just exterminate all octopuses is unclear. In any case that left the sea enemies of humanity with enough power to force humanity to give up the Open Sea. From that time on the deep waters of Sharitarn have belonged to the sea monsters.

2. Merchant Age (655°Age of Civilization)

           That Age ends with the sea levels raising. 
     It begins with what now is the Main Continent divided in three by two straits not unsimilar to the Sorrowful. There was also large channels bellow the Ice Bridge that connects the Main Continent to North Pole. Great merchant companies transformed almost all nations into plutocracies controlled by Merchant Castes entangled into associations of merchants. 
     Was a time of huge corruption, whit large investment in spying and superfluous luxury.
     Between the large port cities the land was divided between Castle Lords with hereditary power. From a race of involuntary immigrants arrived during the first period this Age. Mage Castes became usually the Legislators in the Cities where a Mage University existed, but the merchants had large influence over the local mages thanks to bribery.
    A category of women became know as Silken Sirens. Usually from Scholar Caste families those High Caste and well-educated ladies would sell their services as spies, lovers, and luxurious prostitutes. Usurping in part a role identified usually with highly trained pleasure slaves, but with the social and political contacts of free women. The cultural phenomenon was a product of a specific sort of merchant company characteristic of this period: huge and better armed than most nations. The Sirens disappeared with those companies during the first centuries of Oceanic Age.
    Was by the end of this Age as well that Shirshan began adopting its laws about heritage to prevent the excessive concentration of patrimony in the hands of few Merchant Caste families.
    A global bank system was stablished, and worked for centuries and the time. Sometimes a few thousands of years. Each time the Brotherhood burned everyone involved, eventually. The delay in this response was due to mysterious hermetic reasons no one can identify for certain. Some Scholar Castes mention the already mentioned briberies as a factor.
     Saurian folk of different species where common in the period, and the survivor saurian lineages of the Saurian-Elven Age experienced an improvement in their chances of develop civilized communities by join forces with those newly arrived relatives. That could have been more pronounced, but unfortunately for the lizard’s saurian races lack the sense of kinship to each other shared by all Branched of the Elven Tree in the Multiverse.
    Generally speaking those are more cosmopolitan times, when the humanism reaches lower levels than in the Ages that came immediately before, or those that will came next. Non-human races are integrated in human communities more often, and non-human individuals have a better chance to reach positions of political power and obscene healthy.

3. Labyrinthine River Age. (654°Age of Civilization)

      The volcanic activity is decreasing, global temperatures are on average far higher than on Earth in our days, which is already higher than Sharitarn temperature in the present.
     Where Sharitarn now has oceans there is during this age a maze of countless small islands separated by what Sharitarnes call “Labyrinthine River”. The two main continents of today are fragmented in five. A small but constant flux of water drops from the sculptures placed by the mages during Waterfalls Age.
     Sea people and humans interact far more constantly in this period than they do in modern times.
      Many saurian races, and many lizard people, are brought during this period. 
      The seismic activity had decreased considerably from what was normal in the previous Age. Global temperature had dropped too. However, it was considerably hotter than in current times on Sharitarn. Humanity was in a period of relative confusion. On the other hand the relationship between the many small nations of this time and the non-human races who are oceanic or amphibian was in a sort of Golden Age.
     Many saurean species appeared during this period on Sharitarn, but those talking saureans where not as technologically advanced as those that had been powerful on Sharitarn during the Saurean-Elven Age. Most of them had a similar technological level to what is common on Sharitarn, when not more primitive.
     Sentient oar ships build by magic are characteristic of this period, and where considered the most important weapon and the most distinctive symbol of status for the nations of the time. They became less common in the last days of this Age and practically none was build in the following periods.

4. Southern Age or Trembling Age (653°Age of Civilization)

   The main concern of those who had opposed the Vortex Line project in the beginning of past Age was the catastrophe that could result from the smallest fail. They also had a second concern, and that was the hubris such a feat would bring in case of success.
    Those conservative mages didn’t lived long enough to see their concerns being proved. About 100.000 years after the Vortex Lines creation another large project was presented to the mages that disarmed their concerns about too much interference. The main argument in favour of this plan was precisely the success of Vortex Lines.
    The reason in this case was more honest than the hidden wish of mundane privilege for his own town that moved the mage who designed the concept of Green Lines.
    During Xar-Scar Age the city of Urshawa had lost all magical power for being inside one of the Xar-Scars. Countless mages lost their lives trying to reach the borders of that area of polluted Xar. That happened with Urshawa, the Mage City at North Pole.
     There was a circle of magical stones in the South Pole, since long before Urshawa was build. That circle had been placed by involuntary immigrants during the Barbaric Times, and was so powerful and well hidden that during the foundation of Urshawa mages who knew about it had this place used as a magical anchor for the Mage City. The most important secrets and treasures of Mage’s Brotherhood would be hidden by the Shadow Brothers, elder archmages specially trusted by the Brotherhood, inside the circle of stoned on South Pole.
    The magical connection between the poles allowed the Shadow Brothers to move freely between the city on North Pole and the vault on South Pole. As if they where using teleportation magic, but that was a connection without risk of detection or invasion.
    Looking by the circle of stones on the South Pole no one would find it. The place became known as “Shadow Urshawa” by generations of archmages during Ages. Most where not sure if the place was real or just a joke from their predecessors. Only the Shadow Brothers knew how to travel to the secret vault. Of course, that until they all die trying to reach the border of that xar-scar at the beginning of Xar-Scar Age.
   Now the plan was to find Shadow Urshawa and open an entrance to it, without destroy the magical treasures of humanity inside. Everything going well the connection with the Mage City would be cleaned, and the location of Shadow Urshawa would not be compromised.
    Plan was bold, but solid. Was not for the Vortex Line argument it would never impress enough influential mages to became serious business. Things on Sharitarn where relatively calm at the time and there was no need to any definitive weapon or dreamlike mechanism inside the legendary vault. It could perfectly be left where it was, forgotten, and no one would lose anything because of that.
    That is why it is called hubris, I think.
    Well, they do founded the vault on the bottom of a salt lake in the middle of a island totally hidden by Shadow Magic.
     The cost was unbalance the connection between the Mirror Dimensions, Sharitarn, and the Vortex itself. The shadow Xar escaped mage’s control and almost erased half the planet. To contain it the Brotherhood created a vast anomaly, a physic passage through Sharitarn and the Magical Dimensions know as Cloud Sea. To limit and contain Cloud Sea the mages had to create a continent. It is what we know as South Pole Continent.
     The volcanic activity in South Pole region created hot currents that elevated the temperature of Sharitarn several degrees. Despite the effort of Mage’s Brotherhood to minimise the changes they had provoked as fast as they provoked them, the level of oceans around the globe dropped many kilometres in following days.
    Eventually the mages decided that any attempt to remedy consequences would likely make things worse and tried to forgot the subject.
    The vault was found, but never opened. On the other hand, the island floating in a multidimensional nightmare disguised as a sea of yellow clouds was put to good use. A city was build there, perfect mirror of Urshawa itself. It remains hidden and secret, only a few archmages have access to it.
    Is a “City of Archimages”, so to speak. Prepared to welcome all citizens of Urshawa if another Xar-Scar ever swallow the Mage’s City.
   Outside the Brotherhood no one was told what caused the changes on Sharitarn. As far as official versions go, was all a natural event.
     Earthquakes became a common event, and the continents fragment into so many islands that South Pole became the largest portion of continuous land for most this Age. Trying to follow a plan of small and discreet manipulation, instead of cause large effects, the Brotherhood acts to call things down gradually.

5. Vortex Line Age (653°Age of Civilization)

(Guadlu is founded during this Age, as a Merefolk City)
      Was during a particularly cold winter, when no mage was yet satisfied with what they called “the ork situation”, that groups begun debating the clime. Temperature was dropping for reasons not directly related to magic, but was impossible deny that Undersea had some influence in this too. The mages of Mimbao had dropped all ocean bellow the ground and the Mage’s Brotherhood had created other continents, doubling the volume of salt water on the planet.
    In the eyes of those mages from cities loosing population to hungry and freezing because was harder to produce grains and vegetables was not fair to stop using the collective power of Mage’s Brotherhood to fix the problems caused by this same power.
    One of those mages realized that this argument would do his cause no good. At same time he was lucky enough to step in a hidden door in the basement of some seemingly abandoned mage tower. That placed him in a trail of clues, and in the end of that he found a secret group of mage practitioners, most of them non-human, some of them extremely ancient. Those mages where doing precisely what the Brotherhood exists to prevent, they where messing with the Vortex itself.
    In their defence, no member of this group was interesting in violate the phenomenon. Invert the direction of the Vortex or supress it where not part of their plans. Actually, there was no proper plan in a practical sense.
    The motivation shared inside the group was intellectual curiosity, research and study the results for the sake of learn and enjoy the marvel of that thing. The force capable to transport people between Universes. Even the young human mage could see the point in advance magic studies for no greater goal than their advancement. However, he was still fixed in his original agenda of get more sun for his Peasant Caste’s vegetables.
    The Brotherhood would not, under any circumstances, act to change the global clime from day to night. “They will act to do something else, and that will change the clime by happy accident” though the cunny mage.
     When presented to the right feel minds with enough influence to sell the idea and enough wisdom to not drop more information than absolutely necessary the plan of use this new magical Way, the Vortex Magic, to make the involuntary immigrants a less disruptive factor became appealing.
    When they must present that event to Scholar Castes registers the mages lie their way out the obligation like children who stolen the key of the bodega and not only got drunk but also killed the family’s pet by intoxication. The last thing they will do is admit that such a deep action, involving catastrophic danger, was taken as a consequence of something as trivial and momentary as the interest of agriculture for a few dozen centuries.
    That was what happened.
     The choices about where the Green Lines should be was non-existent, they had to follow the tension lines of Sharitarn magical body. There was only a small degree of variation left, some lines could be reduced or expanded a little. Each small detail was considered in detail, and each mage alive fought like an Warrior Caste to squeeze every drop of advantage possible for his own nation. Or to cut its losses.
    Outside the Brotherhood no one knew something was about to happen.
     In three minutes the planet changed more than it had during most Ages. Long lines of grass marked the continents, separating large regions from each other. The Brotherhood placed invisible walls of shield magic in both sides to protect the lines, and that was what that cunny mage _ now a very old man _ had in mind. Those barriers affected the winds, isolating large regions, changing atmosphere. The result was an fast and durable elevation in temperature, especially at South Hemisphere.
   That all took place in the beginning of this Age.
     The Vortex lines concentrated the arrivals of involuntary immigrants on them, distributing the influence from other Universes. Helping the nations and cultures to deal with less stress with the unpredictable gifts of parallel planets. They interrupted the path of many kaiju, forcing them to enter in conflict with the locals once more. Allies and enemies which used to be days far from each other fell in opposite sides of walls.
    The Wars caused by the Vortex Lines are too many to be mentioned. Not to mention the personal dramas. What stays is the fact that they did not exploded in burning interdimensional energy, and did not brough a Second Age of Spiders either. No one felt to non-existence by accident in this process. Those negative facts for themselves make the Vortex Lines, or Green Lines, the most successful manipulation of the Vortex ever made.
     In that context the arrival of many intelligent species on the sea, and the alliance between some sub-species of elves and merfolk to build a city on the East Cost of a continent passes as a minor detail.
      Temperature was raising but there was still snow on this coast most the year. The architects took huge risks crossing several lines of prudence to make the system of elevators inside the mountain, that makes possible for ships to go up to the top of Guadlu plateau and back to sea level in a couple of hours. The water that flows on High Guadlu do has magical origin, all the rivers and lakes up there are fed by a magical fountain, but the system that uses those waters is mundane engineering and mining skill.

