Void Age

And on the pedestal these words appear,
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!‘
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

— Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley

What can be written of an age that does not exist? Not in ink nor stone nor memory. An age of darkness that did not even know the touch of a gentle breeze? For in that millennium, there was only one thing that mattered: Uranon, for it was the world and its sole ruler.

Prehistoric Times

Before everything, there was a time when mankind, in its most primitive state, wandered across the Red Land. It spread to the far corners of the world and eventually began to settle down. Villages emerged, then towns. Chiefs rose to power and became kings. And then there were the first cities.
Few even know about them today and no one can tell wherever they truly were the first, but one among them was destined for greater things. Its name is now either dreaded whisper or baleful cry and yet also the name of the very world. Uranon first vanquished its rivals in a great conflagration before turning its greedy eyes to the lands beyond.

An Empire Eternal

There was nothing that could withstand the might of Uranon. How long the chaining of the world took is unknown, some claim centuries others whisper of days, but there was one day when the sun rose over a world that knew only a single master. It was on this day, when the wind last caressed the earth, that the Eternal Empire was born.

A Windless Age

The first of Uranon's three crimes against creation was the chaining of its elements. Most infamously, the empire managed to completely stop wind from blowing across the world. But its manipulation of the elements went far deeper, the Uranians said to have created clouds, moved rain, and calmed the roaring earth and sea.

A Voiceless Age

The second crime was the attempted destruction of the human soul. Writing became lost, culture forbidden, and mankind so suppressed that the only identity it had was that of the slave. Speech and dreams were the only things remaining, slowly withering lights in the continent-covering slave camps.

An Age of Abominable Progress
Slave labour was the fuel that propelled Uranon's venture to the furthest edges of science. If what it created can even be called 'science' any more. Flying cities, cold fire that burned for eternity, weapons to wipe away entire realms, iron roads and lightning nets, the things it created were both awe-inspiring and horrifying. What survives of it stands to this day, lonely reminders of the iron fist that once ruled the world.

Times Change

This void of history, nature and soul lasted for a thousand years. Until one day, the wind began to blow again. No one knows how it happened or why. If it was a gentle, almost unnoticeable breeze or a violent storm. But everyone alive today knows that it signalled the changing of ages. For the time of Uranon as an invincible master of all was coming to an end. The Wind Age had begun. And with it sounded the first death knell of the Eternal Empire.

It is an achievement unrivalled. For Uranon was not content with just taking our bodies as its property. They removed our very memory.

— Kalgen, First High Priest of the Faronite Church (54 - 72 SA)

by Bastien Grivet

The Matter of Identity
Even though the empire's name proved an empty claim in the end, the wounds it dealt the Red Land and its people will endure into the distant future. Whatever was before Uranon took power was annihilated.
Realms, cultures, and even families, all were broken apart and then randomly thrown together again, the only unity known by a group its purpose wherever the Empire required manpower.
In time, people forgot what had been, able to only keep distant memories alive orally. When imperial rule crumbled and mankind was suddenly thrown into freedom, few groups had ties more expansive than a single family or work group. Modern Uranon knows no culture or identity older than five centuries.
The chaos of imperial collapse created a mess from which new tribes, faiths, families and nations emerged. It is a process still ongoing over three centuries later. But no matter where it is headed, the wounds torn by the Void Age remain deep, its scar tissue thin.

by Max Schiller