YEAR

AF/PF

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COMMENTARY

c. 5500

AF

MAP   tribal

The First Wandering.This period is described only vaguely in The Song. Today we refer to these early years of our age as The First Wandering, when the families of mankind, restored to Earnor from the refuges of Ohr’mazd, journeyed across the lands of Asteranor and Sullinor in search of those they had lost in the Choosing.  There was little development of agriculture at this time and only a small number of permanent settlements, related to the needs of religious observance, were made.

Sometime in the early years of this period, many of the Magi were gathered together (whether by some great leader of men or by some power superior is a matter of keen debate) and set their task to help mankind find its way in this new world. Among themselves they decided that news of the deep past of mankind must be kept from common people, lest it corrupt them. But neither should the knowledge of the past be completely lost.  And so six of the most able Magi were appointed as Keepers of the Truth. Their task was to keep safe all the history of mankind and at the same time keep hidden that history. And while these six were likely to be extremely long lived it was a certainty they must eventually suffer death, and so they were instructed each to keep an apprentice of similar abilities and nature, and always to maintain communication with his brethren. Or indeed his sisters: the names of these Keepers, and their personal histories were deliberately withheld.

How the Magi came to understand the entire history of  mankind is unclear. Was it simply a matter of memory? This seems unlikely. Perhaps this knowledge derived from The Song, but if that is the case it would suggest that somehow The Song pre-dated the Magi. Or, to put it more strongly, that in some part, The Song pre-existed this entire Age of the Earth?

The greatest part of the Magi, those not appointed as Keepers,  set themselves to forget as many of the events of the deep past as possible, while maintaining and passing on their understanding of nature and the elements and, among their peers, the practice of magic.

c.5000

AF

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The Incursion and the Raising of the Heights. The consensus of opinion offers this as the approximate date of The Incursion and concomitant cataclysm. A significant number of the Churches of the various gods, that yet remain upon Lindis and elsewhere, continue to refute the entire notion of the Exiled and the Incursion – and this despite the evidence of their own eyes!

THIS ENTRY HAS BECOME ALREADY A MATTER OF DEBATE AND DISPUTATION . ON ADVICE THE MAIN BODY TEMPORARILY HAS BEEN  WITHDRAWN. THE TAPROD HAS ANNOUNCED A CONGRESS REGARDING THESE MATTERS TO BE HELD UPON ERRENSEA IN THE MONTH OF JULY 3073. ALL INTERESTED PARTIES ARE URGED TO ATTEND.

5000 - 4600

AF

The Second Wandering. Survivors of the raising of the Dedicae upon Asteranor wandered now in search of safe havens in the far west and east of the continent. With an increase in the number of settlements the economy entered a static, primitive agrarian phase.

The Sunrise Civilisation. The key development of this period may have been driven by a renegade Keeper or apprentice. An imperfect knowledge of the deep past was revealed to both Magi and common people in the East of Asteranor.  A strong desire among them to rediscover earlier glories of mankind, and perhaps in some measure also an intention to discover knowledge that might protect against the possibility of another incursion, together gave rise to the Sunrise Civilization – so named because they looked to the sunrise seas as the home of the lost heritage of mankind. Driven by the impulse to explore the Waste, convinced that knowledge of the ancients was hidden therein, significant progress was made over the course of five hundred years in the exploitation of mineral resource, and in the development of civil and marine engineering. The Sunrise Civilisation was centred upon three cities, Menelcamar, Menelrouex and Menelmandial.  Camar and Rouex are lost to scholars but at the very tip of the Captofinxus, the ruins of Mandial, the Abandoned City, stand to this day, ragged and harsh and glaring still at the unforgiving, unpromising horizon. 

(A detailed study of these ruins by Rinco Vertolan is available now from Gombret Publications of Astoril. In an essay strong on description but light on theory, Vertolan nonetheless offers a span of 500 years from the original, long-muscle-like chambers of the first settlement to the tall watch-towers of the declining years. The “Keepers” seem pleased to agree with this assessment.)

4600

AF

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The Abandonment. Disappointed and diminished in the end by countless unsuccessful forays into Vastos the last of the Sunrise people reached a crossroads. Their civilisation sat upon a peninsula remote from the fertile plains of the country we now name Masachea; the science that supported them became stagnant; the greatest of their people had been sacrificed to a futile cause. Looking into the past for answers to hidden mysteries increasingly seemed pointless. The entire people of the Sunrise Civilisation abandoned what they had built and moved inland.  They called themselves the New Wanderers and they looked to the future.

4600 - 4250

AF

The Decline of the New Magi. Humbled by the failure of their attempt to claim back by bold endeavour all that mankind had lost, the New Magi now carefully withdrew from their role as leaders of mankind. Concerned that more was at play in the world than they had previously understood, the Magi adopted a new strategy. They would play a longer game: stand quietly alongside all the people of Asteranor, tease out only with caution a better knowledge of nature and the seasons and growth and teach with humility a new understanding of existence that owed nothing to the past. The rumour of their former power and their arrogance disappeared into the grass.

