Map lore

The Final Empire had grown beyond its power and like all before it began to show signs of stagnation. Scholars refused to accept that Ermor would fall, as did its people. One race however saw these signs and trembled with joy at the opportunity presented by the slowly fracturing Empire. Shunned, resented and hated by all the C’tis lived in self chosen exile deep in the deserts surrounding civilization, waiting and watching for an opportunity such as was presented. The lizardmen came out from their sand swept holes in their thousands; they spread to all corners of civilization under the pretence of peace. Yet they harboured war in their hearts, brought anger within their being and death was to follow in their wake. One man alone sought to prevent disaster, the Ermorian Emperor Urbanus. He foresaw the destruction that C’tis would bring and spent nights researching a means to thwart their plans. He welcomed the Lizard people into his city so to learn more of them. It was a long night of autumn with the stars shielded by heavy clouds, all was quiet in the Forever City, until smoke started to rise up into the sky and an orange glow quietly grew until it became as bright as a dwarves forge. In the midst of the smoke and all-encompassing heat the Ermorian Library burned. The people gathered round the leaping flames and watched as the knowledge of countless works were lost to searing fire. One man alone fought to put out the blaze but to no avail. The sun rose in the morning to reveal the burnt out husk of the once magnificent structure and half buried under the crumbling ash of his precious research, the charred corpse of Emperor Urbanus lay, gently smouldering under a fine coat of morning dew.
Chaos was the norm for the following dark months. Bandit groups and villainous thugs overran the Forever Empire. The army was crippled by power hungry generals and deserters. The city of Ermor itself became a trophy for whichever gang could control it. The people of Ermor fled, trying to escape the horrors they had seen, but all civilization had been destroyed by the dark schemes of the C’tis. With no opposition the lizard people conquered and enslaved all they saw. None were safe from the armies of C’tis. The dwarfs thought to be safe in their subterranean cities were all but obliterated when the C’tis came from below through tunnels of their own. The elves joined their peoples to fight together but were consumed by the forces of the reptilian people. The goblins fled high into the snow-capped mountains only to flee back after grey orcs drove them back into the devouring beast that the C’tis armies had become. The green orcs fount valiantly against the horde of lizardmen but were too few to stand more than a day against such numbers. The C’tis displayed unrelenting cruelty towards the races that fell before them; great games were hosted where dwarfs were pushed of cloud reaching towers, elves hunted by wild beasts, goblins thrown into pits of burning coals, orcs tortured until they screamed like women and humans made to fight for survival in deep holes with rotten meat the only prize.
All seemed lost. For nearly two hundred years the C’tis ruled; the tales of Ermor soon became myth and legend, whispered by the elders of each race as a fantasy where people were happy and lived free. It was the winter of the one hundred and eighty sixth year of C’tis rule that hope flickered amongst the defeated races. A biting cold swept across the world, temperatures dropping more and more; blizzards covered whole continents for weeks on end and ice froze the fires solid in homes. The cold-blooded C’tis had no measure of protection against temperatures as low as then. They retreated to warmer climates but found little respite, all the way back to their ancestral desert home they fled to escape the encroaching frosts until spring came once more. But spring did not come and the snow kept falling, the ice kept growing and the wind kept blowing. Summer came, the temperature did not rise and the C’tis grew worried at what could happen to the kingdom left unattended. Autumn came and the world got colder still, the frost crept into the deserts of the lizardmen and the snows were blown into the now empty homes of the C’tis, who had crawled into the deepest of their tunnels. Winter came and the whole world was frozen as even the tunnels of the C’tis warmed by torches and braziers grew ice along their walls. The races of Aceon huddled together in their crumbling hovels with pitiful warmth and little food. When spring came once more the ice fell back and the snows lightened. With summer came huge flows of water from the melting snow and ice, even during autumn and winter the frost retreated. After a decade of melting and warming the first flowers grew once more and the all the races of Aceon came out of their shelters, all except the reptile people, all save for the C’tis.
The people of Aceon were decimated by the Long Freeze and little technology remained from before the C’tis. With nearly nothing remaining the survivors of the Long Freeze went their separate ways as families and tribes to grow independently. We now see the start of the rebirth of civilization but will it take hold or will the barbarians keep hold of their way of like?