As a campaign setting, Trid is a sandbox of sandboxes, so its “world history” is necessarily chronicled in broad terms via a handful of massively impactful milestones. In this respect, the chronicle here is best viewed as a foundation upon which each sandbox's more detailed history is laid. It is, as a consequence, a litany of outcomes, with very little attention paid to what caused them. Prior to the present Age of History, there are no years, nor are the Ages quantified by duration. No individuals are identified. As such, it is a sequence—a sparse timeline only—that justifies the state of affairs in the present day, while promoting maximum flexibility to support individual campaigns set in Trid.
Put another way, the framework below tells us
what happened—it is up to individual referees to bolt on their own ideas of
how and
why.
The Before Times
Trid's earliest engravings and pictographs suggest a warm and verdant planet populated by giant reptiles, primitive humanoids, and two dominant races, the
elves in present-day
Alfland and the
saurians, who spread across the
Serpent Archipelago from their island homeland of
Skaelor. These opposing cultures reached a copper-age standard, and with the aid of arcane magic expanded their territories, eventually clashing in earnest along the
Glittershore.
As the elves and saurians battled for control of the Continent, the various humanoid races developed in small stone-age tribal units, avoiding the conflict around them. The dwarfs fled underground to the
Deepreach, humanoids hid in the rugged wilds, and humans roamed the Continent as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Neither the elves nor the saurians gained an upper hand in direct confrontation, and the period was marked by an effective stalemate during which each group held what territory they could, hoping to isolate the other and dominate through attrition.
The Deepreach: First "discovered" by dwarfs in the Before Times, the Deepreach is a network of caves, caverns, and tunnels that sprawl below the Continent, filled with deadly hazards and unnatural predators. In the Dim Ages, the Deepreach was relatively limited in size, comprised of natural subterranean forms, but prolonged habitation and exploration by the dwarfs gradually increased its scope. Today, access points include elf and ancient saurian ruins, abandoned dwarf halls, man-made dungeons, and natural intromissions. There are even stories of sprawling dwarf cities adorned with gold and jewels, of degenerate humans who worship forgotten idols in the gloom, and of deeper races pale and twisted by dark arcana. Fantastic as these tales may be, there is a grain of truth in every lie. Power brokers across the Continent, eager for rich treasure and powerful magic, commission adventurers in droves to delve the Deepreach and return these prizes for their own ends.
The Dim Ages
The impasse between the elves and the saurians persisted until the saurians employed the
Far Paths to deploy their armies across the Continent, quickly overwhelming the elves along multiple fronts. Searching for allies, the elves lifted the nomadic humans out of the stone age by teaching them how to reap, sow, build, and fight. The elves revealed the meaning of
The Circle and
The Celestion, though they forbade man to study the arcane. As the elves defended against the saurians, human culture evolved, until an alliance of elves and men eventually crushed the
Saurian Empire, leaving their culture and their edifices in ruin.
The Far Paths: The Continent is sparsely dotted with ancient complexes dominated by stone ziggurats. Magical portals, known as the
Far Paths, lie at the heart of these monuments, and when properly operated, allow one to travel great distances in very little time. Scholars disagree on their origin: Most believe the saurians used their formidable arcana to build them, while more provocative academics insist these structures predate the saurians, who somehow discovered the secrets of their operation. Regardless, the saurians used the Far Paths to expand their empire, but the network was irreparably damaged when their civilisation fell at the Dim Ages' close. Today, they stand unused and, in fact, are deliberately avoided as unreliable and dangerous (though there are frequent tales of functional portals, much to the interest of arcane practitioners and entrepreneurs alike).
The Age of Fable
After defeating the saurians, the elves cemented their alliance with humans by establishing the Ardic Republic, which unified two-thirds of the Continent under a common religion, language, and law. Cooperation between elves and humans blossomed into great social prosperity.
As human generations passed, the elves expanded their arcane knowledge until the chance arrival of the asteroid-moon
Opho brought the
Ardic Curse that deprived the elves of their innate arcane spell ability. The balance of power shifted to humans, who asserted greater independence from their elven lords, ultimately leading to fierce human rebellion and the eventual
Fall of the Republic. During this violent period, human cultures forcefully distanced themselves from elven influence, redefined the gods of The Celestion, and began to experiment with the arcane. After a generation, humans pushed the elves back to Alfland, irrevocably shattering the Republic. Those elves who survived were exiled from the Continent.
The Ardic Curse: When the elves raised man to civilisation, the one bit of knowledge they withheld was arcane magic, thereby ensuring they would dominate the alliance. Throughout the Age of Fable, elves perfected their arcane craft through wondrous spells, items, and artefacts, but Opho's arrival changed the dynamic. The Ardic Curse blocked the elves' talent for innate spell casting, causing spells to be forgotten once cast. As elves struggled with the need to memorise spells from spell books, man found arcane magic more accessible, essentially levelling the playing field between them.
The Fall: The elves always felt superior to humans—it was, after all, the elves who dragged
them out of the stone age—so when the elves lost their arcane dominance, the resentment they had earned for generations swelled into rebellion. The
Fall of the Republic changed the course of Trid's future. As factious humans reclaimed their homelands for themselves, they pushed the elves back to
Alfland and managed to learn arcane magic along the way. When the humans pressed Alfland's borders, the native
Alfmen took up the cause and exiled the remaining elves from the Continent, ending not only the Republic, but also the Age of Fable.
The Age of History
The Fall of the Republic turned settled areas to wilderness nearly overnight and ushered in the current Age of History. Mankind's chief occupation today is expanding settled borders to create order and safety, pushing back against the dangers posed by raiding humanoids, savage monsters, volatile magic, and forgotten secrets. Perhaps ironically, it is precisely the lure of rich treasure and magic from ancient ruins that feeds the ambitions of power brokers who would reshape Trid to serve their own needs, ultimately replacing the unknown perils of the wilderness with more familiar dangers.
It is now 991 AH, the 991st year of the Age of History. While almost a millennium has passed since the Fall, there is still much chaos for man to tame.
The Silent Nobility: It's no secret that the elves' departure created significant power vacuums. The Age of History is marked by man's struggle to establish order in the new wilderness, whether through the law or by the sword, and power brokers across the Continent compete relentlessly for territory, wealth, and control. Rumoured to oversee this squabble is the
Silent Nobility, a cabal uniting the elite among these power brokers—the rich, the cunning, and the most influential within populations of consequence. Their assumed goal is power over all the Continent, or maybe just enough to enrich their status and legacy, or perhaps they're nothing more than rapacious profiteers, seeing opportunity in every crisis. All agree, however, that they manipulate events, variously disrupting the status quo to their advantage, and the Silent Nobility are baselessly cast as the antagonists of any calamity whose origin is unclear.
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