The Second Era, The Reclamation

After the events of the Deicide and the ending of the first era, there was a time of confusion, hysteria, and opportunity. With the Primordials defeated, beaten back, or banished, the divine made a declaration. They would leave, their presence would be absent and when they do return, it will never be the same as it was. This caused a great vacuum of power and control and there were many different reactions. Some were sorrowful, as if losing a loved one. Some were scared, as if their guardian and protector was leaving them. Some saw the opportunity, as if a throne of control was ready for the taking

Because of this mad dash for control, safety, and other cataclysmic events that took place during this era, time keeping and calendar recording was difficult and often times inaccurate. Because of this, modern era scholars disagree on how long exactly this era lasted and have to use events that took place as reference points

The Great Dragon Empire

Initially it was a time of chaos and desperation. New societies quickly formed and disbanded as everyone seemed to still be figuring out how to govern the world and themselves. Any of these that survived to the current day are the ones that created many of the modern-day cities, traditions, and biases. The prime example of opportunistic beings was the Dragons. They quickly emerged from their caves and mountains in a coordinated effort to pillage, seize, and conquer a large portion of Amphalia. They self-proclaimed that this would be the era of the Great Dragon Empire, they took on the role of the divine and ruled under their tyrannical claws

Resistance

Those unlucky enough to be residing in the Dragon's newly claimed territory were now under their doctrine. Dwarves were able to band together and hide away under the mountains, Elves were able to flee to their homelands in the Feywild, but a majority of the rest were helpless. Rebellions did exist and most were quelled, those particularly that tried to rise against or fight back. However, the ones that stayed low and made it their mission to help others flee the empire territory tended to last longer. That is until the lesser beings received an unexpected ally

The Dragon Civil War

The Dragon Empire was mainly composed of the Chromatic Dragons. Supposedly getting orders from their god, the many headed dragon, Tiamat. However, it is a common speculation that they were merely doing these acts in her honor and name. During the Deicide, an entourage of Platinum Dragons joined the fight against the Primordials for mortal-kind and their efforts and deeds were a large factor in the war. The last of their kind, Bahamut, was resting after the Deicide as he was gravely injured. When he awoke to find that a large percentage of the world was now under tyrannical rule, he wasted no time to gather other metallic dragons to fight against them

Much of the larger and older ones joined him in direct but strategic fights, destroying lairs, bringing down generals, but they never had the numbers or strength for a direct attack. The smaller of the metallic dragons aided the lesser beings by getting many out of the empire or acting as shields to neighboring societies so that the empire borders could not expand even further

The Empire of the Arcane

During this same time throughout the rest of the world, it is theorized that some of the highest levels of arcane power were being discovered and utilized by other societies. So great were these societies that every citizen was able to easily cast high level magics and were their own deterrents to the Dragon Empire. Everything known about these great cities are mostly speculation with small snippets of supporting evidence. We know these societies existed because archeologists will find traces of ruins or relics that are not only not connected to any known divine being, but they also seem to reject divine energies and feed off of the arcane

The prevailing theory is that the same conflict that required the Gods to leave also damaged the weave and barrier between it and this allowed mortal-kind easy access to great power. A post Deicide relic is exceedingly rare to find intact enough to feed arcane energy into it to give it power once more but when they are discovered, they are studied and treasured. Why were these cities so powerful, why are there no written records of what took place in them, and what caused them to be destroyed or disappear? All of these answers are still widely unknown