The Beginning

No one really knows how the world was created. Even the elves and dragons, who are the longest lived of the races and have the oldest memories, can't account for how things came to be. All anyone knows is that at some point the cycles of the great empires began. First came the ancient Jannaar people, and it is their name that has been applied to the continent that they had conquered. No Jannaar are known to survive, their race died out before the rise of the elves, but they were first challenged in the north by giants and in the east and south by dragons. From that and internal struggles their power waned and with that diminution more and more of the land came under the control of others.

Now, giants and dragons by and large had no use for forests and the clearings that had broken the tree line in places or where land had been cleared by the Jannaar for their cities and farmlands. Humans were not much more than grunting brutes living in caves, but a few had been taken in and kept by jannaari and taught knowledge that would let them climb from their caves. These gathered in tribes and began to spread. In the meantime, giants and dragons clashed. The great giant kingdom which had taken hold of most of the north, and the dragons, who had spread from the south up to the farthest ice reaches of the north, fought fierce battles that then would open up vast areas of the trees. During the centuries of their battles, the human tribes around the twin lakes at the center of the continent and to the west along the sea, and the elven clans who had grown strong and powerful after the arrival of other cousin races of elves brought profound arcane magic to compliment their nature magic, formed kingdoms of their own.

These great empires stretched across the northern ares of the continent, sending satellite groups to colonize southern forests, which resulted in several kingdoms that were cut off during later years. Great cities were crafted and amazing works of magic were wrought until lies led to betrayal and then to murder. It seemed as the the entire elven race would fall apart when as suddenly as a falling star, it ended and when those other races living in the shadows of the great empires looked on the elven race, they had disappeared, retreated deep into their hidden forest homes.

It was not long after when the dwarves appeared, having been hidden away in mountain fastnesses and cut off from the outside world, they revealed themselves at last and claimed their own nations in the mountains and hill lands. Their presence came just before the awareness of humans to the presence of the small gnome people who, like dwarves, preferred mining, though in lower hills and with surface communities and friendships with neighbors. After the elven powers disappeared, their most powerful protectors were gone as well. It was this time which was known as one of the dark ages of the gnomes, and they adapted quickly to the use of the illusion magic they'd learned from the elves, and to defend their homes. These appearances were followed by the even more strange migration of the hin people, the halfling races which wandered in tribes and clans from somewhere else. Neither the already established races nor the hin could say which land they'd come from and most scholars decided that they must have come from another world or plane as they didn't resemble any other group in the known world.

Of all the peoples large and small, though, the human peoples showed the most natural adaptation. They moved quickly between surroundings, spreading in a generation to control pieces of lands that had once been the refuge of mythic people. Their magic and technology progressed too and sored to great heights as those deemed worthy learned at the hands of elf masters. Some, however turned to darker ways. These are the ones who would cause one of the single most defining moments in the eons.