6. Wintry Age (652°Age of Civilization)

      ("West Piwag Orks" and Snow Elves arrived)  
     Intense volcanic activity raises a line of fire and smoke on North Sea, adding territory to North Pole Continent and creating the Ice Bridge that connects it to the Main Continent today.
     This activity covers the sky with ashes for years, and the temperature keeps decreasing after that as a consequence of larger parts of globe being covered by snow. The cold was not as severe as it had been during the two Ice Ages, but the life of common people became harder and shorter than it had been in any time since Towers Age.
    Commerce almost disappears from Sharitarn, except for the Equatorial Line, where it grows more intense than ever.
     The snow elves arrive from the Vortex during this period, and spread through the North Cost of Main Continent and North Pole. Some ancient lineages of Urshawa celebrate contracts of free companionship with this people and with a subspecies of humans arrived from the same planet, wish accompanied the elves as allies.         Around the end of the first quarter of this Age a powerful race of orks arrive. They bring a shamanic magic connected to elemental spirits, and their arrival brings a devastating portion of their atmosphere, highly radioactive and deadly to most living species on Sharitarn (humans included). Those non-human iis spread fast, and concentrate themselves on 11 large territories, accumulating power and affecting the world in large scale.
      Realizing the magnitude of danger, in this case the Mage’s Brotherhood finds a consensus. Brotherhood intervention isolates those orks in the region where they still are, creating what now is the West Side of Piwag Desert.
      Some purposed transfer the dangerous orks to Undersea, or even to Sharitarn natural satellite. They were, probably, resistant enough to endure the conditions of the equivalent to Venus in Sharitarn Universe. The mirror dimensions also appeared in those discussions, despite the calamities caused by abuses of pocket realms during the Waterfalls Age. Since no conclusion was reached, the uncomfortable provisory solution for the orks became permanent. This Age ends with a secondary fruit of those debates being implemented.
    After the orks are contained humanity experiences some centuries of relative tranquillity. However, temperatures decreases gradually, forcing humanity to rely heavily on magic, and magical objects, to endure the harsh winters. Prosperous fertile lands follow the west border of Ungnui Forest, and new human kingdoms of natives and iis fight the tree people for generations; trying to expand their farms and hunting grounds without success.
    Around the middle of this Age Lake Shish is blessed by a powerful ii shaman in the name of his ophidian deities of fire, and grow from a small hot pool into the mighty lake visible on the map. It improves the lives of people, specially around the Equator on the West Hemisphere. East Hemisphere is mostly abandoned to non-human iis, except for the State Cities stablished up there.
      Global temperatures drop again around the end of this Age, with the magic of Lake Shish loosing effect after a desecration of a holly temple. The crisis leads to the event that ends this Age and begins the Vortex Age.

7. Zealot’s Age (651°Age of Civilization)

    It starts about 800.000 years before current days. The names in blue belong to cities that still exist today, while the darker ones are of nations that didn't survived up to the present. I call your attention to Kaoquil, the first city build by the stone dwarven on Sharitarn. Ages before this time.
      Esh-Nurá, Nuraiqui and Wlack-Nurái are other cities of this same race. The last of them, Wlack-Nurái, was the largest at the time, and was destroyed by an alliance of human nations during Zealot's Age. In one of the many Humanist Wars that inflamed those times. Kaoquil survived up to more recently, when the obuju conquered it and transformed in their first and most powerful nation: Aquibar.
      Itban-Ao is an human nation, old and powerful. The Golden City of Mevrengau was founded as colony of Itban-Ao, and was an young nation at the time.
      Ur-Shair was still in existence. That was an influential and pride nation that for some time challenged Urshawa for the title of Mage's City. For some time the possibility of an actual dissidence of Mage's Brotherhood was seriously considered by many, and the core of that new institution would be Ur-Shair. At this point the city had lost most its bright, but was still a major global power.
     Xagrix was another influential player at the time, former capital of an Empire during Imperial Age it was the larger and richest nation of Zealot's Age. Core of most Humanist Movements, birth of 7 of 10 zealot humanist leaders, and most dangerous enemy of Mimbao, the Undead City.

       While the Mage Castes and wild sigraxes understood what was happening easily enough for the common people of low caste the six thousand centuries of vampire hunting and mind intrusions that mark the end of Vampiric Age left a strong impression.
      From vampires they extrapolated the hunt to all undead in their minds. Rescuing ideas and movements from Clan Age many collectives pointed all talking non-humans as their enemies.
    Those feelings grew into action, but without the Brotherhood or a large number of Mage Castes to back it they could not move war against any large population of undeads or living non-humans. What they could do was oppose any merchant or diplomatic relation with the enemies of humanity. This humanist movement extimulated also the cooperation and friendship between members of human race.
     Insisting century after century this groups slowly reduced the non-human population inside their nations. Where they became stronger symbols and habits of Clan Age returned, and some state cities even adopter a king and Noble Caste after not have one since they started the existing portion of their History. Was so desirable to have a king that countless villages and small cities whit no drop of noble blood in them imported noble families, at considerable cost.
      The true kings and their relatives laugh out loud when those pretenders are mentioned.
     Eventually, after cause the extinction of a fair number of non-human species and stimulate the foundation of other fair number of non-human independent state cities (the people banished from human nations had to go somewhere) the Humanist Movement died by himself, “from old age” so to speak.
      The Vampiric Age had been marked by the emergency of a new sort of high undead, created without the knowledge of human mage, or any other member of Mage's Brotherhood. Using this beings as weapons a powerful non-human intelligence almost succeeded in take over the planet and slave all humanity. This plan failed, and led to a large war that ended in compromise.         The Humanist Leagues of Zelotes grew as a consequence of the humanist identity raised during the global war against the vampires. "Human" gained a meaning that it had not had since the Clan Age, on Sharitarn, and would no reencounter ever again. At least not up to current times.
     The Humanists expanded their war against vampires to all high undead. From all high undead they expanded it to all non-human races.
    Ultimately, they failed. There are still in existence on Sharitarn vampires from Vampiric Age, and other high undeads as well. Some of them from Ages that predate the Vampiric Age. However, the Humanists succeeded in make that probably the worse time for non-human iis in general since the Clan Age. And saw the extinction of many talking species of non-humans.
      The Zealots this time didn't found a way to inflame the Mage's Brotherhood for their cause, as the humanists of Clan Age had done. Lacking support in that level the movement did not marked the History of Sharitarn as it would have otherwise.
    One distinct difference between that Zealots and the humanists of Clan Age, aside the weaker support from mages, was their atitude toward technology. Notably, the humanists of Clan Age where pretty much against anything that could be suspected to violate the Exclusion Law. That was not the atitude of humanists in this period.
     The Brotherhood had opened a number of tacit exceptions, non-officially, during the Vampiric Age. On account of the need to provide common men some chance against vampires. Fire-weapons, illumination by gas, and a number of small violations of Exclusion Law entered the Zealot's Age, and the Humanist Zealots where very found of them. Pressing as boldly as they could for more non-magical tools to use in their war against the enemies of humanity (which in the eyes of most of them included all talking non-humans not currently bind in slavery).

8. Vampiric Age.(650°Age of Civilization)

      That Age came before the period know as Zealot's Age, and the dominant issues of Zealot's Age are so tied to this period that some Scholar Castes classify the two periods as one single Age. The time that came before is named Wild Women's Age, or just Women's Age.        As consequence of something that happens in the beginning of Wild Women's Age the usual balance between human males and females was highly changed.Having more slave-girl than normal, and a period relatively comfortable in terms of clime an free of major cataclysms, humanity was prospering well in the first centuries of Vampiric Age.
    Instead of strongly independent State Cities, common in our days, the map was taken by alliances and confederations. Where each local community had some independence but the ties of commerce and military interdependence dominated most the political decisions. There was roads connecting even secondary feudal domains to the centres of power. Bards, itinerant teachers and illusionist sigraxes where everywhere, selling their services to rural communities that for the most part enjoyed far more comfortable lives than those of Peasant Castes in Peasant Settlements today.
      Relations with non-human races were not free of conflict, but those conflicts were local in nature. And most wars followed a series of "Protocols of Civility".
    On the other side, slave-girl had a worse life than they have now. By far. The abundance of female human slaves for an entire Age had changed the view of free men. Even free women were seemed as expendable and except for a small number of fortunate ladies born to a solid social position the life of a free woman was only one step above that of a slave girl. In fact fortunate pets and exotic slaves frequently would live better than free women.

     Necromancy was no novelty on Sharitarn when the Mage’s Brotherhood was founded. Far from that, the roots of this magical Way are as old as the first talking involuntary immigrants arrived in the early days of Barbaric Times, when the ancestors of native humans of Sharitarn where still learning the art of tie verbs to substantives.
      As an autonomous magical Way on Sharitarn Necromancy evolves from Healing during the Barbaric times, long before the Age of Spiders. During a period when the only magic users humanity knew where wild sigraxes. At this point in time still called just sigraxes.
     The system of “models” or types of undead that can be created was well defined by the middle of Saurian-Elven Age. No one was expecting anything new.
    The fast shadows came, with glowing red eyes, from inside the ground. From holes in the sewer systems, from caves in the mountains. Generated by a combination of magical stiles, and accidents, in the forgotten human city on some nameless Undersea beach. Those vampires where barely able to speak or make plans, they attacked like beasts during the night and burned to ashes with the sun. Not fearing it, they would not hide.
      The obvious assumption was that those pitiful beings where iis from some parallel planet. They would drink the blood of as may victims as they could, for as long as they survived, and seldom killed anyone except in self-defence.
       Hordes of such peculiar things appeared in distant regions of Sharitarn, and became funny tales among the Merchant Castes and Artists travelling the wildlands.
       The wild tribes noticed something long before the civilized nations. Those attacked by the monsters would become sick weeks after, and look pale grey for a few days, when they would recover. Something strange remained in them, however.
    In the minds of Sharitarnes up to this time there was no confusion to be made between an undead and a living person. Undeads smell like corpses, or don’t smell at all, they do not breath, have no eyes or eyes like glass, deep emotionless voices, and no interest in common people’s conversations. Single minded individuals, or mindless tools. That was about all the common people knew or needed to know about the subject.
     When the pale types with odd accent appeared and the ones bitten by the mindless beasts welcomed them with an unsettling familiarity, and subservience, social conventions of civilization allowed enough innuendos and silences to preserve the furtive invasion.
    Almost all tribes isolated the infected and either cured or killed them before their undead masters show up. Many hunted this master, following the trail of magic influence to its source. On civilized cities the process advanced more, and in nations where there was no Magic University, and no strong sigrax tradition either, the usual was for the entire village become a collection of puppets for one single undead sigrax.
    Liches, solitary in their eternal exile, captured vampires by accident and didn’t took long for one of them decipher the puzzle.
     Those where undead necromants like themselves, but mere sigraxes. They had opened an amazing door to an entirely new field of possibilities for Necromancy. Their deep intimacy with the involuntary immigrants from parallel worlds where light did not exist had provided elements previous necromancers lacked, and afforded them different ways to see what undead existence can be.
     The inevitable conflict would follow, the new undead aristocracy would make their move to take one of the Magical Universities. “Then the Mage’s Brotherhood will burn all of you to askes, and probably your hometown as well” explained a seasoned lich standing on where today is Mud Lake, to his prisoner of pale skin.
     Is one of this rare and precious occasions in History when a rational conversation in polite voice do leads to a meaningful change.
   The lich used his connections to contact living mages in his home city, and talked to others of his kind. The worlds reached Mimbao, and other nations with Necromant Mages among their citizens.
      The Brotherhood could not find a common ground to take action in the subject, but several Mage Castes had no problem in welcome necromant sigraxes at this time.
     Since the price of slave-girls was still far bellow the normal levels those undead found affordable sources of blood for their sustenance. The sigrax vampires needed to join in groups of at least one dozen to create new undeads of their kind. Usually they used the closest mortals available, what led to a high number of Toraneid vampires in this second generation above the ground.
      Eventually the nocturnal undead had to admit their hidden agenda, and the mind behind it. Deep bellow the surface, at the core levels of Undersea, the non-human who had made the first vampires from his faithful sigrax disciples remained. It was more powerful than any lich, and continued determined to take control over the planet. Specially over the Brotherhood.
     Wasn’t much of a revelation, since every master necromant could deduce it all from the very core principled of his discipline. Still, having developed their magic in a culturally isolated context the first generation of vampires didn’t realised how transparent their lies looked to the liches of surface.
     By this point the Mage Universities and liches had learned enough to continue exploring the new model by themselves. So, vampires burned all over the continents.
Many fled, retreating to their home city on Undersea. Some deserted, taking advantage of the distance between them and their creator to ignore its commands. Those stayed on surface, and build new secret identities for themselves on nations where no necromancer was present to denounce their nature. Many may still be around today.

