09-04-2016, 01:31 PM
And it's not even totally done. Still have a few centuries to cover.
THE FIRST AGE, THE AGE OF STARS
There is no ‘true’ beginning to Logasior, or the material plane for that matter. It was created outside the reference of time and space, conceived purely by the unfathomable will of the Far Realm. The Far Realm is a universe entirely separate from the known cosmology, filled with minds and what could loosely be referred to as entities that are simply incompatible with contemporary mortal comprehension. It is a bloated, sickly universe, if such a thing can be said, and in order to progressively sustain its overgrown mass, it needs to encroach on new, empty realms of time and space, slowly corrupting them with its own instability. It does this through a concept known as ‘existence’, a facet which many minds take for granted as something they themselves foment.
The Truth is far more depressing. Simply by their existing, and the very minds they use to reaffirm that existence, they invite the Far Realm to fruition within their beloved cosmos, especially those who consider themselves the most August thinkers as spellcasters. You see, what we call ‘Magic’ is actually a process by which we invite the Far Realm to upset the natural order of the cosmos. Be it divine or arcane, all spells and magical rites can trace their power back to the threads of the Far Realm. To push the limits of what is possible, to use magic to completely destroy the natural order of all things, is the ultimate goal of The Far Realm. When all sanity has been sacrificed in the name of power and knowledge, the cosmos will have come ripe for The Far Realm to harvest, and we will then know the depth of absolute doom.
But I digress, how indeed did this process start? Despite the myriad connotations associated with it, the Negative Energy Plane could very well be considered the only truly ‘natural’ part of our world. Static, draining, empty and lifeless. This was the natural state of our cosmos, this fragment of the multiverse, before The Far Realm cast its attention upon her.
Into this dead nothingness, The Far Realm used a considerable amount of its own power to cause the very fabric of Logasior to fold in on itself, crunching more and more densely until the first solid matter was formed; voidstone. This mote of solid mass goes by many names; Io’s Phyle, The Dragon Stone, The World Heart, The Gate to Madness, but in essence, it is the first appearance of the one of the four Elements within Logasior. Earth. With its appearance, the first Inner Plane, Earth, was created astride the Material Plane. Its existence propagates the concept of Earth, an anchorpoint, if you will, for the Far Realm to maintain its grasp on Logasior.
From The Dragon Stone, The Material Plane grew, building up more and more Earth until The World was formed. At first, every inch of The Material Plane was made of voidstone, but that was to soon change. At some point, the solid matter of the Material Plane could expand no more, lest its growth go out of control and the Far Realm lose its grasp on the machinations of the universe.
Like any recipe, the Far Realm needed to add more ingredients to Logasior to achieve its ultimate goal. Once The World had been formed, the next step was to add a spark for the creation of The Far Realm’s most insane creation; Life. This medium would come to be known as Positive Energy. In direct contrast to the natural state of Logasior, The Far Realm perverted the fabric of The Cosmos to the point where it inverted completely, thus causing a brilliance of frenetic and boundless energy to explode into existence. The remnants of this explosion can still be seen scattered about the heavens to this day, in the form of stars.
The Positive Energy that did not escape the grasp of the hungry voidstone World was absorbed into the solid matter, cancelling out the degrading effects of Negative Energy while leaving the weight and mass of the congealed reality behind, thus creating the first stone. Now, with a stable canvas on which to paint its twisted masterpiece, The Far Realm introduced the next ingredients; Water and Air.
The Far Realm bade the Stars, its shining progeny, to fall to The World and overwhelm the surface stone with more and more positive energy, until it began to soften and expand. This continued until the first Great Ocean and the atmosphere had formed. Finally, the stage was set for the introduction of sentience into the world, but to do that, The Far Realm needed to create something that could flicker, grow, and die within Logasior. A final star was cast down to one of the small, solemn islands in the darkness, where it came to rest and blossom as the first Fire.
Fire did not have a mind, per se, but it did have a directive; consume, persist, propagate. The first fire elemental was born, and this First Fire was blessed as an agent of the Far Realm. All that it touched and breathed on was suddenly awoken with the same drive and vigor as the First Fire. Air, Earth and Water soon were also walking on and within The World, the first sentient beings. Thus began The Process, as mortal minds took shape.
In those days, access to the elemental planes was as simple as turning a corner. Elementals came and went from the Material Plane as they pleased, and before long, were finding ways to combine their aspects to create more complicated forms of life. Deep within the unholiest of depths of The World, The Elemental Progenitors painstakingly (and through no small amount of trial and error) create the first true Life. Though these First Four were conglomerates and collaborations between the four Elemental species as well as The Far Realm, each one was the brainchild of a particular element.
