On the Dim Light of the First Age

It is widely known among the common elf that the world is in its third age. Few know, however, the stories of those first two ages gone by. Having dedicated now the better part of 3 centuries to this study, I put pen to paper at last to recount the tale as best can be told.¹ This essay on the First Age and Era of Upheaval may be taken as a brief primer - a more digestible overview of the highlights for those of a less academical mindset. Please seek my full treatise, Past Ages of Talún: Uncovering the lost history of the ancients, in the high library, where it will surely be retained as a valued contribution to Elven scholarship in perpetuity.

The First Age

From time immemorial three humanoid races were known to walk Talún.

Humans, the godless folk, had no creator deity to guide and protect them. Without divine favor in these times, they walked in darkness. Stumbling through the great forests as simple hunters and gatherers, the humans of this time have left nothing yet known to the archeological record, but they appear in the records of the other first cultures so can be sure of their presence. Unfortunately they appear to have made only two marks on the more civilized world in this era: as primitive raiders coming down from the ancient forests, and as captured slave labor.² There is some evidence to suggest the humans had begun to establish more complex settlements in this time, perhaps learning from contact with their neighbors, but study in the region remains difficult for both political and geographic reasons.³

The dragonborn's most ancient legends tell us they were crafted as servants to the ancient dragons of old. Given great power and insight by their creators - and perhaps a bit too much of their draconic pride - they raised their heads against their masters, and received the blessing of Bahamut to break free and establish themselves. They took much draconic knowledge, and with the blessings of Bahamut they fought off their more evil masters and carved out a small kingdom in the then-fertile fields and grasslands we know today as the dragonborn desert. ⁴

The halflings, children of Yondalla, were gifted from the very beginning. Yondalla's love, and the support of an entire pantheon, helped them develop as a people much faster than any other race. They had been created in the most rich agricultural heartland on Talún, known today as the Vale of Blood, and in this blessed land they built a great and mighty kingdom.⁵ They learned much of the arts and sciences, and much of the arcane as well. From their ancient records we know they waged war against both the dragons and the dragonborn, and took a great many humans as functionally slave labor to build their empire.⁶

Around 12000 years before the current era, the halflings undertook an arcane project on a scale unimaginable to modern wizards. The details appear to have been magically struck from all historical records of the era, but the closest surviving mentions of the project (still a thousand years removed from the event mind you - and well before such wonderfully long lived creatures as elves) describe The Project as "an undoing of the natural order"; and, from a source another hundred and fifty years older, "an affront to the gods".⁷ While we can suppose their memory of the event to be colored negatively by its outcome, It is widely understood that it did in fact draw the attention of a great many gods previously unknown to Talún. Following this event, the halflings empire was supposedly stricken down by a great of angry gods, while their own pantheon fought and failed to protect them. Furthermore they were supposedly cursed, as a race, to be forever sapped of their great drive and ambition.

This course of events may be considered by some to be less likely than the theory of civilized tabaxi or draconic dominance, but in my study I have concluded it almost certainly the closest to truth. Since the incident of 408 in the newly-reinhabited city of Tarragon, it has been discovered that the entire city is intended to function as a magic circle of sorts (quadrilateral, instead of the modern pentagramic - though the findings of Prudence et all in 396 proved they made use of pentagramic circles elsewhere). The circle's purpose is unknown as of yet, and will be difficult to decipher given it's age, unusual layout, and it's location in a very politically unstable city, but the top three floors of the tower are sized for the halfling stature, and I'm told contain truly ancient statues of halfling mages. It is suspected that the ruined site known today as Cardamom was once a sister city to Tarragon, and should the site ever be liberated from the Hobgoblins, perhaps an expedition there could yield further evidence.

The Era of Upheaval

Regardless of its driving mechanism, approximately 11000 years ago, the halfling empire fell, totally and practically overnight. In the few remnants of halfling settlements we've uncovered from the first age, the archeological record comes to a screeching halt, with all evidence of life disappearing seemingly overnight.⁸ This fall, and the (alleged) arrival of the gods marks the end of the First Age. What follows is nearly a thousand years of darkness in the archeological record, and chaos in the geological record, known as the Era of Upheaval.

In this period it is widely believed - and divinely confirmed, to a small extent - that the gods newly arrived to Talún fought with each other, wreaking widespread destruction across the land. The records from dragonborn settlements in the first age wink out quickly in this period, having been either destroyed or abandoned. In one such find, the entire settlement is found upside down, and is found miles from the ancient riverbed that would have been their source of water.⁹ The only known continuous record through this period was retrieved from Great Drakhiri, the settlement now known as the Golden Pyramid. In these records, they attribute the survival of their city to the protection of Bahamut, and describe both the apocalyptic upheaval and their people's flight to this sheltered bastion in terrifying detail.

How the humans managed to not go extinct in this time of great chaos is unknown. Many scholars suspect the involvement of demonic pacts, but given humanity's history in that domain, I find this doubtful.

What we do know of this era however, is that the very first elves were brought to this land and settled in the beautiful forests of Selthys and Selton in this time. While they are obviously less reliable, the earliest dwarven records date them back a bit later into this period as well.¹⁰ Over the next 2000 years, evidence found for most other known humanoid races begins to enter the archeological record across Talún - though study on peoples such as the Orc and Tabaxi is severely lacking, and while several scholers have confirmed their existence, the giants remain a complete mystery.¹¹

As the era of upheaval drew to a close, the dragonborn emerged as the clear great power in the land. Having retained their knowledge and institutions from the First Age, they were positioned to rebuild quickly as these younger races began building from scratch. Now with their rivals to the east removed, the Dragonborn quickly expanded and conquered there way across the continent - establishing the Great Dragonborn Empire, and sending the world into its second Age.¹²