9. Wild Women’s Age (649°Age of Civilization)

      The Age begins during the period when The Vortex tunes a planet named Toranei, occupied by a technologically society of humans exclusively feminine.
     They had males in the past, but in some point of their cultural evolution had eliminated them. Whit portable devices making possible for every woman to fecundate any other, thanks to cellular manipulation, the humanity up there had completely eliminated the biological function of males in reproduction. On the other hand, they had arrived to the same conclusion Sharitarnes reached about the nature of males and females in human species. In their case, the decision was to eliminate those born as natural masters, to eliminate slavery itself.
   That was a particularly active period of the Vortex, with a constant influx of Toraneids on Sharitarn the slave markets around the planet became overcrowded of goods for sale.
    Each Toraneid when pregnant would have only daughters, what only increased the merchant crisis from one generation to the next. Whit such high number of enslavable women available the prices of untrained slaves dropped to a point where was cheapest use those women as animal ration than keep, transport and train them.
     Some merchants would sell lots of recently captured iis to species like the lizard people, who have a predilection for human flesh. However, most humans of Sharitarn felt revolted by the idea, even wild men who have in their culture the habit of cannibalism as good and sacred could not swallow the notion of kill and eat women as cattle. Actually the most militant cannibals opposed more emphatically than anyone else to the idea of sell slave women as meat.
     Just happens that cannibals make some assumptions about the act of eat human flesh, that are more sentimental and spiritual than what civilized people on Sharitarn imagine. Sell humans as meet seems particularly insulting from the perspective of someone who treats the act of eat the flesh of enemies and/or beloved ones as sacred.
      Leave the Toraneids by themselves in the woods was the general solution in most cases, and that for all practical purposes was not different to kill them. Their way of life on their home planet was founded on high technology, the opportunity for survival training up there was barely null. Even when they had been trained as soldiers or cops, that was not enough to stay alive on the wild territories of Sharitarn.
   Natural selection eliminated those bands of Wild Women as fast as new ones arrived. Some few bands formed lawless settlements, and endured for the centuries their home planet stayed tuned by the Vortex.
    When the Vortex advanced to the next Transition Period some rich Merchant Castes and Castle-Lords decided to patrocinated the wild-women settlement nearby. As a sort of picturesque curiosity, a memento of past centuries. Thanks to that, and to the fact that Toraneid slaves where still very common and their daughters continued to keep the slave-girls offer high, this communities survived most this Age. Enjoying almost total sovereignty, save for some seasonal display of reverence for their patron.
     The offer of Toraneid slaves on the Main Markets decrease gradually by the end of this Age, thanks to directives adopted by the Merchant Castes around the world. Stablishing limits to how may daughters each Toraneid slave-girl could have the merchants and slave trainers regained control over the market, and opened space for higher variety.
     Toraneid settlements became problematic in this new context. Some of them had predicted the impossibility of keep their way of life indefinitely and started adopting Sharitarne male dominant premises gradually. Those ended up as normal peasant settlements, villages, and in some cases even grew enough to became state cities.
    In many cases large scale raids captured and slaved all the wild-women at once.
     That process continued for thousands of years after the period considered as the end of this Age. Something happened that put the merchant complications of slaver houses in shadows. The end of this Age is marked by the raising of a new kind of undead from the caves of Undersea.

10. Crab Age

The age starts with the arrival of a giant crab, followed by several other monumental animals. An entire human city existed on the crab top, with structures build to protect the inhabitants during the period when the crab digs itself bellow earth or moves under water. Not all animals where as large as Shokraa, it was actually the largest one. Still, those kaiju where in many cases large enough to set shadow on entire State Cities. Their side wasn’t the only factor that persuaded the Scholar Castes to name this Age as they did. Each one of those gargantuan animals influenced the clime and natural phenomenon around them, creating a different environment. And each one brough from their home world a population of smaller species adapted to survive in the aura of their specific beast. Some of those species where intelligent, others where not, but none seemed able to control the monster they followed. At very best they could influence its behaviour a little. The kaiju had no need of sustenance by food, but they seemed sensible to ambient and very inclined to stay in movement most the time. Some nations perish under the monsters and their followers, some kill them. Others flee from their shadow and stablish themselves elsewhere. Fortunately, most of those animals end up stablishing a very regular route and routine. Thanks to that share the world with them became possible for humans and other races.

This crisis is a hard test for Consensus of Vurda-Knar, and it passes. The Brotherhood as a whole do not interfere. Individual mages participated in many conflicts, some died trying to stop a centipede or a snail to crush their cities. Those ended portraited as secondary characters. The protagonists of this Age where the warriors, Warrior Castes, barbarian war-chiefs, half-human bandits without a nation to die for. They fought the followers of each kaiju, since the monsters themselves didn’t needed food but their parasites attacked ever human settlement they could reach for resources. Including human meat, naturally. Sigraxes and alchemists played a role in the romances and real wars of this period. However, the warriors and their largescale strategies are the central element that will remain as cultural brand of this period. The surviving kaiju remain, but their importance decreased considerably when their tails of predators and looters either exterminated of incorporated to the category of normal dangers of wild in the minds of their neighbours. The only state city which worth that name brough from the home world of those creatures remains as one of the most exotic nations on Sharitarn: Shokraa, the Crab City.

11. Towers Age

This Age begins with the Brotherhood taking from the Planet, and from all other parts of its Stelar System, any technology that could be a violation of Exclusion Law. Sensible to the danger of complacence the mages in the first centuries of this Age stablished a very high standard of vigilance and judgement. Violations should not be tolerated, no matter how small. In case of doubt, better to play safe and burn the suspects. After a Cycle of Debates about the lessons to be taken from History the Brotherhood adopts its most extensive and serious protocol since the Exclusion Law. By the Consensus of Vurda-Knar the Mage’s Brotherhood adopted its minimal interference politic. Control destructive changes capable to put in risk all planet would be the guide line of this entity, no more interference in local disputes, not even as mediator instance. The mages themselves would be encouraged to reduce their relation whit the institutions of power in their nations to a minimal absolutely inevitable. This directive seems to have worked well for the Brotherhood, since its magical power only grew from that period to our days. There was a lot to rebuild on the planet, some areas remained so contaminated by radiation and other sources of contamination that no form of life present on Sharitarn seemed able to exist there. The centre of the largest among those areas is where now the West Piwag is located. The most noticeable event of this Age was the construction of the first Municipal Mage Towers we still have. The uniform design adopted intended to make clear the power and unity of spirit of all Mage Castes on Sharitarn. As for the power they succeeded completely, those towers are as thinner as some private mage towers but they raise above the taller mountains, and go far under the ground twelve times deeper. Some of them even dare to open their lowest level to tunnels that go down, all the way up to the high levels of Undersea Caves. Free from the heavy weight of Mage’s interference in their day-today busines the other Caster reorganize their nations more accordingly the reality of their surroundings. Artist Caste develop unique stiles of painting and realistic sculpture takes a variety of National themes neglected in previous ages. Huge statues of animals and plants found only in the region where the artists where born gain space, sharing central squares with national heroes and kings. Among the non-human races the tendency of adopt more aspects of human culture became stronger. The age ends with the arrival of a giant crab, followed by several other monumental animals. An entire human city existed on the crab top, with structures build to protect the inhabitants during the period when the crab digs itself bellow earth or moves under water.

12. Fairy Dancer Age.

This Age begins with the large portal in space being activated. It exploded before any harm had been done to the structure of reality. Pixel fire danced on the surface of this structure a instant before the explosion. The fairy people was back to Sharitarn, and their surprize attack not only destroyed the Portal in space and the satellites in orbit. The pixels also burned to death all but five Pyramids, in one same move too fast to be registered by human perception. The remaining Pyramids has accepted the pixel’s terms in that fraction of second, and retreated their armies. Not destroy the enemy would prove to be a bad decision, because as soon and the deal was made the living computers began to analyse the new enemy and its magic. Planning the elimination of all fairies. The Pyramids attack was devastating, burning most the territory claimed by the pixels, and their occupants. It failed in exterminate the enemy, only because one of the Pyramids changed its mind in the last instant and did not attacked. All that had been too fast for humans have time to understand the game being played. What came next was a dance of a hundred thousand years of retreats and attacks. Humanity rebuild, and the Mage’s Brotherhood learned to hold its ground, until reach the position of main ally to the pixels. By the end of this Age the Brotherhood destroy all but one Pyramid, the Pyramid of Wriin, which had been neutral for most the conflict. Most the planet was burned and contaminated, heavily diminished in their power the fair people retreated to their traditional lands. Humanity was left with the rest of Sharitarn to heal. As for Wriim, it closed itself. Alive and active, but in an internalized way. The city grew around Wriim, but under close vigilance of mages. It has contact with a small circle of citizens, and is allowed to share some information in exchange for resources. This contact cannot affect the relations between Lauvriim and the other State Cities too much, or it will end in the destruction of White Pyramid and everyone close to it.

13. White Pyramid Age.

The White Pyramid of Lauvriin was know as Pyramid of Wriin, and was just the first of twelve living computers arrived though the Vortex from the same parallel planet. Their techno-magical nature made difficult for the Mage’s Brotherhood classify their essence as a violation to Exclusion Law. Even penetrate the walls of those hermetically closed structures was all but completely impossible. The structures seemed armless at first, sleeping curiosities, monuments perhaps. There was an emanation of intent in each one of them, but with magically created murders almost immune to magic still walking around, and still in conflict with humanity, structured didn’t got much attention. Even when people began to build their homes around the pyramids, and worship them in some sort of new religion that attracted little interest. The Ungnui people noticed before anyone else, and they contacted the mages of Mimbao and Shirshan with emissaries for the first time in a long time to share their concern. The pyramids where building a war-machine, recruiting walking statues, hydrous races, and even the floating tadpoles. At same time the high intelligent beings where deciphering the principles of magic at work in this Universe, and the basic physic constants. Took some time for the Ungnui persuade the undead and the human mages about the proportion of this treat, and the need of urgent reaction. The Brotherhood sent spies and researches to verify the suspects. Before they could find out anything the city of Urshawa was attacked by a heavily armed battalion of cyborgs teleported right in the Mage Hall. At same time all the existing Mage Towers of cities exploded, as did the most powerful strongholds of mage cabals. Structures connecting the White Pyramids grew fast, and flying drones attacked the ungnui forest day and night. Living machines floating in orbit coordinated the attacks, and a large portal was being build in space with the purpose of connect the Universe of Sharitarn to the home world of those Pyramids, and all other Universes previously conquered by their race. Difficulties grew as the project seemed closed to conclusion, and the structures grew only to be undone. Like the Penelope’s embroidery, it could not be finished, but unlike that other work problem had nothing to do with the artists not wanting to see their work done. Each path to the portal between Universes seemed to close, the living computers moved on just to step back once more, and again. While their drones and soldiers continued the extermination war against all mages and sigraxes not cooptated by the computers. In panic the surviving Mage’s Brotherhood saw the machines reach the point where they would not step back. The definitive risk had to be taken because now no other alternative was left. The living computers had register of the risks, but to them the existence isolated from their specie was not an option. So, they moved on.

14. Hunters age, or Second Adventurers Age.

This age begins with the reestablishment of Mage’s Brotherhood communications, thanks to new and improved mind spells able to work despite the interference. When Mage’s Brotherhood looked at itself now what it saw was a very different structure, and spirit. The global culture had fragmented beyond any help of restauration during this age. Mages had lost any desire to clean the world from treats, instead they wanted the best possible existence for their regions, and above all for their communities. The Mage Universities had no interest in share the magical Ways for the sake of global advancement. Instead they would only trade spells, and only when it was of interest of their nations. Humanity conquers back the position of dominant specie of the planet. However, it does not hold all the power anymore. The Brotherhood cannot understand the teleportation net well enough to use it safely, and teleportation mages became less common. The mess with the mirror dimensions made their spells more dangerous for some time, and when that difficulty passed naturally those who followed the Way where few, and their will to share what they knew was rare. Magical treasures are still more common, and tolerance with high-tech artifacts is higher than it had been since the Saurian-Elven Age. Build those marvels was not acceptable, and could attract the deadly green fire, but walking war-tanks and advanced hand-rifles circulated the markets sharing space with swords and shields. The naughty mage secrets revealed by the event with the mirror dimensions circulated on the planet. Also, some less than strict mages used the atmosphere of liberality in those matters to hide and sell what they considered to be minor violations of Exclusion Law. This Age ends with the arrival of White Pyramid of Wriin.

