The Chronicle of the Seven Ages

The Severance (Year 0)

The sundering of divinity, when gods broke and the world convulsed.

• Year 0 – The Shattering of Heaven
  The Severance tears through Masada. Mountains split, seas boil, the sun flickers as though extinguished. Gods scream across the skies, their voices tearing mortals apart where they stand. Some are consumed in flame, others transfigured into beasts. For a full day, no dawn comes, only the glow of falling stars.

• Year 1 – The Ashborn Survivors
  In the chaos, mortals stumble into makeshift camps. Many die of thirst, fire, and plague. Some are marked by miracles that linger, children with eyes like burning coals, mothers who bleed saltwater, soldiers whose wounds never heal. These “Ashborn” are both feared and revered.

• Year 22 – The First Unburied
  Across the battlefields of collapsed empires, the dead begin to rise, not as undead, but as pale revenants muttering in broken prayers. They wander without memory, sowing terror among the living. Later generations call them the first Reborn.

• Year 75 – The Hollow Sky
  A century after the Severance, the northern lights appear as blood-red rivers pouring across the night. Animals flee, crops rot, and seers claim the heavens themselves are bleeding. The Hollow Sky never vanishes entirely, though it fades with time.

The Age of Ash (1–500)

A time of wandering and ruin, when fire and famine shaped the survivors.

• Year 133 – The Black Famine
  Ash-clouds blot out the sun in the east. Crops wither. Whole clans survive only by eating bark, bone, and flesh. The gnolls and orcs emerge in strength, carrying with them twisted gods of hunger. Cannibal cults spread across the wastes.

• Year 220 – The First Concords
  Human tribes, fleeing beast hordes, seek refuge among the goliaths. Around firepits, oaths are sworn in blood and bone. They promise to defend one another or die together. The seed of the Elden Concordat is planted.

• Year 347 – The Elven Withdrawal
  The elves retreat fully into Almaerina. Entire groves vanish overnight, swallowed by trees that grow impossibly fast. Outsiders who try to follow are found tangled in roots, suffocated without violence.

• Year 482 – The Fires Below
  The gnomes light their forges in the deep earth, raising the first subterranean bastions against the horrors crawling from the Core. They begin their endless war beneath the world, unseen but unbroken.

The Age of Chains (501–1000)

When oaths and bonds became the foundation of survival.

• Year 516 – The Chain of the First Flame
  Dwarves scattered across the mountains forge the first links of an oath-chain, each blessed with molten iron. This symbolic bond ensures no Hold will ever fall unavenged. The dwarves endure not by kingship, but by covenant.

• Year 592 – The Quiet Accord of the Stonefasts
  The halflings seal their fortress-cities, speaking only once to outsiders: “We will trade, but never trust. We do not ask, do not answer. Leave us to our duty.” Their gates remain shut for centuries.

• Year 664 – The Vale Covenant
  In the Vale, tribes formalize seasonal rites to appease the forest. The first Wolf’s Chapel is consecrated around an eternal brazier. Hunters begin to whisper of the Lady of the Forest, a presence neither god nor mortal.

• Year 793 – The Flesh Harvests of Ralhaz
  Orc warlords begin reshaping captives into grotesque forms, birthing the first “Fleshbound.” These horrors fight as armies of stitched monstrosities. Survivors of their raids are driven mad by the sight of familiar faces remade into claws and bone.

The Age of Fire (1001–1500)

The rise of nations, when flame was lifted as covenant and war as law.

• Year 1014 – The Founding of Antioch
  Zealots gather around Matra’s flame, declaring fire not a comfort but a crucible. The first Antioch stronghold is raised upon the ruins of an older city, its hearth burning with sacred flame.

• Year 1087 – The First Legion
  Antioch fields a disciplined legion, every soldier carrying a torch lit from temple flame. They claim fire itself will judge their service. Their victories spread fear and reverence alike.

• Year 1172 – The Maw Opens
  A fissure yawns wide in the northern ice. Caravans vanish. Hunters report a voice calling from the pit, promising eternity in exchange for devotion. A cult forms, venerating the Maw as the wound of a god.

