FirstEra Masters of a Broken World
Timespan: Years 2251-2800 of the Era of Chaos
The Hollow Victory
For the first time in over two millennia, humanity stood as the undisputed masters of Eldara, the Shimmering Veil. No elven advisors questioned their decisions, no dwarven craftsmen offered alternative approaches, no representatives from elemental enclaves raised concerns about environmental impact. The Material Plane belonged entirely to humans, shaped solely by human will and human vision.
Yet this total dominion felt less like triumph than like inheriting a house after the rest of the family had died. The continent that humans now ruled exclusively bore the scars of their conflicts like wounds that refused to heal. Where once fertile valleys had fed multiple kingdoms, twisted wastelands stretched for hundreds of miles, their soil poisoned by magical weapons that had been designed to deny resources to enemies rather than preserve them for future use.
The great cities that had once stood as monuments to human achievement lay in ruins or had been rebuilt as fortress-settlements designed primarily for defense against other humans. ★ Ithilvaeth, the former jewel of Verdant Reach, had been rebuilt three times during the civil wars, each iteration more militaristic and less beautiful than the last. Its famous Spiral Towers, once graceful monuments reaching toward the sky, had been replaced by squat defensive structures bristling with magical weapons and surrounded by walls that blocked out more light than they let in.
★ Lenthiri, capital of The Kingdom of Lenthir, had survived the wars physically intact but bore psychological scars that ran deeper than stone. The city’s streets, once alive with the bustle of international trade and cultural exchange, now echoed with the hollow footsteps of a population that had learned to view strangers as potential threats and neighbors as possible enemies.
King Marcus Goldenheart the Fourth, great-great-grandson of the queen who had initiated the agricultural independence that helped trigger the broader conflicts, ruled over subjects who had never known peace, never experienced cooperation with other races, and never seen their kingdom as anything other than a fortress surrounded by enemies. His people were efficient, disciplined, and utterly without the joy that had once characterized human civilization.
The Poisoned Legacy
The magical corruption that had begun during the wars continued to spread long after the most intense fighting had ended. The Aetheric Weave (Magic), damaged by the unprecedented demands placed upon it during the conflicts, remained unstable in ways that affected everything from basic spellcasting to the fundamental processes of life and growth.
In the Blighted Zones - areas where the most devastating magical weapons had been deployed - nothing grew naturally. The soil itself had been transformed into a substance that resembled earth but lacked any of the life-giving properties that plants required. Rain that fell in these regions turned acidic, corroding metal and stone while providing no nourishment to anything living.
Master Alchemist Helena Corrosivebane of Sylmaran Ruins, one of the few scholars still attempting to understand and reverse the damage, documented the spread of corruption in her Chronicles of the Wounded Earth: “The magical contamination follows patterns that suggest sentient guidance rather than random dispersal. It spreads along ley lines and magical confluences as if seeking to maximize damage to the continent’s fundamental magical infrastructure.”
Her research revealed a terrifying possibility - that the magical weapons used during the wars had not simply damaged The Aetheric Weave (Magic) randomly, but had created systematic weaknesses that were continuing to spread like an infection through the continent’s magical foundation. Areas that had never seen direct combat were beginning to show signs of magical instability, suggesting that the damage was propagating through the weave itself.
Human settlements had adapted to this reality by clustering around Safe Zones - areas where magic still functioned reliably and the land remained capable of supporting life. These zones were fiercely contested, with the ongoing conflicts between human kingdoms now focused on controlling access to regions where normal life remained possible.
The Changed People
The generation of humans born after the Elven Retreat represented a fundamental shift in human nature. These children, now reaching adulthood in the 2350th year of the Era, had never known cooperation with other races, never witnessed the patient wisdom of elven advisors, never experienced the steady reliability of dwarven craftsmanship, never learned from the elemental perspectives that had once enriched human understanding.
Captain Sarah Bloodstone of Caernast’s reformed navy exemplified this new generation of humans. Born in the 2315th year, she had grown up hearing stories of elven treachery, dwarven selfishness, and the dangerous naivety of ancestors who had trusted outsiders with human welfare. Her worldview was shaped entirely by human perspectives, human needs, and human solutions to human problems.
“The old generation speaks of cooperation and balance as if these were virtues,” she declared during a military planning session. “But cooperation requires trust, and trust requires that all parties share common interests. We learned through bitter experience that other races will sacrifice human welfare for their own long-term goals. Independence is not isolation - it is honesty about the reality of competing interests.”