15. Reconciliation Age

The Vortex entered in one very short transitional period, it lasted only a couple years but brought a scary variety of powerful and strange lifeforms. One affected particularly human History. The floating globes had about five meters of diameter, and moved fast, followed by a tail composed by tentacles as thick as human waists. They jumped from the Vortex in all directions as blood from a severed artery. Looking like floating tadpoles swimming in the air they spread, exploring far with their inquisitive minds. The purple and violet iis passed through magical walls and traps as if they where noting, burning in their way any thing and anyone between them and their goals. Fell magical strongholds resisted, or even slowed, their progression. Divination spells revealed extreme intelligence, but too alien to allow the hope of communication. After consume a number of mages and sigraxes from all species the iis entered the teleportation doors. All took hours, people had barely realized what was happening when the portals closed, the net changing in incomprehensible ways as a reaction to those strange monsters. For thousands of years before that the stress caused by the growing manipulation of energy in high layers of mirror dimensions ha been stressing the tissue that holds them separated but connected. Maybe the collapse of the portals was the last drop, or maybe was blind coincidence. Just a month after the arrival of those odd globular beings countless prisons an treasure-chambers build over the ages by Mages in pocket realms dropped their contents of Sharitarn. Fortunately the most secure of all prisons, the pocket dimension where all beings that look like spiders are throwed by a autonomous spell to be left and forgotten, was not affected. Just the possibility was enough to freeze the blood of all native humans of Sharitarn. The most advanced teleporter archmages where still trying to understand the interaction between the tadpoles and the teleportation net, and decipher the new formulas needed to use the net of portals now, when the monsters and treasures popped into Sharitarn. Powerful artifacts, technological gadgets the mages of other times had decided to keep instead of destroy as the Exclusion Law demanded, strange animals and plants that affected Xar globally making impossible the use of Mind Spells, among them included the magical net of communication. At once transport and communications had become far harder. Precious treasures had been spread randomly around the world and the chaotic waves on the planetary Magical body difficulted the use of Divination Spells, making things even worse for the mages. The mages had the knowledge, brute power and organization to travel the roads and seas both above and under the continents. However, the dynamic of Mage’s Brotherhood was compromised. Shapeshifters and other enemies of humanity found weapons powerful enough to give them the upper hand in some regions. Timeless monsters excluded from Sharitarn by their dangerous nature but kept alive by their precious knowledge in some field now walked again the planet. All that would be complicated enough without the third factor. Just happened that a mage, a Creator of huge talent, had been trying to bring into existence a self-replicating specie of helpers. He wanted those living statues to be intelligent enough to take care of minor tasks in a mage’s Officine, and resistant enough to not broke each time a magic accident happened. This man was basing this project in some doppelganger guinea pigs, kept in magical cages. Happened that this mage got a magistral success in his project, regarding intelligence and resistance to magic. Unfortunately, the resistance to magic was too high to allow the magical lines of contention inside the new specie to work. Thinking by themselves the new specie decided they had more in common with the hydrous prisoners than with their human creator. This mage and all others working in the project died before they had time to realize what was happening. The moving statues, fluid as doppelgangers and barely impervious to magic, multiplied fast. They regarded few species as allies, and killed all others. Above all, they considered humans as their natural enemy. All that happened in the same year. Scared by those changes human cities looked to their neighbours for alliances, even when those where werebeasts and shapeshifters. Those did the same. Humanity alliance seemed weak and powerless now, no global authority could hold. The parallel planet tuned after this period of transition was one never touched by light. Could be that in its Universe light as we know had never existed. Or could be that something in the air of this planet blocked it completely. No intelligent specie with knowledge of special travel arrived from up there. Many intelligent species arrived however, pale and dark monsters, nightmare eaters, deadly fast humanoids. In other times humanity could have kept its ground, but as things where now the Undersea was taken. Each human city surviving in its islands as isolated now, servants paying tribute to monsters for whom darkness was the only home. Meanwhile, as this Age went on humans and their enemies in the surface stablished truces and regional treaties for mutual support against the fluid statues. Lost had been huge, some compromises had to be made even regarding the Exclusion Law. Survival became the centre of all debates in each Market of Sharitarn. Of all main species only the ungnuie remained neutral. This age ends with the reestablishment of Mage’s Brotherhood communications, thanks to new and improved mind spells able to work despite the interference.

16. Waterfalls Age.

This Age starts with the large opening between surface and the Underseas being closed by the Mage’s Brotherhood. On year later the water fountains appeared around the globe. Monumental statues as tall as Mage Towers, but with open mouths near to the top. Dozens of them, vomiting water in huge quantities. The substance was product of Creation Magic balanced to return to surface the volume of salt carried by the oceans when they fell to create Underseas. The nations build on low areas now retaken by the Ocean had to flee or perish, unless they could breathe under water. Those statues continued generating water for ten thousand years, until sea levels reach about as high as they have now. During this period the humanity divides itself, part of it goes back to surface to retake it from the shapeshifters and djhalards and another stays behind in the walls and beaches of Undersea. The project of Mage’s Brotherhood was to stablish a global control over the planet, and rule it with a common mind for the advancement of magic. Took less than three generations for that plan fragment in as many ideas of advancement as there was mages on the planet, and bellow its surface. Once a certain number of Magical Universities had been founded, and became evident for all non-human species that keep a war against humanity would be suicidal, the internal conflicts made impossible the reunion of Mage’s Brotherhood power. The ungnui retreated slower than any other species, but they accepted the new reality eventually. Their forests still had twice the size they have in our time, but that was a huge lost if compared to what they had been in previous Ages. The considerable dissemination of teleportation spells and the net of portals active as a whole kept the Mage Castes from distant parts of the World in very close contact. Even common people could travel in an instant from one side of Sharitarn to the other, paying for the passage through the magical portals. Quality of life improved for humanity, common people in those generations lived better and longer lives than in any other time. Was peace between humans and the small number of races which where now seemed as Historical Allies of humanity. On the other hand, the shapeshifters and werefolk where hunted and many species ended extinct. The Waterfalls had completed their world, and remained as monuments to the power of human mages. “Too much war makes humans cruel and sordid. Too little war makes humans lazy and weak” That expression originates in this period, even if the idea is far older. Was registered the first use of it, and who spoke the words was not a human. Extimulated by the incontestable power they had the mages started to risk bolder experiments in order to extend their power even further. Followers of different Magical Ways competed to see who could create the best solutions to imaginary problems, creating new spells every day. While human population kept growing. To accommodate that populational expansion Mages opened growing pocket realms inside mirror dimensions. Permanent portals transported water from the oceans to those idyllic lands, and the founts replaces the liquid on the sea of Sharitarn. The already complex system of portals designed to serve in the war against the shapeshifters was expanded many times, extended to different purpose. Accidents happened, entire caravans of settlers died from time to time floating in the empty void between mirror dimensions or fused with solid rock. For most part the complex magical net of teleport and communication worked. Too well it worked, so well that humanity grew lazy and weak. Is hard to say how many pocket realms there was, humanity by the end of this Age was in hundreds of billions and only a small part was on Sharitarn. What marks the end of this Age is a conjunction of three independent events. One brough by the Vortex, one emerged from deeper layers of Mirror dimensions, and the last created by human mage. Those three events combined fragmented the magical net of portals, destroyed the existing mage towers and with them the Mage’s Net of communication, and killed 999 in each 1000 humans on surface of Sharitarn. As for those living in pocket dimensions, any survivors_if they exist_ remain beyond the reach of magic up to this day.

17. Deep Roads Age

Humanity grew strong deep under the continents, while the Deserts above slowly transformed themselves into forest and ravines. Only the boldest barbarians dared to hunt side by side with the intelligent predators and shapeshifters, those involuntary immigrants had claimed the land under the sky for themselves. Scholar Castes who lived during this period compared it whit the Barbaric Times, the large period before the Age of Spiders, when humanity was cattle for other intelligent races. Unlike what happened in those distant times however, now human civilization was alive and growing in power. A new net of portals was being slowly build, mixing mirror dimension and underground state cities in a maze designed to be impossible to conquer even if a group of mages somewhere committed treason. Raids of shapeshifters from the surface attacked sporadically, but the Underseas where too far away to worth the effort of a large invasion. One of the powerful psionic lineages of humans had begun to develop a new magical Way based on their capacity of create invisible protective globes around themselves. The effort accelerated when the Vortex tuned a world where powerful mages, human and non-human, had something similar. The experience with the lost of teleportation spells served humanity well, since the Shield Magic was kept in the hands of humanity and a few trusted allies. The shields allowed more human State Cities to survive, keeping invaders outside most the time. Was still a precarious position, those nations served more as outposts and training ground for Warriors and sigraxes than anything else. Much of the core structure of Caste System, including the Caste Codes of most castes, owns their existence to this Age. The form was abandoned and returned many times, but the logic of High and Low castes, with education directed for vocation, survived. Unnoticed by common people of their own cities, and by other talking races, the Mage Castes gained knowledge and power. Was an Golden Age for cooperation between magic users of different human nations, both wild and civilized. They had a long road to build into unknow darkness before they could claim half the power and magical understanding their ancestors had lost during the Magicratic Age. This Age ends with the first true session of Mage Net since the beginning of Imperial Age. Mage’s Brotherhood was still very weak, but was once more able to access something of its potential. That section closed the Great Fend made by the arrogant and disproportional spell of Mimbao mages. And determined the creation of a new ocean on the surface.

18. Adventurers Age

The Ungnui Forest wakes up in this period, green and exuberant as it had not been for many Ages. The plant people had invested dozens of thousands years extending their roots deep, and have reached the oceans bellow. Whit their amazing resilience and adaptability they found a way to sustain themselves with this salt water, and feed the other plants in their surroundings. Far away, on what now is the North West corner of Main Continent, the rock formation know as Stone Noodles had worked as a protective box for countless animal species and plants. It had the only fresh water lakes on surface, protected by layers of moving stone. Despite the long period of dry air outside, somehow, the structure had kept humidity inside. New predatorial species arrived, and more humans. The lich gave up their students after destroy his net of portals, but the circles formed by him continued. Heirs of heroes from Clan Age joined forces with involuntary immigrant humans, and whit elves even. The new predators large and harder to kill than any wereshark, named Djhalards took the mountains and valleys where the East Coast of South Continent now is, a carpet of grass was growing up there as the large green forests returned water to atmosphere and rain once more could be heard in some parts of the world. For generations no human had seem a cloud, now, after more than 200 thousand years, their heirs looked at the moving shapes on sky with reverence and disbelieve. The Djahlards killed humans and shapeshifters without hesitation, making no alliances. While the shapeshifters fought wars against each other. Humanity during this period found a rare common ground, and advanced with very little internal conflict. Guardians of Mage’s Brotherhood treasures and secrets the long-living Mages of non-human origin and the undead mages welcomed those new generations of mages. Communication was hard, and the travels to Urshawa as a necessary step to reach the level of archmage barely suicidal. The followers of Mage Way of Teleportation where in huge demand, but sigrax shapeshifters had learned to place barriers and traps to difficult their spells. Atmosphere continued very dry, and the oceans had been forgotten in the surface. Small lakes where growing, thanks to the ungnui forests where no talking animal dared to venture. That was a slow change. All rivers on the world, when they formed small and timid, joined in the colossal fissure bellow what used to be the island continent created by the mages of Mimbao in their fight against the weresharks. Standing days of distance from it one could see the dark line on the mountain wall, disappearing in both sides of horizon. That was the entrance to a dark world few ventured, a fall into nightmares. Under the continents, inside countless caves and tunnels, a world flourished. New marefolk had joined the survivals of the Huge Fall Into Darkness, walking species had follower the ways opened by ungnui roots, slowly conquering this new world. Races used to exist on those dark regions since before the invasion of oceans cause mass extinction shared space with those fleeing the dry surface, and with those brough everyday by the Vortex. Agoioven was the first human nation to realize the resources to be found on the underground. Shirshan did the same a few thousand years later. The foundation of human cities on the borders of Undersea marks the end of this Age.

