TimHistory

[00:37] <Tim> THE KNOWN HISTORY:  This is what is known, heavily summarized and drawn primarily from Mer and Long-Ear sources for the early parts, mostly Short-Ear for the portions concerning the Greenspear Wars.  Modern period notes come from all three sources, with occasional differences noted.  These recollections are fragmented, and so occasionally untrustworthy or incomplete.
[00:38] <Tim> At the headwaters of time, there was Earth, Sky, and Ocean, the three children of the formless chaos that existed before all things.  When Being and Being Not became separate, they sprang out and divided What Is between them.  In those days, all of Earth was in one place, all of Ocean was in one place, and all of Sky was in one place, such that they could walk and converse and fight as elves...
[00:38] <Tim> ...do.  Earth was lovely and alluring, so both Sky and Ocean competed for her favors in vicious battle.  Again and again, one would seduce Earth, and the other would arrive to drive him (to the degree that 'he' and 'she' can ever describe such primordial forces) away.  Born from Earth (and occasionally Ocean or Sky) were the gods.  Sky was the elder and stronger, yet Ocean was devious, and...
[00:38] <Tim> ...the flow of his thoughts was adaptable and deep no matter his mien, thus the sagas are full of stories in which Ocean fools Sky and tricks him into protecting Earth until she gives birth to one of Ocean's children, thinking it his own.  The clash of their primordial weapons whenever Sky discovered these deceptions hurled great sparks that seared the Sky's body with thousands of stars,...
[00:38] <Tim> ...while his answering strokes cleft great scars into Ocean's flesh, scarring it with whitecaps.  At last, Earth grew tired of this; their battles had torn her once-smooth flesh with canyons and hills, Ocean's tides wore away at her statuesque cliffs and Sky's bolts of lightning burned her gentle slopes.  She conspired to invite them both to her bed at the same time, then fell on them in a...
[00:38] <Tim> ...fury, tearing Sky into the Thousand Winds and ripping Ocean into the Thousand Waters.  Hurling their heads away from her, she created the Sun and Moon.  Exhausted and battered, Earth sank away into herself and fell apart, creating the Thousand Lands.  Life blossomed from the decay of the great three, maggots that fed upon their flesh and became the first living things.  All that existed...
[00:38] <Tim> ...was left to the gods.
[00:46] <Tim> Halfbred children of primordial powers, the gods were a young and lively race, yet venal and indolent.  They dwelt in their mother's house, the Heavenly Mount surrounded by the Lily Sea in the uttermost west, and presided over an age of divinity.  Many and strange were their works, for they had great power and did what pleased them at the time.
[00:49] <Tim> Eventually, however, they grew bored with using their power for self-gratification, and creating beings of smoke and fire and thunder that had lives measured in days.  Creating marvels was easy, but they desired servants in their own image.  From enduring stone and soft clay, they shaped figures in their likeness, and whispered the Divine Runes that all gods speak, words that shape the...
[00:49] <Tim> ...world, into the ears of these vessels, which inhaled the divine breath and rose to life.
[00:54] <Tim> The beings of stone were vastly powerful, and knew neither death nor fear, but they cared even less than the gods for the tedious but necessary management of the world, and more for the making of things.  The gods considered them a failure, and banished them into the depths of the world.  The beings of clay, sculpted from Earth's softer flesh, were more patient and mindful.  They were given...
[00:54] <Tim> ...the duty of stewarding the world while the gods frolicked, warred, and loved on the Heavenly Mount.  Many gods shaped the clay Elves, yet it was Earth that gave them substance.  Thus, in a way strange to the gods, they were bound to the land, regardless of which of the major forms the gods had shaped them in.
[00:56] <Tim> The Long-Ears were favored, and permitted to live on the slopes of the great mountain, working as the gods' servants, elite household troops, and concubines, as well as farming food for the divine festhalls.  They were also taught the language of the Runes, the first magic of Elfkind.  The Mer-elves of the waters were sent to steward the oceans, lakes, and rivers of the world, while the...
[00:56] <Tim> ...hardy and numerous Short-Ears were sent forth in vast hosts to bring all lands under the divine heel.
[01:00] <Tim> Under banners invested with the sigils and power of the gods, the Short-Ear and Mer hosts swept out into the world, encountering many strange creatures, races, and bizarre foreign gods.  Many were driven to the ends of the earth, many were destroyed outright, and captives from others were paraded before the gods by returning emissaries of the great hosts as tribute.  Among them was a race of...
[01:00] <Tim> ...warriors with mayfly-short lives, who wielded the bane-metal which is formed from the residual anger and bitterness in Earth's veins without being scourged by its touch.
[01:02] <Tim> Although they were not tied to the land, as elves were, the gods found great amusement in their mischief, boldness...as well as one other thing.  Being unbound to the land, they had no overwhelming loyalty that could surpass fealty to the heavens.  What were once prisoners became honored guests in heaven after many generations of their short-lived people.  The gods even taught them the...