This new generation of humans displayed characteristics that would have troubled their ancestors but seemed perfectly adapted to their current circumstances. They were more aggressive, more suspicious, and more willing to use violence as a first resort rather than a last option. They showed remarkable loyalty to their own communities but viewed outsiders - even humans from other kingdoms - with automatic suspicion.
Most significantly, they had lost the human gift for synthesis and bridge-building that had once made their race unique. Where previous generations had excelled at finding common ground between different perspectives, the new humans seemed capable only of viewing differences as threats to be eliminated rather than resources to be utilized.
Elder Councilor Marcus Greywisdom of Verdant Reach, one of the few remaining humans who remembered the golden age, observed this transformation with profound unease: “They are efficient warriors and competent administrators, but they have lost the essential human quality of curiosity about other ways of being. They do not ask ‘what can we learn from this difference?’ but rather ‘how quickly can we eliminate this threat to our established way of doing things?‘”
The Eternal Conflicts
Despite their complete dominion over the continent, the human kingdoms remained locked in conflicts that had long since lost any rational justification. The War of Five Kingdoms had evolved into a permanent state of low-intensity warfare punctuated by periodic escalations that devastated entire regions without resolving any underlying disputes.
The Kingdom of Noldruun, despite its magical superiority, found itself constantly defending against coalitions of other kingdoms who feared that magical dominance would translate into political hegemony. Sylmaran Ruins, whose artisans produced the finest weapons and tools on the continent, faced persistent attempts by other kingdoms to capture their craftsmen or steal their manufacturing secrets.
Verdant Reach, split between the descendants of Prince Marcus and Prince William, remained a battleground where the other kingdoms fought proxy wars to prevent either faction from achieving the unity that might tip the continental balance of power. Caernast used its naval superiority to blockade enemy ports while Lenthir weaponized food production to starve resistant populations into submission.
The conflicts had become so institutionalized that entire sectors of each kingdom’s economy depended on continued warfare. Weapons manufacturers, magical researchers focused on military applications, and military logistics specialists formed powerful constituencies that actively opposed peace negotiations because their livelihoods depended on continued conflict.
General Thomas Warmaker of Caernast’s army articulated this grim reality with brutal honesty: “Peace would require us to dismantle the military-industrial systems that keep our kingdoms functioning. We have organized our entire civilization around the assumption of permanent warfare. Ending the conflicts would be more disruptive than continuing them.”
The Forgotten Arts
In their focus on military efficiency and survival in an hostile environment, human civilization had lost many of the cultural achievements that had once made it great. The arts of diplomacy, cross-cultural communication, and collaborative problem-solving had withered from disuse. Knowledge that had been preserved for centuries was being forgotten as scholars focused on immediately practical applications rather than broader understanding.
The Silent Libraries of Sylmaran Ruins, once repositories of wisdom from across the known world, had been purged of “foreign influences” and reorganized around purely human knowledge and human perspectives. Texts written by elven scholars were locked away as “historically interesting but practically irrelevant,” while dwarven technical manuals were studied only for military applications rather than the broader engineering principles they contained.
Grandmaster Theron Shadowquill the Sixth, inheritor of Sylmaran’s scholarly traditions, defended these changes as necessary adaptations to current reality: “Knowledge that cannot be applied by human hands to human problems is not knowledge but distraction. We preserve what serves us and discard what served relationships that no longer exist.”
The magical traditions that had been developed through collaboration with other races were being systematically replaced by techniques that relied entirely on human magical theory and human magical practices. Noldruun’s Crystal Gardens had been reorganized to focus on developing magical weapons and defensive spells rather than the balanced magical practices that had once been the kingdom’s glory.
Archmage Lyralei Starweaver the Fifth justified this shift in terms that revealed how profoundly human thinking had changed: “Magic developed through collaboration with other races contains inherent weaknesses because it depends on perspectives and assumptions we do not fully control. Human magic, developed by humans for human purposes, may be less elegant but it is more reliable because we understand every aspect of its function.”
The Price of Independence
The complete independence that humanity had achieved came with costs that were becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Without elven agricultural wisdom, human farming techniques were slowly exhausting the soil in the remaining fertile regions. Without dwarven engineering expertise, human infrastructure was becoming less reliable and more expensive to maintain.