19. Hopeful Age

While the world was still a desert, and an uncertain journey of years through the domains of talking beasts still separated the few remaining strongholds of human civilization from each other, an ancient lich citizen of Mimbao decided to teach magic again after millennia in reclusion. He was a human when alive, and an ii from a Universe where space-travel faster than light was possible. The marks of this travels cased a terrible disease and resulted in death at young age, but that had been the boy’s way of life until he was caught by the Vortex in his first visit to Earth since childhood. The energy killing him from inside the bones was translated by his adoptive Universe into the power of tele-transport, and from that combined with his magic potential and education in one of the first Mage Circles of Sharitarn, the man who had become a necromancer helped others to create the magical Way of Tele-transport. Now that tele-transport spells where lost, and most magic with them, this Lich began a movement to raise humanity by connecting all remaining cities whit portals of tele-transport. The essence for this plan was stablish a strong net of transport and communication to free humanity from the assault of changelings. All humans with magic potential would have access to one of the few Magical Universities still actives. In a few hundred generations the Mage’s Brotherhood should be back on business. The plan worked well, at first. A large net of portals connected all nations with Magical Universities to smaller human cities, and Urshawa archives opened their doors again to new generations of mages in the top of their potentials looking to reach the power of archmages. Then a mass of were-beasts commanded by sharklike generals took one city of their net. Most mages kept their ground inside Magical University, but a small group gave up the secrets of magical portals to the shark sigraxes in the hope of protect their families. The net was used by the shapeshifters to have access to other human cities and whit the generalized chaos the portals had to be closed. Several enemies saw themselves lost in mirror dimensions, but the first hope of humanity in a long time was lost.

20. Changeling Desert Age

The salt mountains of ocean bottom now exposed to the winds cover the continents with a sheet of salt making survival even harder. Curiously one of the species that adapts better to this dry environment is the one of Shark-like shapeshifters the undead of Mimbao wanted to scare into submission with their magic. Many shark cities grow in the desert, with houses and temples made of salt and stone. Those are not the only shape shifters thriving in the desert. Races able to adapt to the harsh conditions grow in numbers while humanity decreases. A war begins between the godlike undead mages and the shapeshifter populations, it gains global proportions and last for a dozen thousand years. The War Chaos Against Dead War moves in favour of living tanks to the many necropolis which choose to side against the Lich Lords, following the example of Mimbao. Many Liches follow their living ancestors instead of support their own kind. The Human Republics still in existence fragment into barbarism, or became feudal states surviving around salt oasis thanks to desalinization techniques developed during many generations. If those techniques involve any technology and science brough by the Vortex after the Age of Spiders is a matter for debate. In any case the Mage’s Brotherhood highly diminished and in the hands of undead mages and timeless non-humans decided that this knowledge was acceptable by the Exclusion Law. The ungnuie forests dry and most assume the vegetal specie which had survived Age of Spiders extinguished now. That was not the case, the ungnui merely had concentrated their entire energy in dig hundreds of miles with their roots to reach the oceans bellow their forest. The last Lich Lord is destroyed, all others had abandoned their fight and accepted the nomadic existence once more.

21. Lich Lords Age.

This Age begun with human civilization having lost most its control over magic. The living mage of those generations where little more powerful than sigraxes. Countless magical fortresses and towers had become inaccessible because the spells and sigils needed to access them had been lost. Undead mages and those non-human mages from long-living species not killed by humanity during the Clan Age remain as the only guardians of true magical power. They maintain the Mage’s Brotherhood and keep its mission to prevent technological advancements and any other change that could eventually lead to a second Age of Spiders. Necropolis grow in size and power, and left unchecked many leeches interrupt their routine of moving every few centuries and allow the land around their homes to be soaked by necromantic Xar. Legions of undead spontaneously generated by this excess of purple Xar walk Earth causing panic and destruction among the less powerful non-human races. In the sea an ii specie arrives. Those Shark like shapeshifters challenge Mimbao for its dominance over the archipelago and Open Sea. The undead answer is to raise the entire archipelago transforming it in an large island, and collect it to the South Continent by a large land bridge as soon as it seems save enough. The ungnui had eradicated the fungus in the region by them and an alliance led to the expansion of Ungnui Forest up to the former archipelago which was now a peninsula The reunited population of Undead City share its powerful magic with the tree people, and in return learn many spells forgotten long before the Age of Spiders, which had never belonged to humans. At same time in most the planet magic had become a minor force, the Magical Ways confounded with the mere paths brough by involuntary immigrants. Lineage powers gain importance among humanity and the hereditary mage-senators keep control over their Nations more by tradition and wealth than anything else. This Age ends with a cataclysm. The spell made by the undead of Mimbao at the beginning of this Age weakened the ground bellow Open Ocean, and now if collapses in many places. With access to deep mazes underground the Oceans are almost entirely drained. To most species on the sea and on the underground that means immediate extinction. While to the new gardens and forests growing of surface it means a slow and torturing dead. Living races of Sharitarn join to fight and destroy the Lich Lords who refuse to go back to their nomadic existences while the oceans dry. The Vortex at end of this Age tunes a world of powerful shapeshifters and humans. From this same parallel world came different kinds of undead and a subspecies of human. Some lineages of those humans and shapeshifters psychical powers, which often included hereditary anti-magic.

22. Magicratic Age.

Given the long dependence of high-level magic to barely all areas, the political power was gradually concentrated in the hands of Mages and sigraxes during the previous Age. In this time the floating islands are ruled by Parliaments of Mages, and the kings and Nobles became little more than symbolic trophies for the mage senators. When the green islands begin to grow in some points of desert the Mage’s Brotherhood is almost forgotten by the mages themselves. It’s role of enforce the Exclusion Law is done almost entirely without interference of people, old spells working by themselves. Mages are too involved with local conspirations and small wars to dedicate relevant time to magical development. The paradox is that in the govern of mages, magic declined. Humanity lost knowledge and expertise from one generation to the next. Those mage-senators divide themselves about how they see the expansion of fertile lands on the soil bellow. Some floating nations take control over the largest areas they can conquer, others worried about the inevitable social changes any return to the surface would bring part to destroy the green spots. By consequence of those conflicts a larger number of magical users died, floating island and fortresses ended drifting without direction or linked to the stones bellow by huge chains forged by the few remaining masters of magical iron-work. Flying mounts tamed and crossbred by magic became harder to control as the knowledge about them was lost. Warrior lineages of Warriors and Noble Castes systematically breed to incorporate certain innate talent for bound with non-talking animals brough from human iis became a necessity by the end of this Age.

23. Sand and Salt Age.

With almost all continent contaminated and dry most humanity moves to oceanic islands and powerful enchanters create floating ships to keep contact with the surviving Continental State Cities. Other, more ambitious, make entire valleys above the clouds of sky, adapting the floating disks used to provide light and heat for humanity during the Dark-Ice Age. This floating lands are expensive in terms of Xar, but the lack of territory on the ground makes them necessary. The city of Mimbao divides itself in two, its living citizens move to a floating island while most undeads remain on caves above and below water. Immunes to the fungi the most powerful undead mages continue their existences barely noticing the mass extinction event. Fairy people move their entire population to a mirror dimension leaving behind many artifacts. Greed and bold adventures risk contamination and magical traps to seek for those treasures. Most die in the process. The enemy cities of Micula and Agoioven make an rare truce, and help each other to survive. A legendary connection between the two cities is excavated far bellow the ground, but it is abandoned after several attacks made by a involuntary immigrant race recently arrived, which was spreading in deep caves bellow this tunnel. Even the ungnuie suffer with the contamination, but they endure the challenge and keep their territory in a daily combat against the desert that lasts 100.100 years. Thanks to them the South Continent recover faster than the Main Continent. The Sorrowful River is expanded many times, by a common effort of humans, ungnuie, and merfolk, and other channels are opened from it to create a net of navigable channels all over the Main Continent, connecting the most important nations and during some period it grants large tributes for the Builder Alliance. The land slowly recovers, ending the Age. The city of flying people is found by Xiirsh and her brother during this Age. The place is desert and there is no sign of the people who build it.

24. Age of Plagues

Specie of moss and fungus that produces heat, left behind by the Fair people before their isolation, spread without control and covers large areas on the north and centre of Main Continent. Pestilence Mages of Vurdacnar City (the same city that destroyed Ludrien in the Imperial Age, forcing the survivals to escape and found Lutianen on their wholly mountain) develop ways to contain and control the magical moss and fungus left behind by the pixels. Vurdacnar mages develop the Fungi Way of Magic, but an accident destroy them and their city, leaving only a few Mage Castes to develop wild lineages of that way. A deadly valley of sentient fungus created by magic is isolated by a coordinate effort of several nations before the toxic cloud produced there became more destructive than the hot moss and fungus contained by Pestilence Mages. A deal between the fungus and the humans allowed the preservation of this region under a mountain. The accesses to it are hidden by magic, under the south limits of Grey Snake maze. Global temperature raises, and as the surface of ocean defreeze a variety of intelligent species brought by the vortex during the two previous ages enter in contact with the people of surface. Most of them are very primitive. Except for the ungnui forests and areas around cities capable to magically protect their farms most the continents and islands on the continents had been reduced to desert by plagues and by infestations of fungus. That creates the ideal environment for insular nations grow in influence inside Mage’s Brotherhood.

25. Fairy Spring Age.

Cannibal Wars continued, but the issue had slowly sled to background. The Vortex brings a race of powerfully magic beings, which decided to accelerate the raise of global temperature, and defreeze of ocean. The first half of Fairy Spring Age is know as Green-Ice Age for some, because most the ocean was still frozen and a vegetal mat of moss and hot fungus covered large areas of ice tanks to pixel magic. The fairy people looks like pixels and is even less friendly with technologic advancement than the Exclusion Law purists of Clan Age used to be. However, the fairy have no particular love for humanity and it establishes a constant tension between them and the Brotherhood. This Age ends when an internal conflict among the pixels leads to the decision of isolate all their population in one area and abandon the rests of the Planet to humans. That’s when Blessed Grasslands is founded, the Pixels control the region and only accept the entrance of those they choose to welcome. The fairy actually keep larger territories in caves deep under surface, and Mirror Dimensions. From time to time a pixel is convicted to by a crime, striped from most power, and banished to human lands. Where it is usually slaved or killed.

26 .Red-Ice Age.

The oceans where still frozen, and temperature was still freezing in most regions. However, the sun light became visible once more. The Mage’s Brotherhood had obtained a huge level of influence by being the only thing between humanity and total extinction, if had saved not just humanity but most other intelligent races as well. For most practical purposes the Brotherhood was the Global Government of Sharitarn when this Age begun. However, and the objective situation improves the national and tribal identities from before Imperial Age gain strength. All starts when the heirs of royal lineages formed in early days of Clan Age stars a movement against cannibalism. Eat the flesh of intelligent species was them a normal practice for all groups on the planet, and humans would eat their own relatives as easily as they ate neighbours from non-human species. The idea to forbid cannibalism became popular enough to attract some mages, and the return to local identities, and loyalties gained force so fast that before Globalists could react the self-determination of State Cities ruled by kings was all but entirely restored. Safe for rare cases where the national identity had never being lost (like Mibavan, Agoioven, and Mimbao) the human cities without kings to speak for them never found their way back to existence. However, other human cities appeared. In the cultural conflict between cannibals and non-cannibals countless holly wars happened, most of them separated sides with the wild human tribes joining forces with the non-human cannibals.

27. Dark-Ice Age

This age begin with a century of apparent inactivity of the Vortex. A cloud of ashes left in atmosphere by the Major Sacrifice at end of previous Age darkens the sky all over the globe. To avoid extinction of humanity and most other living species the Brotherhood invests most the Xar left in the planet to create floating islands, which illuminate the territory bellow. Despite the fire under those islands the oceans freeze, and are covert by dark ashes. The survival of humanity heavily depends on magic, with is harder to do now, and the sacrifice of intelligent beings (voluntary or not) became a regular necessity for most races. Using that source of Xar small communities survive century after century of this endless cold night. Nightmarish monsters are brought by the Vortex from Parallel Universes where light do not existed, and they are the iis with better survival chance in those days. The high cost of energy to obtain food makes barely impossible the existence of cities, most are abandoned. The few remaining cities do not work as nations, but as centres of education for mages. While other human cities are abandoned to ice and monsters those remain to provide humanity the necessary mages to keep the fight against darkness. Eventually that fight ended in victory for humanity, but only after a period of improvement so long and gradual that no one would have noticed it if was not by the Divination spells.

