The Dark Ages

The world reeled in the aftermath of the cataclysm. The Bhanjax army was gone but there were enough of them still roaming the wilds to be a threat. The population was decimated, and without able bodies to farm harvest them, crops withered and rotted in the fields. Those that did survive became more insular and focused on self-preservation. The quality of life deteriorated and the world became harder. The mana level dropped dramatically and spells and many of the conveniences of the past age that were powered by them failed. They became relics, antiquities and eventually novelties once their wonder could not be sustained.
  The world quickly became a very large and unforgiving place and the distances between many of the lands became too great for trade to be viable. Baras Province, The Jotunlands, Kerast and Akkad all became isolated.
  The world plunged into a global dark age that lasted roughly nine hundred years. While the human provinces picked through the bones of the Meradassian Empire and forged their own empires, the newly formed races of the plague attempted to do the same.
  The remnants of the Meradassian people, began calling themselves the Phaeraan after the tragedy at Phared and managed to hold on to the heart of the empire’s territory as well as the province of Khed by allying themselves with the remaining Saurial. They came to call their new country Phaeros and for a time they managed to rebuild the land. However, after witnessing the devastation that Magic had caused and with so many magical dead zones throughout their territory, the new Phaeraan people begin to shun magic. While it is not outlawed, it has become culturally taboo. This drove a wedge between the Phaeraan and Khedrani people as the latter were not afraid of magic and saw it as a useful tool. The Kingdom of Phaeros eventually splintered with the Khedrani forming the country of Khedris and the Phaeraan remaining in the south. Phaeros never regained the glories of its past and has slowly become a wild country of small city-states and enclaves that dream of past glories. A country in name only.
  The province of Shiare had been relatively unaffected by the Bhanjax offensive (especially in the West) and they, along with Phaeros, became the direct inheritors of the Empire. Using the existing infrastructure left by the Merad, the Shiare established strong ties with the Goblins as well as keeping a cordial and mutually beneficial relationship with the Plains elves. They absorbed those human refugees from the old Perra province who had fled from the Goblins into the Galdani grasslands in the northwest. While nominally part of the Shiare, they remained a distinct culture that would eventually become the Galdani people. Taking a page from their predecessors, they divided the Shiare into five separate provinces and formed a council of five military leaders to run the new Empire. Initially each consul was to serve a term of five years as the proconsul but over time that gradually shifted into a lifetime appointment and the title now only changes after death.
  Initially the Shiarens claimed all of the Ilsaran territory as their own as a sixth province. They figured that because the province had been the hardest hit by the bhanjax offensive and had no real infrastructure in place, it was up to them to bring it under the rule of law. The new Shiaren empire was met with fierce and unexpected (to them at least) resistance from the Ilsaran people. Never one to be easily ruled, the Ilsaran people craved their independence and weren’t going to let the Shiaren ruin that dream. Despite just surviving a massive war, the Ilsaran province rose up in a heartbeat and went to war with the Shiaren. With the assistance of the remaining Blade Knight Legions who were stationed within their borders hunting down remnants of the Bhanjax, they drove the Shiarens quickly to the bargaining table. After the Treaty of Wellspring, the nation of Ilsara was founded and encompassed all it’s hereditary lands from the Border River in the East to the Wellspring in the West. While the smallest of the original Meradassian provinces, Ilsara boasts rolling green hills, fertile soil and the only known surviving gate through the veil at Glaston’s Tor.
  With the nation of Ilsara newly formed to the North, the Khedrani people took similar steps towards independence after their philosophical differences on Magic drove them away from Phaeros. They expected some resistance, but Phaeros was more internally focused on driving magic from the land and were happy to see them go. In time, Khed eventually rose from the devastation of the war and managed to become a prime trade nexus.
  In the north chaos reigned. The individual kingdoms that had existed before the Bhanate plague survived but were greatly diminished. The bulk of the Bhanjax army had scattered into the wilds beyond the mountains and were a constant threat to the isolated settlements. The area became known as the Bhanate Kingdoms (or occasionally the Bandit Kingdoms) and each barony and kinglet is fiercely independent, resilient and harbours a strong resentment to the south for abandoning them to the Bhanjax.
  Across the north sea, the Jotunlands stayed much the same as they had the day the Jotunar first landed on its shores. While the plague may have brought new monsters and creatures, the Jotunar clans saw them as challenges to be overcome, not something to be feared. They continued raiding the southern coasts in their long boats and telling tales in their long halls during the cold winter months.