[01:02] <Tim> ...rune-magic that had once been the sole domain of elfkind, seeing no harm in educating a people who would likely die before achieving mastery.  Then, to the gods' surprise, a few of them did.  The gods found this intriguing.
[01:06] <Tim> "Children play with many toys." Spoke some of the gods, "Have we not grown greater than ever, in mastering the world?  Why should our first servants be our only ones?  Mother's anger stings the Elves, perhaps we should set them aside, and place these lesser things in charge of the world."  For the gods had grown wary, the Elvish Host had grown powerful, and its leaders had strength that...
[01:06] <Tim> ...could sever mountains at the root.
[01:08] <Tim> It is at this point that mythology becomes history, and while mythology is fairly easy to unify, history is seldom so convenient or accurate.  What is known is that the Short-Ear hosts returned to the Heavenly Mount, trailed by the Mer.  Swords were drawn in the holy land.  Divine blood was spilled, although whether the gods were wiped out, or if it was a single death that resulted in what...
[01:08] <Tim> ...follows, is lost knowledge, destroyed along with the records of the time.  Elfkind was banished from the Heavenly Mount, and set sail in what came to be called the Scattering, seeking lands that would make a fitting home for elves.  The Short-Ears purged their history, on the Day of Lies Long-Believed.
[01:09] <Tim> As for the mayfly-people, they were sealed away forever, sent out of the world.
[01:18] <Tim> The voyage was an exodus of horrific proportions.  Only a fraction of elfkind survived the Scattering.  Except for the Mer, whose mythology speaks of First Heroes battling a cycle of inexplicable monstrosities that whittled away the Mer population.  Alfheim was discovered by the Short-Ears and Long-Ears at almost the same time, if what records exist can be trusted.  The Mer were already...
[01:18] <Tim> ...there, in offshore settlements.  The Short-Ears put ashore mostly to the south, and accreted around the edge of the Inland Sea, while the Long-Ears landed at the city of Tun-Adel in the north, and buried their dead there with rune-wards set to halt any decay.  What followed was millenia of war, strife, and empire.  Great nations rose, fell into decadence, and were shattered from within or...
[01:18] <Tim> ...without.  Histories were written and rewritten to cast the victors of the time in the role of heroes.  Many great stories were lost, and many more fabricated wholesale.  For example, the tale of First Treesinger is considered allegorical, since the existence of Sorcery, magic that did not use the god-granted Runes, was not discovered until generations after elves landed on the continent,...
[01:18] <Tim> ...yet according to Greenwood's official history (which is itself embellished) The Treesinger was there when the first settlers arrived, and taught them the art of singing shape from trees.
[01:26] <Tim> History at this point is full of impossible feats and outright lies, but some seem to have odd credence to them.  The Short-Ears of the desert have been scrappy merchants ruled by feuding tribal princes as long as anyone can remember, yet their legends speak of an empire whose wealth overflowed from every palace, legends of ridiculous numbers of chariots and elephants, of overwhelming...
[01:26] <Tim> ...magical superiority.  This story survives because Avalonian legend mentions friendship with a "Southern Kingdom".  The reason for skepticism, however, is the claim that it was destroyed by a dragon.  Dragons are terrifying monsters, but they can be killed, and the idea of one so thoroughly erasing an entire geography and so much of a population is completely ludicrous.  Either they were...
[01:26] <Tim> ...exagerrating, or the dragon is a metaphor.
[01:28] <Tim> However...the Dusty Serpent Road does travel south from Hub.  When it reaches the desert, its twists and turns become erratic, and its surface shows signs of damage.  This is the only part of any of the Serpent Roads to do so.  Parts of the road are buried in sand, which is usually impossible with the enchantments laid on it.
[01:31] <Tim> Still, if one follows its course, it seemingly goes out of its way to...nowhere.  Blank regions of sand, places with no water and no life.  The head of the road itself ends at a massive pool of shifting sand fine enough for travelers to fall into and drown, the size of a small desert in and of itself.
[01:46] <Tim> Avalon claims to be the oldest civilization on the continent, although there are no other records to confirm this, and some tribal records conflict, with stories of a "Sun Kingdom" or "Sun and Moon Kingdom, strong in the mountains."  Desert Short-Ears tend to support the claim because Avalon officially supports their story of having a great empire.  Avalonian early history also has bizarre...
[01:46] <Tim> ...stories of strange, fell kingdoms on the Great Ice, and of the depredations of the Valari, seagoing Long-Ears who live on floating raft-cities.
[01:50] <Tim> However...modern scholars notice inconsistencies in these, too.  Some Valari dwell inland, now, and their weapons and culture differ with numerous popular accounts that seem to describe more or less Dinay tribeselves.  The Dinay are a simple, tribal people now, coastal elves on the southwestern shore, the fact that they supposedly came so far north at one time is somewhat baffling, given how...
[01:50] <Tim> ...dangerous the seas are.
[01:53] <Tim> The fact that they are shown as a serious threat, a masked race of boogeymen, is even stranger.