28 Mad Labyrinth Age

The sky became dark as the stress imposed to the Vortex causes ruptures in the planet creating fractures in space. Those fractures lead to mirror dimensions, to deep caves on Sharitarn, or to other locations on the surface of the planet. At same time, some Vortex tunnels that stay open for years instead of minutes appear, they are still limited to one direction but some vomit a huge number of monsters and destructive matter, before the Mage Brotherhood find and close them When species of intelligent spiders confined in a mirror dimension are seem on Sharitarn the Mage’s Brotherhood reaches a conclusion about the situation and sacrifices most the Xar, and the mages, on the planet to close the vortex tunnels and the fractures to mirror worlds.

29. Cyborg Age.

With the power of anti-magic crystals and cyber technology the Grove Alliance takes great influence over the world. Their cybernetic is not forbidden by the Exclusion Law, strictly speaking, because both the Yellow Nation (‘mummies’) and the human founders of Agoioven brought it to Sharitarn before the end of the Age of Spiders. Taking advantage of the confusion caused by the absence of gods and emperors the Grove Alliance manages to influence the Mage’s Brotherhood in a level only comparable to what was common during the Saurian-Elven Age. The Brotherhood itself grows powerful once again. It had been hidden in the shadows during the theocratic Imperial Age, most mages trusting more in their deities than in their common goals and means. Now that time was over. Agoioven builds a Mage University at this point and it accepts ungnuie and yellow telepaths, two races already extremely powerful without magic. It also accepts the frog people. For a time Agoioven takes control over Mibavan and almost destroy the Symbiont City, but then the opposition inside the Mage’s Brotherhood manage to organize a resistance and builds the Mage University of Mibavan, transforming the nation in main head quarter for the resistance against the Grove. This Age ends when a secret cabal of frog people and human mages try to build a portal between universes, using techno-magic to manipulate the Vortex. It results in the destruction of almost all cybernetic technology on Sharitarn and extinction of the frog people. (official foundation of Lutianen happens in the Middle of that Age, with the arrival of a race of humanoids that fly without wings. These super-humans build Golden Wing_ the first Mage University of Lutianen_ and the structure that will be used as base for High Towers on top of Lost Pride Mountains)

30. Imperial Age.

Sharitarn is divided between about one dozen nations. Most nations are ruled by human emperors but the real power behind those emperors are a timeless race of immaterial entities worshiped by the emperors and by most other ephemerals. The Dragons (Xiirshi’s specie) arrived near to the previous Age and founded their city, Iborn. It remains as capital of Draconian Empire, the smaller among the great nations. In their realms the Dragons are worshiped as living gods. Fall begin when the frog people Imprison the ‘Lovecraftian monster’ Zagdon. From that point on the non-human race allied to the ungnuie and with the cyborg telepaths of Solitary Island performs a plan that culminates with the capture of all remaining gods bellow Solitary Island.

…

53. Fratricide Age.

54. Awakening Age

This Age starts with the arrival of demi-god heroes and their ‘Humanitarian War’. They moved fast, and where brutal with the non-humans. However, their power contrasted with a regrettable lack of patience and difficulty to understand the arguments of those humans who lacked their powers. In their home world that had not been a major issue, apparently, because the pressing matter up there was simple enough and they where familiar with it. On Sharitarn, things where different. The demi-god army almost started a war against Mimbao, mistakenly assuming that the humans up there where slaves to their undead neighbours. After that mistake was corrected, what happened without more serious consequences thanks to luck more than to anything else, they cleaned large areas of Sharitarn from non-humans. Giving them back to the humans. The magic portals and other infra-structural elements where needless destroyed by those saviours more often than not, but humanity was grateful to them. The demigods wanted to eliminate human slavery, restricting it only to non-humans. At same time they wanted to exterminate all non-humans. This contradiction was just one among many sources of conflict with those violent and well-intended benefactors of humanity. The true problem was when they started building a techno-magical device to open a portal and go back to their home planet. Seemed natural for them that as soon as their “job here” was finished they would return to their home and keep protecting their nations against the alien monsters. Excessively convinced of their superior capacity of reason, and of solve problems, they did not listened any local advising them about the nature of the Vortex and the dangers involved in try to violate it. When the undead mages in Mimbao noticed what was happening was too late for stop the demi-gods, or try to awake the sleeping mages. The techno-magical portal opened, but not to the home world of the demi-gods. Nor to any other Parallel Universe either. Noble to the end the demi-gods sacrificed themselves to close the portal, almost all of them died or went lost in the nothingness between Universes. Dark Things came from the portal before it was closed, and killed the common humans standing near to the portal and expecting a chance to go back to their home universe. Fortunately, those Dark Things were not Spiders. But they were intelligent, and destructive enough.
The portal had been isolated, but not perfectly closed, and the Dark Things protected them, spreading their power and forcing the tissue of reality to reopen the fracture that would eat the entire Universe. Possible, the Multiverse.
That was enough to unite the surviving non-humans, the humans, and motivate the undead mages to awaken the sleeping Mage’s Brotherhood. The Brotherhood had little time to take action, before was too late. The portal was on the top of a mountain, and the Brotherhood had to consume the mountains and a large portion of the Continent, as much as a portion of Sharitarn atmosphere. They sent it all to the core or some Gas Giant far distant in Sharitarn Universe. And at same time teleported all the shadows to the most distant extreme of the Universe they could find. Eventually the shadows will reach the half-open portal, and open it completely. And the Universe will be destroyed. If Sharitarn Universe still remains in existence for that long. Chances are that it will not, because the shadows cannot travel as fast as the light does. And the Mage Brotherhood had them placed as distant from their goal as possible for their teleportation spells, which is fairly distant. Now the mages were awake. To a Sharitarn very different from the one where they had slept. The mages had teleported so much of Sharitarn to the corners of their Universe that they had to create some atmosphere magically, and bring some land back from Mirror Dimensions, just to keep Sharitarn surface viable for human life. Despite all this some demi-gods, and many common humans from their home-Universe had survived. Worried about the lack of restrain of those super-powerful humans, and understanding their commitment to protect humanity in general, and their human parents in particular, the Brotherhood magically marked all humans from that Universe. And determined that they would be punished if the demi-gods ever violated the laws and costumes of Sharitarn again. As long as they respected the ways of Sharitarn, their people could live isolated from the rest of the planet in distant islands, or in the Continent if they preferred. The demi-gods and their people isolated themselves in oceanic islands. And the demi-gods kept fighting the consequences of their arrogance through all Sharitarn, but avoiding to call attention or interfere with the lives of humans and non-human nations. All that happened in decades. However, for the rest of this Age, and many Ages to come, the planet Sharitarn suffered with the scars of the traumatic experience of that techno-magical portal. The Mage’s Brotherhood has enough brute power to create a ball of pure gold, iron, or any other basic element them times larger than Jupiter, and repeat the trick countless times without tire. However, Creation Magic deals better with simple than it deals with complex, and no amount of brute power and purity of Xar can change that. The Mages could not replace the atmosphere they had teleported precisely, with all factors of temperature and pressure, and different molecules, to not even mention the living things floating in the air. What the mages brought from the Mirror Dimensions to replace the mountains and the ground bellow them wasn’t the same they had teleported either. And the scale of the operation alone stressed the Magical Body of the planet more than the mages liked to admit to themselves. Fortunately, the long period without mages awake and playing their power games against each other had left the planet in a rare state of abundant Xar and low tension. Still, the operation was a hard blow. And the energies escaped from the hole in reality had not been cleaned. The major dark intelligences with power to reopen the portal where gone, but toxic energies more dangerous than anything the Vortex usually brings where lost on Sharitarn, and infiltrated deeply inside the planet. Mayhappen that some of those dark minds in shapeless bodies would find a way to enter the Mirror Dimensions and swim in there until find the prison where the Brotherhood keeps all things considered to be dangerously similar to Spiders. That notion terrifies all Sharitarnes, but the Brotherhood didn’t dared to further stress the Magical Body of Sharitarn with a thorough search and cleaning. The matter was postponed. Isolation of mages had resulted in regrettable results, the Brotherhood recognized. Mages should be part of their communities, involved with the interests of their nations. However, most mages alive in that period still felt little connection with the non-mages. They had abandoned the lives of humanity long time before, all people they knew who where not mages had died. Few cities at this point in time still had their non-magic populations. However, the Magic Universities needed apprentices fast, and all the constant supply of resources that only large and powerful nations can provide. Global population was low, after so many extermination wars, and the mages were aging again, now that they where no longer sleeping. That led to the uncomfortable situation of humanist mages, who considered that keep humanity as the dominant specie of the planed, had to accept a large number of non-human pupils and prepare them to be the next generation of mages. Not all humanist mages would do that. Some rules had to be accepted to prevent a Fratricide War inside the Brotherhood. A pact was set, that would prevent the number of non-human mages to raise dangerously. Long lived races such as noble and high noble elves where excluded (the first have lives that extend for Ages, while the others never decline with age), and those considered to be too dedicated to the interest of their own kind were limited to a few individuals at the time (stone dwarves, most talking insects). In any case humans would be accept as students with priority, and the preference after that would go to humanoids. Whit deals like that the Brotherhood opened the doors of their Mage Universities again. But the number of Universities with enough students to continue active after the death of those mages was less than one in each three. The Mage Universities continued to decline. Many welcomed undead Mages and other non-humans who had not stepped inside a University since the end of Saurian-Elven Age. Only by allowing that the Brotherhood kept many Universities open. Odd generations of mages passed the Third Test in those times. There is some objective limitations to how far one can go in terms of accept teachers and students. Liches cannot stay in the same place for more than a decade, give or take, and no city should have more than one in its limits at the same time. Many Universities had as much as five Liches teaching in the University, and that resulted in plagues, death and disease for the living population. Lizard people (not to be confused neither with Saurians nor with Dragons) hate talking mammals in general, and humans in specific: the first is atavism the second is cultural but both inclinations are strong. Still, the world was braking apart. Magic was essential to keep the balance of atmosphere since the event in the beginning of that Age. And all sides endured the growing tensions, for the sake of survival. Until they didn’t. That Age ends with a open war between factions of mages, and the attempt to brake the Mage’s Brotherhood 

55. Shadowed Age

Except for Mibavan, Agoioven, Mimbao, Shirshan and Lutianen and a few other nations of small importance the State Cities with Mage Universities where all deserted by this point. Left as half-forgotten monuments. The secret about how to awake the sleeping mages was preserved by a few Senatorial Houses when the Green-King died, but it was lost in the non-human coup.
A minority of angry voices in the Oblong Shade insisted in keep hunting all human survivors, and killing all human iis that arrived from the Vortex, and even wanted to enter the sanctums where the sleeping mages rested in order to finish one by one. Most factions felt that take the magical tools from the humans was enough. And many worried about the Exclusion Law, proposing means to replace it by vigilance and keep avoiding a new Age of Spiders.
Mimbao was a unique case, with many undead mages who had never gone to sleep, and some who knew the terms of the Exclusion Law better than any human mage for having been present when the Brotherhood was founded. The naval power provided protection to any human ships and crews that asked, and for port nations. This declaration of intentions made the human genocide pause, and forced a compromise that granted to humanity a place in the world. A territory that should be a few kilometres from the sea or from a body of water in reach of Mimbao Ships: humans would not own those areas, but they would not be hunted to extinction in them either.
In exchange for that concession the city of Mimbao would not make attempts to awake the sleeping mages. And would leave the rest of Sharitarn for non-humans.
This deal worked well for all sides, for most this Age. Extermination of humanity turned into slavement of all humans found outside human lands. The few human cities capable to protect themselves did so, the surviving barbaric tribes did the same. And after some time tradition transformed them into accepted neighbours for non-human communities. Almost all human ii arrived from the Vortex during this Age was killed at first sight. Non-humans did their wars among themselves and mostly ignored our specie, except as slaves or source of protein.
Without conscient supervision for too long the Exclusion Law begun working erratically. Influenced by the collective sleeping mages it would sometimes burn entire races, for no understandable reason. And often allow factories and machinery of growing complexity around the world. Mibavan and Agoioven had expanded their power, using the distinctive technologies they are know for. Without the worries about offend the Mage’s Brotherhood the two enemy nations cut for themselves a portion of the world. And lived a strange and tense alliance against the anti-humanist forces.
That Age ends when the Vortex tune a planet where lives a sub-species of humans which has some individuals with natural powers similar to magic. One of each 1.000 of all humans on this parallel planet had some unique magic-like power, but of those powers where comparable to the capacities of archimage liches, and in some cases beyond that. Those demi-gods had developed those powers fighting hostile forces from alien planets in their own Universe, but those aliens did not lived in the Parallel Planet and where beyond the reach of the Vortex.
Already organized as an army to fight against “monsters” for the sake of humanity the demi-god iis embraced the goal of free humanity from their non-human masters. Moving forces of tectonic proportions to achieve this goal fast.