Caernast’s famous Lighthouse of Eternal Flame had been extinguished in the 2380th year when the dwarven-designed fuel systems finally failed and no human engineers possessed the knowledge necessary to repair them. The lighthouse, once a symbol of welcome and cooperation, stood dark as a monument to the costs of cutting ties with traditional allies.
Trade networks that had once connected human kingdoms to markets across the known world had collapsed as foreign traders found human ports too dangerous and unreliable to visit. The diverse goods and exotic materials that had enriched human civilization during its golden age were replaced by purely domestic production that, while sufficient for survival, lacked the variety and quality that international trade had provided.
Merchant Lord Alexander Coinless of Lenthir summarized the economic impact in his Report on Continental Commerce: “We have achieved complete economic independence at the cost of economic vitality. Our people have everything they need for survival but nothing that makes survival worthwhile. We eat adequate food, wear functional clothing, and live in defensible structures, but we have lost access to the beautiful, the exotic, and the surprising that once made human life rich rather than merely sustainable.”
The Gathering of the Forgotten
As human civilization descended deeper into institutionalized warfare and cultural decay, a movement began to form among those who remembered what humanity had once been capable of achieving. It started quietly in the monasteries scattered across all five kingdoms, where the ancient practices of balance and inner harmony had survived the corruption that had claimed the broader culture.
Sister Elara Brightflame of the Order of the Flowing Stream was the first to articulate what many monks had begun to feel - that humanity’s break with other races had severed them from more than just political alliances. In her Meditations on the Lost Balance, written in the 2456th year of the Era, she argued that the human gift for synthesis and bridge-building was not just a cultural achievement but a fundamental aspect of human nature that connected directly to their unique relationship with The Aetheric Weave (Magic).
“We were born from the tension between light and shadow, from the creative friction between opposing forces,” she wrote. “When we severed our connections to other perspectives, other ways of being, we did not achieve independence - we achieved imbalance. We are now creatures of only one half of our nature, and that incompleteness is killing us as surely as any poison.”
Sister Elara’s writings began to circulate among monastic communities across the continent, finding receptive audiences among monks who had watched their kingdoms descend into barbarism while maintaining their own practices of inner balance and cosmic awareness. The Contemplatives of the Eternal Moment in Noldruun reported disturbing visions of cosmic imbalance. The Disciples of the Iron Will in Caernast found their combat meditations increasingly disrupted by what they described as “spiritual static” that seemed to emanate from the growing conflicts.
Master Chen Innerlight of the Keepers of the Inner Flame, great-great-grandson of the original Master Kael Innerlight, documented how the spreading magical corruption was affecting monastic practices: “The techniques our ancestors developed to bridge human life force with the aetheric weave are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. The weave itself has been wounded by the magical weapons our kingdoms deploy against each other. We are not just damaging the external world - we are severing our own connections to the cosmic forces that define our essential nature.”
The Call to Restoration
By the 2480th year of the Era, Sister Elara had evolved from a philosophical critic to an active organizer, traveling between monasteries to build a coalition of monks who shared her conviction that humanity’s only hope lay in returning to the balanced approach that had once made them great. Her message found particularly strong resonance among younger monks who had grown up watching their kingdoms tear themselves apart while their monastic training taught them that such conflicts violated fundamental principles of cosmic harmony.
The movement she built was not politically motivated in the traditional sense - it was not seeking to support one kingdom over another or to impose particular policies on existing governments. Instead, it was dedicated to preserving and restoring the human capabilities that were being lost in the general cultural decay: the arts of diplomacy, the practices of cooperation, the techniques of finding common ground between different perspectives.
Brother Marcus Bridgebuilder of Verdant Reach, one of Sister Elara’s earliest supporters, established Sanctuary Monasteries that welcomed refugees from the ongoing conflicts regardless of their kingdom of origin. These monasteries became centers where humans could experience the cooperation and mutual aid that had once characterized their civilization, serving as living examples of what humanity could still achieve when guided by principles of balance rather than principles of war.
The movement also attracted support from non-monastic communities: scholars disgusted by the deliberate destruction of accumulated knowledge, artisans who mourned the loss of multicultural artistic traditions, healers who struggled to treat magical injuries with techniques designed for natural ailments, and farmers whose lands had been poisoned by magical weapons and who desperately needed solutions that their own kingdoms could not provide.
