A Short History of Acae
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This History makes use of the Well-Known Calendar of the Eminent Scholar Draum Hunan, where the Year Zero is the Year of the Crowning of the Elf-King Samelith Panisanem, the Peacemaker. Prior to That Date is the Chaos Era, and Afterwards, the New Era.
Contents |
Timeline
-? The Cataclysm
0 Crowning of the Elf-King Samelith Panisanem
371 - 394 Lightwars
808 - 812 Orc Wars
815 Beginning of Kerken's civil war
851 Martell declares war on Vamikir
852 Current Year
Some Remarks on this History
The Cataclysm
The history of Acae has been shaped, first and foremost, by the Cataclysm. A very long time ago the whole of Acae was a united realm ruled by a line of demigod mage-emperors. Then there was the Cataclysm. There are competing theories as to what caused it, but none amount to more than rumor. Some say the last mage-emperor went mad and destroyed it all. Some say 'twas arrogance; the ancients thought they might become gods and instead brought ruin down onto the world. Some say a horde of demonkin were released by a miswrought magic of untold power. Regardless, the facts are these: whole mountain ranges were leveled and new ones rose. Climates shifted. Magic changed.
All that survives from before the Cataclysm is legend and myth. Stories for mothers to tell children and for scholars to collect. After the Cataclysm there followed centuries (it is not known exactly how long) of chaos. There are some bitter old men who say the Chaos Era never really ended (or even that the Cataclysm never really ended), but according to the Eminent Draum Hunan, it ended 852 years ago with the crowning of the Elf-King Samelith Panisanem, the Peacemaker. He made among the then-great powers of Acae what is popularly known as the first true, lasting peace since the Cataclysm. It is now, theoretically at least, the New Era (NE). Still, the world seems in many ways to remain in the shadow of the Cataclysm. Uncharted ruins dot the landscape. Vast stretches of forest and plain lie unclaimed by the civilized nations. City-states are by far more common than kingdoms, of which there exist only a few that are truly stable. Even since the death of the Elf-King greater kingdoms than now exist have risen and fallen again. Every century, the old and cynical say, brings civilization closer to exctinction. The Cataclysm? No, no. They laugh bitterly. That's not what happened to that old Empire. It just died out. As we will, someday.
The Orc Wars
In the past century, the event that has most shaped the current state of Acae is the Orc Wars. In 808 NE, a vast horde of orcs, half-orcs, humans, hobgoblins, gnolls, ogres, and countless other savage humanoids and monsters stormed down through the Ikkar Gap from the northeast led by the greatest villain known to the civilized world: Bartag the Orc-King. The Orc Wars are called such, and exist in the popular imagination as a battle between civilization and savage orcs principally because Bartag himself was an orc. Educated humanoids sometimes point out that most of the horde wasn't even orcish, but they are sneered at for their pretention. Bartag was. He is the image of orc, the face of barbarism and savagery, evil itself. Bartag's horde swept down out of the north with no warning whatsoever, and ravaged across the Known World for four bloody years before a coalition of the civilized states drew him into a decisive battle at the gates of the fortress-city of Barras. In this battle, Bartag himself was killed, and without its leader, the horde almost melted away.
The wars resulted in several significant changes in known world. Simple folk were given the chance to travel to distant lands and the civilized states had a reason to band together and strengthen their ties to each other. Trade increased, and even peace between the nations of Vamikir and Martell seemed briefly possible (this has since ceased to be true). Since the wars, too, orcs and half-orcs have faced terrible persecution across the civilized world. In the former nation of Aethen, which Bartag and his horde almost completely razed in the early days of the war (levelling the capital city and killing the entire extended royal family) orcs and half-orcs were rounded up and worked to death in slave camps. Rumor has it some communities still keep camps in what was once Aethen. Further, the uncivilized areas of the world, particularly the northlands, have emerged in the minds of civilized Acaeans as places of terror and dark things. The northlands are called again by their name in the old language of the pre-Cataclysm Empire: Drul'tsa -- the darknorth. Finally, a whole generation of civilized folk was directly touched by the war. Greybeard humans still live to remember it and tell tales of their own battles to their children. Elves who fought in it are still in their prime, and remnants of the old coalition still exist in the form of marriages between men and women of distant lands and bastard children sired by soldiers on both sides.