56. Green Archimage’s Age

Hellifon-Vas was a human, like all other guardians chosen to stay awake while the mages slept. He was a Healer too, and had powerful magical items to prolong his natural life beyond even what Healer Magic allows the followers of this Way. Despite that the mage kept his power over the planet for only on quarter of this Age.
Green was already the colour of healing arts at the time, used by itself by mundane physicians and mixed with violet by healer mages and sigraxes. Except that violet was avoided during the Mageless Age. The global domination of Hellifon-Vas brough it back.
The Mage-King used non-humans and humans in his armies, and took control over all major magic portals and most know weapons on the planet. He loved architecture and gardens, and knew quite a lot of plants. What makes somewhat ironic the non-official support the ungnui (a plant people) gave to the resistance against the Green Tyrant.
After rule for a little more than 25. 000 years the traitor of Mage’s Brotherhood was old and tired, exhausted by many conflicts and betrayals. He was absolute monarch of the entire planet, and had allowed a number of exceptions to the Exclusion Law designed to make his govern easier and less dependant of magic. It was absolute tyranny, but from the perspective of most non-human races it was also a significant improvement in quality of life.
Aircrafts crossed the skies of Sharitarn piloted by saurian who had a natural talent for the job, having being born with wings for arms. Elven and giant cops used their natural magic and telepathy to hunt dissidents and terrorists, for a global political-police. While wild barbaric tribes moved from shadow to shadow, caring spies and hunting terrorists for the Mage-King, or helping those who opposed him. The Green-King could manipulate to some extent the magical mechanism of Green Flame, but he could not set a rule in the Exclusion Law for his own forces that was different from the rule that would work for the terrorists who opposed him.
Therefore, the terrorists would carry guns, and use aircrafts and submarines, as much as magical weapons and armours.
While the Green King was the only human living member of the Mage’s Brotherhood awaken the insurgents had little chance. Powerful undeads and living non-human mages kept neutrality. The global tyrant would avoid to go directly against anyone powerful enough to force him to engage the resources of his sleeping Brotherhood, and they kept their silence about his actions on the rest of the world.
When the Green-King died of old age and magical exhaustion his govern changed into a Global Republic, with his more than 600.000 living heirs as potential members of Sharitarn Senate and World Administrators. War for power between the different lineages of heirs exploded, with True Nobles and wild sigrax lineages selling their services for the ‘Senators’ but working to secure their own interests.
Was them that several groups of non-humans and magically modified post-humans joined in an alliance to extinguish humanity for good. With Magical Paths and natural powers similar to magic the Oblong Shade moved as a single warrior, or as a dancer. In one day they attacked, and killed 99 in each 100 humans on the planet.

57. Mageless Age

The Mage’s Brotherhood starts this Age as a distant and barely forgotten institution for most common people. The distance between those who live civilized lives in State Cities, around Mage Universities, and the feudal or nomadic majority of humanity is so high that most cities expend generations without any contact with their neighbour. At same time the national pride among civilized people is low and decreasing. Almost every mage sees himself as a member of Mage’s Brotherhood first and foremost. While the non-mages in the cities are servants, slaves, or second-class citizens. Outside the cities the world is divided between human farms and fortified villages in growing levels of prosperity and the wild territories where non-human iis hide in fear and fight for survival. Conflicts between humans are less common and the noble families share the world among themselves. True nobles rule the most prosperous nations in the world and keep the common policy of unite efforts to keep the non-human treat in check. Magical weapons and teleportation portals created during the previous Age for the wars against non-humans gain civil uses, and alchemists grow influence in society. As that is happening, the same first centuries of this Age see a general distrust in spells and magic users grow among the people who neither live in state cities nor are wild nomads. Magic is slowly associated with non-humans, whit the exception of magical objects and potions that are not seemed as “magic” by the common folk. Caught unprepared some ancient State Cities are attacked and destroyed by feudal neighbours and have their mages all killed by mobs of ferocious alchemists caring powerful magical weapons and armours. The Mage’s Brotherhood reacts by recommending all Mage Universities to close their cities and reduce commerce to the essential minimum. That makes the problem worse, and the low population of cities combined with the lack of contact with the growing villages of “mundanes” makes hard to keep the number of Brothers for one generation to the next. The idea of submit humanity by force is considered and abandoned in account to the humanistic ethics still prevalent at the time. The alternative found by the mages is buy time. Most cities isolate themselves from the rest of the planet transferring everything inside the walls and the very walls to ethereal pockets between Sharitarn and the nearest Mirror Dimension. For those outside the cities was as if they had disappeared living empty ground behind. After that most mages when to sleep in magical fields that would prevent them from aging, that way preserving the power of the Brotherhood for times when that power became again necessary. The few mages that remained active would keep vigilance, and eventually recruit promising talents with magic potential. For almost all this Age the magic users walking on Sharitarn where almost exclusively what we now call “wild sigraxes”. At the time they were divided between “barbaric” and “alchemist-masters”. The first group belonged to wild tribes and continued to practice spells openly and be respected for that, but the “alchemists-masters” had to be as discreet about their powers as possible. As objective fact only wild sigraxes and Mage Universities can perform the First Test, and that Test is the only method to awake the Magic Potential. You be subjected to the test and endure it in order to became either an alchemist or a magic user: became an alchemist is fail the test, by current definition. Fail the test, and survive it. However, during this Age alchemists where wanted (needed, actually) and magic users looked upon with suspect. So, the “alchemist-masters” had to pretend not to be able to make spells. They had to direct most their students to fail the First Test without even instructing them in the possibility of succeeding. At same time, they had to look for promising students who could be trusted to became alchemist-masters themselves. Without scholars and soothsayers working with them in civilization the people lost most the contact with History of Sharitarn. Speculative explanations appeared for why people exploded in green fire by no obvious reasons when engaging in some activities. That was an Age rich in changes and religious flavour. Gradually the wild tribes with lineages of sigraxes gain influence, and raise into power over larger territories. While the long lineages of noble heirs of the Heroes from Clan Age decline. This Age ends when one of the mage guardians responsible for stay alert and keep vigilance betrays the Brotherhood. The guardians would awake the sleeping mages every couple thousand years to a reunion and deliberation of actions about the Exclusion Law, between those periods they had the power to make minor changes in the way the Green Flame acts. This Mage murdered or captured all other guardians and prevented the Brotherhood from awake. Doing that he stolen all control over the Green Flame available and designed a global empire of magic with himself as Absolute King.

58. Clans Age

Human reaction to the elven adventure is extreme. It eliminates almost all non-human inside the Mage’s Brotherhood and closes the door of this institution to non humans for a long time. The remaining non-human mages take refuge on Shadow Urshawa, and reactivate the portals to North Pole. In the spirit of moral renovation the Exclusion Law comes back strongly. The saurean suffers greatly despite of their neutrality in the conflict between humans and elves. Saurean nations are burned completely, the survivors fall into nomadic barbarism and became little better than the lizard people. The strong isolation of all mages from their nations and a generalized paranoia about technology reduce cities to little more than a appendix of Mage Universities. Mages do not involve themselves in mundane business as much as they used to. Political power fragments in tribal alliances. That is the time when the most important royal lineages of present begin.

59. Saurian-Elven Age.

The Xar-Scars reach their maximum near to the end of the previous Age, then a fast process of healing changes the planet producing powerful waves of Xar that make the magic oasis grow in size and power. During this period of erratic magic, the elven races try another union. They create a net of State Cities connected in a Confederation secretly designed to work as a basis to take down human control over Sharitarn. However some important Elven Nations refuse to join the alliance. Up to 25% of the Mage’s Brotherhood is non-human. 10% Elven, 10% Saurien, 5% other groups, This non-human pressure inside the Mage’s Brotherhood leads to high levels of tolerance regarding violations to the Exclusion Law. The Brotherhood became a less monothematic and more politic institution, Close to the end of this Age the Elven Alliance makes it’s move to consolidate power. That move fails and the reaction of humanity almost entirely eliminates the elven presence on Sharitarn. Erevi is the only elven city that survives this period.

60. Xar-Scar Age.

An incident related to the Vortex causes a large damage in the magical body of planet Sharitarn. It opens large areas where Magic is impossible given the polluted Xar. Between those regions spells became weaker and harder to cast except in a few magical oasis. Among those Xar-Scars is the region on North Pole where Urshawa is located, the contact of North Urshawa with it’s hidden sister (Shadow) on South Pole is lost and the survivor citizens of Urshawa must travel their way on foot until a place where they manage to establish a new Mage’s City. The Mage’s Brotherhood weakness open space for changes, and the number of non-humans grows. Tropical Urshawa is a nation of many species.
…

90.

(about 9 million years ago) Foundation of Shirshan

91. Hydrous Age.

   

A TIMELESS LOVE FOR HISTORY   

 

 Sharitarnes have a closer relationship with their History than we have. The main factor that determines that is a consequence of magic. Specifically Divination Spells.           Soothsayers (followers of Divination Way of Magic) have been around since the early days of Barbaric Times, before the Age of Spiders and the Desolation Times that predate the period Sharitarnes divide in Ages, which starts with their Native Civilization. 
     Divination Magic produces reliable and precise information about objective facts, of present and past. It is limited by magic factors in many cases but suffers little to no influence from the passage of time. As long as no magical accident or intentional action hides the information you are looking for makes no real difference if you are researching what happened this morning or 100 billion years ago. That makes small details about their ancestors available for Sharitarnes in a extent of detail that no Earthling human could dream about. 
    Civilized Families keep friends and enemies through the Ages, wild tribes often go far beyond that in the guts of Barbaric Times. And isn't too rare for a merchant to accept or make payments for a contract made 6 or 7 million years before. 
     Another secondary factor that makes memory last longer on this planet is the existence of individuals who live longer than humans. Indefinitely, in some cases. 
      Being those former humans who became undead or non-human iis this long lived individuals and groups make even more important for humanity to keep register of the past. On the other hand, in true, that would not be necessary. Human natives of Sharitarn are, with rare exceptions, lovers of History. Not general through, or even Human History, those are not a object of much interest outside Scholar Caste circles. 
      Family History, that is what Sharitarnes love. And by connection the History of their respective nations.

WHIMSICAL TOPOGRAPHY

Planet Sharitarn changes faster and more drastically its surface than Earth does, and probably more than any other planet in Sharitarn Universe. Or at least any other planet that could hope to be home for living species.
In a small part that is a consequence of direct actions of mages. More than that it is a consequence of countless spells mixing with each other beyond the knowledge and the control of the magic users, year after year and Age after Age. Still, that is not the main factor of instability.
That would be the Vortex itself.
Since long before life evolve on Sharitarn the phenomenon became active. By the time it would only bring lifeless matter, but it did so continually. As it still does.
In some cases the substances brought by the Vortex came from Universes with laws of physics extremely different from those that apply to the Universe of Sharitarn. Each time that happens the universal constants of two different realities overlap and mix in a unique way, with consequences that are unique to each case. Besides, even not considering the interaction between different realities the simple fact that the Vortex is constantly adding materials to the surface of Sharitarn makes things unstable.
Thanks to the Mirror Dimensions Sharitarn don't gain mass every time the Vortex brings something from other Universe, as it does not gain mass when mages and sigraxes create something from nothing using Creation Spells. The mass of the planet remains more or less constant because as the Vortex adds more to the surface an equivalent quantity slides to successive layers of parallel dimensions, that end in non-existence. That keeps the mass constant, but not the composition of the planet. That is constantly changing.
On the oposite direction, magic is a factor to keep a certain level of stability in the surface as well. Nations with Mage Universities have powerful tools to prevent natural events (or not that natural ones) to erase them from the map. The area around them may change from continental to insular, from tropical forest to ice desert, time and again. If and when the mages are not able to prevent that. Is far less likely for the urban areas to accompany those changes.