  The Goblins in Perran weathered the early years after the war surprisingly well. They picked over the scraps of the Empire’s table and cobbled them together with their own natural talents and began to form a burgeoning trade empire. Their lack of physical size was offset with an innate, if somewhat chaotic, magical ability. In a time when Magic was seen as unreliable, they were able to use their innate sorceries to secure their territory and built their kingdom on the practice of slavery much like the Merad had before them.
  The main group of slaves within Perran were the fauns and those humans that hadn’t fled when the Goblins came to power. The fauns had not fared well after Perran was established and were considered second class citizens within its borders. They retreated to remote sylvan enclaves where they practiced woodcraft and waged a low-level guerilla war against their erstwhile masters.
  The world changed drastically for the elves after the plague. Not only were there lives much shorter now but the world was harder. When the sky elves returned to their ancestral homes high in the Dragonspine, they found that the mountains were far wilder and more dangerous than they had been. The elves attempted to follow Selinah’s tenets and acted as peacemakers, healers and mediators to the other races but an internal schism formed and divided them. These rebels feared the newcomers and wanted nothing to do with them. They wanted the elves to become more insular and focus on the welfare of their own people first.
  The plains elves fared far better as the grasslands of central Shiare were mostly untouched by the war and the tribes and families flourished around their herds. They became rich off the land and even though they held no political power within the Shiaren Republic, they had a vast amount of influence and many a Shiaren senator shaped their policies around how the elves reacted to it.
  To the south and the sea. The sea elves were the least affected by the plague and most able to capitalize on the misfortunes it brought. As the world became bigger and travel times took much longer, the elves and their mastery of Aliah’s gifts allowed them to reach any port in any weather. Historians agree that without the vital trade and connections that sea elven ships brought to the world, the age of darkness immediately following the plague would have lasted much, much longer. With the wealth that trade brought, the Sea elves banded together with the humans of the Baras province and formed their own nation of Dhabara. With many satellite enclaves in various ports across the world. Most famous being the Protectorate of Círdan and Cialeste
  In Kerast, the bhastani tribes and humans came to an eventual truce, sharing the jungles if not equally, then in a mutually respectful fashion. The Leonar roamed the plains of western Kerast which put them into conflict with the savage Tau’rhos who claimed the same territory. The Bhengar stayed mostly to the southern jungles where they occasionally crossed paths with the small forest ghosts known as wildlings. The Tabaxi blended in with humanity with the greatest ease and slow spread outwards from Kerast.
  In Akkad, little was heard. The few sea elven ships allowed to dock there caught glimpses of strange architecture beyond high walls and heard snippets of odd atonal music but other than those assigned to the docks they saw little of the people there. Occasionally they would ferry small flocks of the raven-folk known as kenku to Kerast or points beyond but never once did they take any back.
  In the West, the floating islands of Zurr-Ryk continued to stay aloft after the plague subsided. Whatever magical change Dhamoc’s magic had wrought on the land seemed to be permanent. The saurial that had migrated to the continent studied the phenomena for many years without making much headway. The gnomes that were born on the floating islands cared little about how they got there, but instead focused themselves on building an organized society, as far removed from their chaotic beginnings as they could get. They colonized the Earthmotes and built several cities. In time they came into conflict with the saurial and firbolg who also shared the land with them. While there was never any actual war between the races, border conflicts did occasionally flare up and the gnomes always wanted to be prepared “Just in case”.
  To combat their larger foes, the gnomes spent years perfecting weapons and defenses that would give them some sort of advantage if/when a war broke out. After many hundreds of years of tinkering, they developed what they would call the Forgeborn.
  In their experimenting, they had managed to imbue these clockwork automata with a spark of sentience and life. The forgeborn were never used for their intended purpose and as time went on, they ended up filling a subservient, second-class citizen role within gnome society doing the tasks that gnomes couldn’t be bothered to do
  While the gnomes scurried about shaping the world in their image, the firbolg quietly found their place in the world and mostly kept to themselves. The firbolg avoided most conflicts with the gnomes and were as much amused as they were exasperated with gnomic expansion.
  The gnomes, in their paranoia, feared the taller races would overrun them, but the firbolg were much fewer in number than the gnomes and had no interest in conquest. They kept to their forest enclaves both on the earthmotes and the continent below and viewed the whole gnomic fascination with perfection with bemused tolerance
 