This period was the most peaceful of mankind’s new existence.

4400 –3600

AF

Ravenna 2

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Rise of the Apian Civilisation. A minor ice age descended from the High Dedicae upon the central parts of Asteranor. Long glaciers marched across the land, carving the landscape and making harsh the environment.

But Apia, a southerly peninsula escaped untouched by the frost.

 (The College of Errensea in this last year has offered more upon this matter referring to the role of deep ocean currents and the tempering effects upon land masses – see MACKINKLE Mekanicks of the Pelagos; chap. 3: The Historical Record; Errensea 3068 PF; Collegiate Press.)

Clement weather and bountiful soils conspired to produce a reliable surplus for the estate owners of the peninsula.

In more northerly reaches, however, between the Hurgals and the Riversea were many hard pressed tribes struggling to force even the most meagre harvest from the land. But after the raising of the Dedicae and by the scouring of the glaciers in their ferocious attack and gradual retreat, much that could be useful to man had been uncovered where otherwise it would have remained deep and inaccessible for generations to come.

With only the lightest of touches by those of the wise interested in such things, trading agreements were now promoted between the haves and the have-nots. And so a simple arrangement was made whereby grain and dried fruit travelled north and a great treasure of minerals passed into the south.

The two key Apian settlements of Ravenna and Rummela, with the wealth of solid trade behind them, slowly became fine cities of great economic power.

4450 –4250

AF

The Central Tribes. Life in the central parts of the continent was for many years semi-nomadic, populations shifting with the changing of the seasons. Summer was a time of poor settlements taking advantage of the three months of growth to produce as much staple as could be achieved, to supplement whatever could be got by trade. Spring and Autumn found the settlements abandoned by men-folk all gone north in search of iron and copper ore, gold and gemstones, and coals thrown out of the earth by the great cataclysm: a mineral harvest. When Winter came they would return to their settlements, raising their shutters against the wind and snow, to begin the long wait for the reluctant thaws to free them once more. A difficult life if ultimately profitable.

4250 –3000

AF

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Tribal Warfare. It began on a small scale but inevitably the sheer mineral wealth of the northern parts of the central regions had become a great cause of dispute between the various tribal formations, and indeed between criminal renegades within those formations.  Battles and wars were commonplace. Progress in the Apian style was hampered by a general chaos prompted by greed and fear. Progress was indeed not a word much used. A slow brutal agglomeration then occurred of groups of families, and this not commonly in harmony or equity; local power bases, often criminally begun but gradually regularizing as victims and victors become weary of the fight, carried the people of Central Asteranor through a harsh 1200 years.

3000 –  2500

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TRIBAL
PERIOD

Church of God Devourer; Rise of the Black Magi. With The Great Retreat the ice sheets were finally on the run. What is today the Norberry and the Segyllin Parts of Pars, and the Dukedoms of Valdesia, Drafasia, Kellestan and Terremark in Aegarde, and all of Masachea down to the Araxis had been, in the depths of the long winter, almost completely inaccessible.  By 2700 the Retreat had become a rout and all the lost lands had become free again.  The result was a thinning of the populations of the central southern regions as the more adventurous, or more oppressed, sought out a new life in the north.

It is during this period that men discovered, amid the highest mountains of the Northern Hurgals, the forbidden valley of The Choosing, though only the Magi understood anything of what it might be. The tribes on the now Partian side of the pass were wisely wary of this place: the ancestors of the Medes eventually so disturbed by fear of the pass, and mourning the loss of their greatest chieftain, Kentreth’hal, in the end decided to return into the south. (This was much to the dismay of those peoples that had remained in the South throughout the Retreat, preferring to work hard at creating a better place of their traditional homeland.)

But to many of the tribes of the nearer parts of Masachea, the valley of The Choosing became an important feature of their lives and of their religion. They developed a worship of the perceived Lord of the Promised Darkness, and established the first of the churches of Ah’remmon upon Earnor. 

It is almost certain that the rise of the Black Magi, and indeed the rise of the Masachean nation, found their roots in the uncomfortably dark beliefs regarding this Lord of the Promised Darkness, the so-called Rightful King of the Earth.

There is an ancient script graven upon an inner wall of the ruins of “The First Temple” in the modern city of Hyrcana. Magic must have been in the making of that engraving for the words written are discernible to this day after more than 5000 years of decay all around. Here are those words: The Rightful King is God Devourer.  The righteous man will give up his flesh to the Rightful King; but that man will drink of the blood of his father.  It is the Gift of the God.

The followers of the Rightful King named their country The Land of the Flesh. In the language of that day that was Jaaghoa Masachea.