             

About Sharitarn Maps

There are very specific forces at play, determining the changes on the surface of this planet. Some are similar to those found on planet Earth. Others are possibly unique in the entire Multiverse.
1 One should have in mind since the first moment that planet Sharitarn was formed about 415.068.001.000 years ago. What makes it considerably older than Earth Universe, if current scientific theories are not too far from the true. During this long period the stelar system and the galaxy where Sharitarn is located changed considerably. Nowadays the Universes of Sharitarn and Earth are Parallels, which means that they are identical in Astronomic Scale (as far as forms, sizes, and relative positions are concerned) but that was not the case during all the time Sharitarn has existed.

2 Keeping that long existence in mind, one must then consider that during all this period the Vortex has been dropping mass from other Parallel Planets constantly on different points of Sharitarn surface, randomly. From somewhere close to the core of the planet, the same quantity of mass slides to Mirror Dimensions, where it has no mundane relation with the rest of Sharitarn Universe. That creates a slow but constant movement from the surface in direction to the core of the planet, you will not find anything equivalent on Earth.

3 A third factor that complicates this scenario is that some of this mass does not “plays for the same rules” of the rest of Sharitarn.

Basically speaking, the forces of nature in Sharitarn Universe are the same that exist in our Universe. Except for the phenomenon directly related with magic the same science that applies to our home Universe applies here. And magic has a strong connection with intentionality, purpose, what means we don’t have to worry about even consider it as a factor in the time before life evolve on Sharitarn. However, the Vortex touches Universes where natural laws exist that greatly differ from those of Earth and Sharitarn.

Each time the Vortex brings something from a Parallel Universe for the first time the law that “govern” the existence of that mix with those of Sharitarn. The result is unpredictable, and it will determine how all similar matter from that same Parallel Universe behaves on Sharitarn Universe.

That was how we ended up with a metal that slows down the molecular vibration of everything in its vicinities: temperature drops around it. The currency used by Erevy, the Elven city, is made of such material. The odd stone structure that continually moves, and keeps a constant distance from the core of Sharitarn, know as Stone Maze, or Grey Snakes, is another example. There are substances that don’t affect gravity, others that repel other corpses instead of attract them. Things that are abstract concepts on Sharitarn (like “good”, “evil”, or others) have substance and mass in some Parallel Universes, and are transported to Sharitarn by the Vortex in some cases, sometimes keeping their substance and being able to influence the environment. None of those cases involve magic.

The definitive test to know if something is magical or not consists in carry that inside an Xar-Scar. In those areas of highly polluted Xar magic is impossible. All undead, including the most powerful liches, became mere corpses inside Xar-Scars: from what we can say for sure that the only difference between an undead and a common dead corpse is magic. The “ii” substances keep their odd properties in Xar-Scars. (And the same can be said about certain ii races, by the way. Shadow-fathers came from a Universe where death does not exist, they cannot die and even their cells are indestructible: properties that does not change inside Xar-Scars).

Those substances from different Universes, acting according different rules, have been interacting with each other and with normal matter of Sharitarn Universe since the formation of this planet. And still are.

4 Life Evolved on Sharitarn lithe more than 345 billion years ago, what gives us more than 70 billion years of biology to consider. That is important because where life exists, purpose exists: intentionality. As soon and the first microorganism evolved on Sharitarn the Vortex changed it activity drastically. Before that time, it only transported non-living matter. Since life begun on Sharitarn the Vortex passed to bring mostly living beings. The phenomenon did no difference between simple or complex organisms, nor between small or large ones. The only limitations was that during this first stages it would not bring any “talking species”, nothing with human levels of intelligence.

Regardless, most matter brough by the Vortex was organic. And alive. Non-talking organisms do not make spells, but they are open to the magical aspect of Sharitarn Universe in a way non sentient matter isn’t. Many species that evolve on Universes where ostensible magic exist will evolve magical capacities. Xar is a factor of survival for living species, like temperature, gravity or pressure.

Long before intelligence evolve on Sharitarn we had ethereal forests, with trees growing through inside others like holograms, and teleporting resources from greater distances than they could have covert growing roots. And living as much from Xar as from light and mundane nutrients. There are predators that hunt with telepathic senses, and cut their prey with claws that are magically sharp. Preys that hide themselves in ethereal planes of Xar, and even go as far as find passages to teleport themselves to Mirror Dimensions in order to hide their eggs in those desolated regions free from predators.

Some magical properties remain in the body of dead animals and plants, or other forms of life, after death. And they accumulate, changing the light rivers of Xar on the planet. And being heavily affected by the shocks that result in the formation of Xar-Scars.

5 Finally, one cannot discount the importance of talking, magic users properly speaking. Mages have only existed for about 62 million years, and their power is a factor one could hardly exaggerate. However, since the beginning of Barbaric times, 8 billion years before the Age of Spiders the Vortex brings talking species with more frequency than non-talking species. Among those intelligent iis there are some powerful races with godlike powers similar to magic, and some species of highly advanced technology as well.

So, from those 70 billion years of biological life on Sharitarn, the later 8 billion have seem intelligent races raise and fall. Develop civilizations and test the limits of magic and mundane reality in Sharitarn Universe. The Exclusion Law came much later, after the Age of Spiders and the Desolation Times that followed it.

In some aspects our adoptive planet is similar to our original home. However, there are here too many factors that make impossible to know what to expect from the tectonic forces in play here.

I already mentioned that the stone formation know as Stone Maze does not change its position related to the core of the planet. Another fact to notice is that Magic Universities also remain in the same place in relation to the Stone Maze, to each other, and to the centre of Sharitarn. They are fix points on the World Map, since the instant the Magic University is founded, and remain as such even when their University stop their activities.

Nations with Magic Universities have mages, and only them have mages. A city must have the “magical number” of mages to keep a Magic University active (the actual number is an well kept secret, but most estimate it is either 27, or 25). Those nations are actively influencing the tectonic forces constantly, to keep themselves safe from major changes in the landscape. And to destroy their rivals, whenever possible. However, human nations with mages are certainly not the only intelligent forces with interests using magic to change the world on global scale.

From entire species to single individuals worse godlike power overshadow the power of entire cities with Magic Universities, there are many non-humans influencing the ties. A Magical Way in specific is tailored to affect the atmosphere in global scale: Tempest Magic. It provides little for the follower in terms of fast and localized spells, but even a Tempest sigrax can affect the weather of entire continents. Causing long lasting changes, if other magical forces do not erase them.

With that I close this text, in an unfortunately pessimist note. There are far too many factors involved in the formations of continents on Sharitarn, and more are introduced by the Vortex every minute. No one can say what the phenomenon will bring next to this planet. Under such circumstances, any attempt of prediction would be an exercise in futility.

The best we can do is understand what we can. Adapt our knowledge to the new facts as they arrive. And hope for the best.

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Let's Talk Some Genetics 

Biologists and Geneticists of Earth Universe have a specific term for that phenomenon. They call it “L.I.E.”, but without the capitulars and the dots. If you ever repeat what I am saying in the presence of Sharitarnes I will deny it, and accuse you of have misinterpreted my teachings for stupidity or ill intent: keep that in mind, for your own sake. Still, I fail to construct any other expression to express this message.

Whenever a “native Sharitarne” boast about being “truly” or “purely” native, this native is stretching the true beyond the point where it changes into its opposite. If this native is a simple minded individual you may consider some chance of honest mistake. That is the best I can offer.

Let’s go into facts: except for the magic, and for the Vortex sub-products, this Universe is like our Universe. Our knowledge of nature applies here as well as it applies to our own Universe. So, we have a ground to sit on and think logically. Cause follows effect, and so on.

So, you have humanity evolving on Sharitarn about 8 billion years before the Age of Spiders begin. The Age of Spiders takes 1 thousand years give or take how much you few like, and after that we must add another 3 million years of Desolation Times, or “Desolation Age”.

We have 657 Ages of “human native civilisation” here, they vary in duration but a rough approximation is that they are “on average” 100 thousand years each. A little less than that, actually, but the difference isn’t enough to make difference for our discussion. If you count the “Desolation” as another Age it lasts about the same of 30 typical Ages, as you may have noticed.

In any case, humanity evolved at the beginning of Barbaric Times, you have it more everything that comes next separating the first humans on Sharitarn from the humans who live here right now. There is no way for human specie stay the same for a period of time that long, without a something fixing the mutations that will happen overtime.

I don’t like to admit the fact, but facts don’t care for my feelings about them neither should you. Fact is that the phenomenon know as “The Vortex” do has a special relation with human species. Also, we must admit that: the exact same genetics will evolve time and again in different Universes. Several species are the same in different Parallel Planets. And is in the nature of that special relationship between the Vortex and our specie that humans are brought to Sharitarn with more frequency and in larger numbers than any other specie.

Not all human variations brough by the Vortex are “identical” to the native Sharitarnes, but we are, and a large portion of the humans brought to Sharitarn are as well.

I am sure we would find differences between Earthlings and Sharitarnes, and other “normal humans” looking the matter in a proper microscope, but that is an academic point on a planet where microscopes are forbidden and magically prevented.

The simple fact that humans are the same in look from one Age to the Next, for 657 Ages strongly suggests that the “original” human genome that evolved on Sharitarn is being reintroduced time and again in the blood lineages. The habit of free men having sex and children with their slave-girl, and the fact that about all ii women are slave-girls matches that data. Sons and daughters of slave-girl enter life as free citizens of their nations often enough to make the difference between freedom and slavery a minor factor from the point of view of evolution.
The major consequence of pleasure slaves being part of all human groups on Sharitarn is the reduction of specialization. A city divided in Castes as rigidly as Sharitarne cities are would separate itself in different post-human species after a few Ages, possibly less. What prevents that is the sex slaves being available for all free men, and having no caste.
In the present humanity is very proud of being what it is on Sharitarn: “the only talking specie native of…” you have heard it before. That is an “Human Planet”, they say. Has been for most the Ages after Desolation Times. So, there is some degree of intentional design behind the “purity” of human race. Being human is an asset, and a valuable one. Families have good reason to wish to preserve it not mixing themselves with “suspect” branches of humanity.
Well, free men can have as many odd sex-slaves they want, and also have children with them all, because that makes no difference as far as “family” in concerned here. Children born by a slave are slave property of who owns the woman. They can be freed only by the will of their owner. And freedom don’t make them “part of the family”: Blood does not matter in that regard. A father must declare the bond, “recognize” the children, or there is nothing to be considered (the nobles, of “True Noble Caste Blood”, are the singular and complicated exception here, but they are not very numerous).
The subject change drastically when we enter Desolation times, and the long Barbaric Times. Because Sharitarn was pretty emphatically not an “Human Planet” back them. Humans where “cattle” during Barbaric Times, or wild animals to be hunted for food and for sport.
No “humanist pride” is likely to have keep eugenic practices in place back them. The human sigraxes existed but they where far weaker than civilized non-human users of magical paths. And not likely to worry about keep the humanity constantly identical to itself over the course of generations.
Human control of Xar grows gradually over the course of all Barbaric Times. And still now the wild sigraxes are know to be less powerful than their civilized counterparts. Now I can go back to that first statement I made. You will hear with some frequency Sharitarnes say things like “I have no drop of ii blood in my veins”. This is something most well educated High Castes do not believe to be the literal true. Because even if you would assume the unlikely circumstance of someone having no mixed blood through all History of Humanity from the present to day one of Barbaric Times that would not make the statement true. They know that.
Because before the Barbaric times you have 62 billion years of existence of life on Sharitarn to consider. Humanity evolves on Sharitarn on that base, and during all those 62 billion years the Vortex was working. Bringing living non-intelligent species from Parallel Planets in the Multiverse. Hardly any living specie on Sharitarn could be “purely” Sharitarne. Much less a specie as complex as a mammal.
No, Sharitarn natives are themselves already an “ii specie” in all but the last step. They evolved to humanity here. From a mix of influences that must have been mostly ii.
Well, as I said before, that is not an debate you want to raise. Sharitarnes like their “long lineages” and “nativeness”. Most of those who say they are “pure Sharitarn native” not only have ii ancestors but even a fair percentage of non-human heritage. Or so I suspect, and not without evidence.

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