The Recent Past

While no group of scholars or historians can agree on when the Dark Times exactly ended, they all agree that there were several key factors that likely contributed to it.
  First, the world’s population had rebounded significantly enough to ensure that there was more food for more people. This, coupled with a period of several decades without any sort of border skirmish, plague or internal political shift, allowed for a more creative, research-based lifestyle in many countries. It was these ingredients that mixed together and formed a crucible of creativity from which the gnomic invention of the forgeborn came from. After almost a thousand years of stagnation in almost every field of research, the breakthrough of creating artificial life inspired a renaissance in both mechanical invention and all branches of spellwork. While they never achieved the same heights as the ancients had prior to the plague, they strove towards those lofty heights and several rediscoveries and advances were made
  Secondly, the great tabaxi storyteller, Marcav Shadowspaw, released his seminal masterpiece into the world. The Baraquellan Cycle inspired generations of stories of lost princes and fabled adventures to be had just beyond the horizon.
  While the fabled islands of Baraquelle were far from the Shiaren province of Gald, the stories struck a chord within the Galdani people, and they embraced the courtly etiquette portrayed in the tales with fervour. The tales spurred a cultural revolution that shifted their pastoral province to a center of fashion and learning.
  On top of the cultural changes, the galdani people discovered vast gemstone deposits in their territory. This newfound wealth, coupled with the egalitarian ideals from their cultural revolution pushed them into declaring themselves independent from the Shiare and naming their new country the Principality of Gald.
  The Shiaren Proconsul immediately declared war against these rebels and several battles were fought to regain the territory and wealth that they represented. The Shiaren made treaties with their Goblin neighbours and planned a two-pronged offensive, but the Galdani had not been idle either. They had forged alliances with the fauns that lived in the forested northern border between Perran and Gald and their promise of equal treatment under the law brought the savage faun clans to their side against their traditional goblin oppressor. They even reached out to the gnomes to purchase some of their forgeborn creations to use in the battles. The Galdani themselves fought with idealistic fervour and eventually drove the Shiaren Republic back. The Principality of Gald was formally established in 1167 AP. To this day, relations between The Shiare and Gald remain civil but frosty.
  Finally, and likely the most definitive end to the Dark Times was the return of the Shadow elves to Tarsere.
  Elven history had long stated that there were only ever three tribes of elves. Any scholar that said otherwise was often ridiculed or ostracised by the Elves to the point where they were never taken seriously again. However, there were enough subtle hints left throughout early elven history that didn’t quite add up. For those who persisted through the ridicule, those hints and omissions pointed towards there being a fourth tribe of elves, one that revered Korvanah, the Raven Queen. A tribe that had vanished shortly after the Gods departed from the world.
  Why the other three elven tribes refused to speak of their brethren for almost ten thousand years is unknown but when the Shadow elves returned to Tarsere, the three tribes had to face their lie.
  The shadow elves returned to Tarsere as refugees without warning or fanfare. They were fleeing something from the Shadowfell and claimed the forested valley known as Shadowvale, located in the North between The Shiare and the Bhanate Kingdoms as their home. As to what exactly they were fleeing or how they returned, they would say very little. They kept to themselves and were less welcoming to change and the younger races of Tarsere compared to their native Tarseran cousins but they still shared the overall elven outlook on life. The time they spent in the Shadowfell had altered them both physically and mentally and finding their place in the new world was difficult. In time, they acclimatized to the new world and while they are the most reclusive of the elven tribes, they have slowly expanded out from Shadowvale to small isolated creches across the continent,
 

Modern Day

The world is slowly coming out from the dark ages like an owlbear awakening from deep hibernation. It has been almost 1800 years since the Plague first struck and it is a time of relative peace. Most nations are comfortable with their borders and conflicts are at a minimum. The bhanjax tribes are growing in numbers again and while they lack leadership and direction, they are increasingly becoming a threat to civilisation. The wonders of ages past are slowly being rediscovered while new discoveries are being made with increasing frequency. It is an era of hope.