Hammerfall

Said to be an Elven term for 'the Mainland', little of Tor Lindon, north or south knows peace.
It is rumoured that the Ancients were in their own history, a fragmented and barbaric people. What the sources of the various conflicts may have been, no one knows fully, save that in the age-long years of co-existence, very, very few had ever been peaceful. Humans, Elves and Dwarves formed the Three Elder Races. Each race was gifted with many unique strengths. Strengths they believed would allow them to become masters over everyone else about them. But the Elder Races also had strengths in common, the most insidious being the power of their intellect. For whilst the races warred, they became ever more cunning in their tactics and devices and employed them to their fullest extent with little remorse. Magics were devised to destroy specific peoples, weapons were designed to affect not just one person or small brigade, but entire villages and cities. Hurts and recriminations piled one upon another and the shear depth of hatred each shared for the other approached genocidal proportions.
It is in this backdrop of chaos and suffering that the first references are made to the Oracle. The Oracle's origins are that of a simple Elf maid, humble and pretty, who is captured and horribly tortured in the course of an ongoing war between her peoples and neighboring human nations. Her compliant nature earns her the scorn of her captors, and she retains a vow of silence in the face of suffering that would make the most seasoned veterans blush. In the final moments of her life, she places herself between her captors and their assailants and sacrifices herself for those who held her in the deepest contempt. That act of selflessness pierces the veil of war and hatred and evokes a reaction of the strongest kind from the Lady. At the dawning of the veil between life and death, the maid is enshrined in an unbreakable crystal, and becomes the Pathbringer, a direct conduit to the Lady and her teachings for those who would follow. The Lady bars any and all interference in Tor Lindon affairs on the part of other would be gods, and the footprint for the creation of the Ancient civilization is laid.
There are very few scholars that challenge the precept at one time in Tor Lindon's history, a great and vast civilization existed that dwarves even today's greatest powers at their height.

Fall of the Ancients

The destinies of those who now inhabit Tor Lindon seem by far to be dominated by an enigmatic and glorious past, long forgotten in the annals of time, but highly coveted for the power it is believed can be gained from its knowledge.
A civilization of Ancient Elves and Dwarves and Men, enlightened by a divine Path once held dominion and presided over the whole world, and in a time of unprecedented peace and harmony reached the apex of knowledge and power the like of which academes of today can only suspect. It is said that such was their might and knowledge, they could divert rivers from their course, grow forests where once none existed, and float great cities in the sky.
In time, it is believed by some, that they learned to break the bonds of this realm and reach for the stars where they found still more realms and brought there their understanding of peace and knowledge with them.
But the glory of heaven is not meant for mortal hands, and so the civilization of the Ancients began to unravel.
Nor for the hands of immortals, it seems.
The Path teaches that the One (known now as the Lady) had created a race of beings preceding the Humans, Elves and Dwarves of Tor Lindon. Templates, perhaps. This race of beings, referred to on separate occasions as thevaldangeli were beings of vast powers, and yet still creations and not rival to the One. Meant to be curators of a sort, they were given dominion over various aspects of reality; elements, and life, death and so on. The thevaldangeli existed in the cosmos even as the Ancients were not yet conceived.
The thevaldangeli proved strife-ridden and prone to being influenced by their passions. As a race, very little is known but the Path teaches that the One denied them Tor Lindon.
How it came to pass that the thevaldangeli came to Tor Lindon is unknown. But both the Path and the muqaradaq of Qu'astan corroborate that great beings came, and the peace of the Ancients was shattered.
War eventually breaks out, but it is a war unlike any experienced prior.
The Ancients in their Golden Age had risen to such heights. Now their knowledge was turned to conquest and forcible dominion, and the unleashing of such resources and energies would reshape great tracts of Tor Lindon. Rivers would be diverted. Cities incinerated. Mountains raised and minions of war created. The world groaned under the strain, but the Book of Azza'aasaa describes the following:

...the ground shook and I fell to my knees. The ashes of Akkallaqua'al were on the bitter wind and my battle with Goe'oest had left me drained and wounded like never before. Still, Bistit's voice whispered that I should raise my head towards the heavens, and as I did I could scarce believe what mine own eyes relayed: the death of Kallal....

There is growing evidence that the Ancients destroyed one Tor Lindon's three moons, and brought it down. The resulting cataclysm is often referred to as Hammerfall.
A great darkness overcame the land. The Ancients came to an end and Tor Lindon was lost. Disease and death, famine and ignorance now dominated.
Millennia would pass before the torrent of destruction subsided and the vast stretches of land ravaged by the cataclysm would again become hospitable. The Path that once bound the races to one another diverged and was severed, as too the unity and harmony that it led to. In its stead, the fragmented remnant of the three Races began to newly assert themselves on the lands surrounding them, and soon saw that they were not alone to do so.

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  Hammerfall