• Year 1345 – The Oathfire Rite
  Antioch consecrates its first Oathfire ceremony. New citizens lift torches from the Sacred Flame, their vows binding them forever to the state. Those who falter are cast into the fire as examples.

• Year 1499 – The Second Concord
  The Concordat expands its oaths, binding freeholds, clans, and scattered provinces. Caer Haleth is chosen as its council seat, a fortress-city raised with chains of black iron.

The Age of Shadows (1501–2000)

The time of betrayals, heresies, and things too strange to name.

• Year 1510 – The Silent Harvest
  A Vale village consumes crops grown from blackened soil. All are found days later, sitting at their tables, dead but smiling, their mouths filled with roots. Their houses are burned, but songs of the Silent Harvest persist.

• Year 1642 – The Panarchian Revelation
  Goliaths of the Rock Teeth Mountains reveal their true nature: the blood of the sun-devourer flows in their veins. Their rune-lit flesh and impossible strength are not gifts but inheritances from a creature buried in the stone. Some embrace it. Others fear it will one day wake through them.

• Year 1720 – The White Rot
  Entire forests in the south wither, their leaves turning white as bone. Survivors of the blight are plagued with visions of corpses standing in rows, waiting.

• Year 1857 – The Depth Wars Escalate
  Gnomes collapse entire caverns with fire and black powder to halt the Core Spawn. Survivors bring strange weapons to the surface, firearms and machines forged in desperation. The surface world takes notice.

• Year 1931 – The Ashen Crown
  A king in the east declares himself chosen of the gods. He burns his capital until only cinders remain, then rules from the blackened ruin, his crown forged of charred bone. His line collapses within a generation, but the crown reappears in later centuries, each time bringing fire and ruin.

The Age of Watchfires (2001–2500)

Nations grow hard, turning into fortresses of law and secrecy.

• Year 2017 – The Dragonborn Awaken
  From the Rock, the dragonborn emerge at last. They are not born but made, weapons wrought before the Severance and only now stirred into wakefulness. They speak of a war their makers never finished, though none can say when or where the enemy will come. The world watches uneasily, for their conviction is absolute.

• Year 2130 – The Festival of Ten Thousand Lamps
  In Antioch, ten thousand lamps are lit in remembrance of the fallen. For one night, the empire glows like a constellation of fire. The lamps never fully extinguish, burning faintly in secret places to this day.

• Year 2274 – The Frosted Choir
  In the Maw’s domain, an entire caravan is found frozen solid, their mouths open in song though no sound emerges. The cult calls it a miracle. Concordat calls it a warning.

• Year 2411 – The Stonefast Muster
  A halfling Stonefast opens briefly, purchasing every harvest of food and timber within weeks of travel. Then the gates close again. The villages thrive for a generation on halfling gold, but never learn why.

The Age of Dimming (2501–3176)

The present age, when all fires grow low and old powers stir.

• Year 2539 – The Blighted Grove Appears
  Trees weep blood, animals are born twisted, and hunters return speaking in tongues. Wolf’s Chapel holds rites, but the forest does not heal. The Lady of the Forest is said to wither.

• Year 2663 – The Salt Wars
  Antioch wages fire and salt against cults of rot. Entire provinces are erased, their names struck from rolls. The Oathfire burns for months, fueled by condemned bodies.

• Year 2812 – The First Reborn Recorded
  Dead soldiers rise after battle, alive and fractured but not mindless. Concordat scholars mark them as omens. Antioch records them as sanctioned miracles. Villagers whisper them as curses or blessings. None deny their reality.

• Year 2924 – The Dragonborn Warning
  Dragonborn inquisitors speak openly: the war their kind was made for is not yet done. They are heeded with gravity, for none doubt their conviction. Whether prophecy or madness, no one can say.

• Year 3176 – Now
  The hearth of Wolf’s Chapel burns low. The forest darkens. A grieving man makes a pact with a dying spirit. The Age of Dimming reaches its end.