Lady Catherine Memoryholder, a former court scholar of Sylmaran Ruins who had been exiled for refusing to purge “foreign influences” from the kingdom’s libraries, became one of Sister Elara’s most important allies. She brought with her networks of scholars and intellectuals who had preserved books, techniques, and cultural knowledge that their kingdoms had declared irrelevant or dangerous.
“They call us traitors for remembering what we once were,” she declared at one of the movement’s early gatherings. “But we are the only ones who remember that humanity was once capable of greatness precisely because we could learn from others, work with others, and find strength in diversity rather than weakness in difference.”
The Sacred Pilgrimage
In the 2520th year of the Era, Sister Elara made a decision that would transform her philosophical movement into a political force: she announced a Sacred Pilgrimage to Aelarion (Pre-fracture), the abandoned island where humanity had first learned the arts of civilization and cooperation. Her stated goal was to meditate at the base of The Ythraewyn and seek guidance about how humanity might rediscover the balance that had once defined their nature.
The pilgrimage attracted followers from across the continent - not just monks, but thousands of humans who had grown weary of the constant warfare and cultural decay that defined their daily lives. They came carrying supplies, skills, and most importantly, a shared commitment to rediscovering what humanity had lost.
The journey to Aelarion required crossing territories controlled by multiple hostile kingdoms, navigating waters patrolled by Caernast’s increasingly aggressive navy, and avoiding the Blighted Zones where magical corruption made travel dangerous. The fact that several thousand humans managed to make this journey successfully demonstrated both their desperation and their dedication to the cause Sister Elara represented.
Admiral Sarah Bloodstone of Caernast’s navy, representing the new generation of humans who had never known cooperation, attempted to intercept the pilgrimage flotilla with demands that they submit to search and interrogation. Her encounter with Sister Elara became legendary among the movement’s followers for demonstrating the fundamental differences between the old and new approaches to human nature.
“You carry no weapons and claim no allegiance to any kingdom,” Admiral Bloodstone declared during the confrontation. “This makes you more dangerous than any army, because you represent ideas that threaten the stability of the order we have built.”
Sister Elara’s response revealed the philosophical gulf that now separated different factions of humanity: “The order you have built is based on fear, suspicion, and the assumption that cooperation is impossible. We represent proof that such assumptions are choices, not natural laws. You see us as dangerous because we remind you that there are alternatives to the path your generation has chosen.”
The confrontation ended without violence when several of Admiral Bloodstone’s own crew members, moved by Sister Elara’s words and exhausted by decades of warfare, refused orders to attack the pilgrimage ships. The incident demonstrated that even within the military establishments of the warring kingdoms, there were humans who yearned for alternatives to constant conflict.
The Claiming of Aelarion
When Sister Elara and her followers reached Aelarion (Pre-fracture) in the late 2520th year, they found the island exactly as the elves had left it - empty of permanent inhabitants but still anchored by the divine presence of The Ythraewyn. The great tree pulsed with the same cosmic energy that had given birth to humanity nearly three millennia earlier, its connection to The Aetheric Weave (Magic) unbroken despite the corruption spreading across the continent.
The pilgrims spent months in meditation and discussion beneath the branches of the Ythraewyn, seeking guidance about how to proceed. During this period, they were joined by additional refugees from the ongoing conflicts, including entire communities that had decided to abandon their war-torn homelands in favor of the possibility of building something better.
The decision to claim Aelarion permanently rather than return to their kingdoms emerged from these extended meditations. Sister Elara, now recognized as the leader of what had become a substantial population, declared the establishment of The Kingdom of Aelarion in the 2525th year of the Era - not as a conquest of abandoned territory, but as a restoration of humanity’s connection to their origins and their essential nature.
“We do not claim this island by right of strength or political inheritance,” she announced in the Declaration of Restoration. “We claim it by right of need - the need to preserve what humanity once was and can be again. Here, under the tree that gave us birth, we will rebuild the arts of cooperation, balance, and wisdom that our people have forgotten.”
The establishment of the Kingdom of Aelarion was not simply a political act but a spiritual and cultural one. Sister Elara was crowned not as a traditional monarch but as Queen-Guardian of Aelarion, a title that emphasized her role as protector of human potential rather than ruler of human subjects.
The new kingdom’s founding principles were revolutionary by the standards of current human civilization: absolute religious tolerance, welcome for refugees from any kingdom, commitment to preserving and sharing knowledge rather than hoarding it, and most radically, formal openness to renewed contact with other races should such opportunities arise.
The Restoration Project
Under Queen Elara’s guidance, The Kingdom of Aelarion became a center for preserving and practicing the human capabilities that were being lost elsewhere. The island’s monasteries were expanded to accommodate scholars, artisans, and practitioners of cooperative arts who had fled the increasingly militaristic cultures of the mainland kingdoms.
The Academy of Restored Arts was established to teach the diplomatic, scholarly, and cultural skills that had once made humanity great. Students learned not just the technical aspects of various crafts and disciplines, but the collaborative methods that had allowed humans to synthesize different approaches into innovations that exceeded what any single perspective could achieve.
Master Diplomat Helena Bridgeweaver, a former ambassador who had fled Sylmaran Ruins when that kingdom declared diplomacy with other races to be treason, established the School of Constructive Communication. Her curriculum included not just negotiation techniques and cultural sensitivity, but the fundamental human skill of finding common ground between apparently incompatible positions.
The island’s Crystal Gardens, modeled on those of Noldruun but dedicated to healing rather than warfare, became centers for developing magical techniques designed to restore rather than destroy. Aelarion’s mages worked on methods for healing the magical corruption that had spread across the continent, for purifying the Blighted Zones, and for restoring the damaged connections within The Aetheric Weave (Magic).
Most importantly, the Kingdom of Aelarion maintained the Ythraewyn not just as a monument but as a living symbol of human potential. Pilgrims from across the continent continued to arrive, seeking connection to their origins and guidance about how to transcend the conflicts consuming their homelands.
The Hostile Response
The establishment of the Kingdom of Aelarion triggered violent reactions from all five mainland kingdoms, each of which viewed the new realm as a threat to their own legitimacy and approach to governance. The very existence of a human kingdom dedicated to cooperation and balance challenged the assumptions about inevitable conflict and necessary isolation that had become central to mainland political culture.
King Marcus Goldenheart the Fifth of Lenthir declared the Kingdom of Aelarion to be a “refuge for traitors and weaklings who lack the moral courage to defend human interests.” He imposed economic sanctions on any merchants attempting to trade with the island and declared that any Lenthir citizens who traveled there would be considered defectors and banned from returning.
Noldruun’s Archmage Lyralei Starweaver the Sixth went further, declaring that Aelarion’s magical research represented a “dangerous contamination of human magical practice with foreign philosophical influences.” She convinced the other kingdoms that Aelarion’s healing magic might actually be a form of subtle attack designed to weaken mainland magical defenses.
Caernast imposed a naval blockade around Aelarion, though enforcement was inconsistent due to the number of Caernast sailors who sympathized with the island’s mission. Sylmaran Ruins declared that any scholars who had fled to Aelarion had stolen proprietary knowledge that belonged to their original kingdoms.
Verdant Reach, still divided between the descendants of Prince Marcus and Prince William, found their ongoing civil war complicated by the emergence of a third faction that advocated abandoning the succession dispute entirely and joining the Aelarion restoration movement.
The mainland kingdoms’ hostility toward Aelarion revealed how completely they had abandoned the cooperative principles that had once defined human civilization. They viewed the island kingdom not as an example to emulate but as a threat to destroy, demonstrating that they had become incapable of learning from alternatives to their own approaches.
The Growing Vulnerability
As the 2800th year of the Era approached, the stage was perfectly set for the next phase of Zoroth’s plan. Humanity was now divided not just between five warring kingdoms, but between the mainland kingdoms committed to conflict and isolation, and the Kingdom of Aelarion dedicated to restoration and cooperation.
This division would prove crucial in the trials to come. While the mainland kingdoms remained blind to external threats and committed to destroying each other, Aelarion preserved the knowledge, skills, and most importantly the human capacity for unity that would be essential for any effective resistance to the dangers emerging from the depths.
Queen Elara, now in her seventh decade but still sharp in mind and spirit, had unknowingly preserved humanity’s last hope for redemption. The Kingdom of Aelarion would prove to be not just a refuge for those who remembered better times, but the seed from which humanity’s eventual salvation would grow.
The scarred dominion that humanity had created through centuries of warfare was about to face its greatest test. But unlike the mainland kingdoms, Aelarion had preserved the tools that would be needed to meet that test - if they could survive long enough to use them.