The Water Elementals desired a creature that was wise beyond belief, patient, and adapted to living within their beloved oceans. Through this, the first Aboleths were spawned. At the same time, Fire craved to create a race that possessed boundless ambition and minds ablaze with power. Ilithids are their progeny. Air, chaotic and free, jealously threw together a jumble of ideas and intents, creating the first Beholders. Finally, Earth, in its infinite patience, crafted forms of life so enduring, so pragmatic, that they would never change in the slightest. To this day, all Oozes call the depths of The World their home. All of this took place within the darkest pits and caverns within The World, and with the natural evolution of fungi and other forms of sedentary life, the Underdark slowly took shape.
Though they claim unsurpassed intelligence today, in the earliest days of the World, Aboleths and Ilithids were no more cunning than feckless apes. Despite this, their proximity to the primordial world gave them an intuitive connection to the Far Realm, or as they named it, Magic. The opposing races of Fire and Water, carefully watched by their Elemental forerunners, soon found themselves at odds with one another.
Aboleths, though power-hungry and scheming, were ultimately self-sufficient and cooperative with one another, insofar as they were able to keep out of each others’ business where it really counted. More importantly, their diet of any organic matter was much easier to sustain than the Ilithid craving for fresh, sentient brains, and so often had to turn on each other for sustenance. This made the Ilithids vulnerable to the already expanding empires of the Aboleths, who thrived among the primordial lifeforms that the Elementals continued to create; the sorts of ‘normal’ creatures that we today continue to be mundane animals.
Ultimately this resulted in the Aboleths moving closer and closer to the surface of The World, their hallowed tunnels and flooded passageways leading them into the first true oceans of Logasior, while the Ilithids were doomed to roam the dark pits of The World for the rest of the foreseeable eternity. The Aboleths began to build great cities in tribute of themselves, caring little for reverence of their elemental creators, and declared themselves de facto rulers of the nascent universe. These sprawling cities, founded on the peaks of what we now call mountains, stood for untold millennia. As time passed, the four original sentient races began to drift apart and cease to associate with one another completely. The Beholders and Oozes, though just as ancient as their brothers, were too chaotic and mindless respectively to form any lasting culture of importance.
So it was, with Aboleth in the oceans above and Ilithids in the darkness below, that the first great war began. The Ilithids chafed against the self-proclaimed rule of the Aboleth, but could not stand against the self-sufficient might of the united Aboleth kingdoms. Though the Ilithid’s raw, destructive magic potential made them fierce in small scale skirmishes, their handicap of near-constant starvation made them no match for the already booming infrastructures of the Aboleth.
One Ilithid, however, had an idea; if the Elementals could create their own life, why could they the Ilithids not do the same? This one Ilithid, who went by the name Gaahad, propsed that the Ilithids dedicate research into creating an easy, vulnerable livestock that was ideal for them to prey upon. The idea in and of itself was instantly well-accepted, but in keeping with what would become Ilithid tradition, they did their job too well.
The idea was to create lifeforms that carried so much potential Life and Magic within themselves that they essentially could not be killed. Their eternal life and ability to recover from even the most grievous of injuries would make them long and reliable sources of food and energy for all of Ilithid kind.
Vain as they were, the Ilithids created these livestock in their own image, for the most part. A head, two arms, a torso, and two legs. There were some variations in these prototypical humanoids, however, and each strain had its own name. Their names were thus; Moradin, Pelor, Amaduy (Later Obad-Hai), Io, and Greuhms (Later Gruumsh). Initial tests surpassed expectations. The Ilithids could feast on the rich, active, powerful brains of these Entities of Gaahad (A title eventually shortened to ‘God’), indefinitely, with the Gods’ brain growing back swiftly and whole.
What the Ilithids did not count on, however, was interference from The Far Realm. So infused were the Gods with the power of Magic, of The Far Realm, that their connections to its whims were almost instinctual. Through this, The Far Realm was able to grant each of the five original Gods a sense of true self. Each time one of the Gods’ brains was consumed and regenerated, their ability to pull on The Far Realm for their own means was strengthened. I suppose it should go without saying that the Gods did not appreciate being mere livestock to the Ilithids, and so it was that The Five began to collaborate a plan to break free from their masters.
Meanwhile, the war between the Aboleth and the Ilithids had begun to reach a stalemate. The Aboleths, who had long used the power of magic to subdue and command the Elementals that had bore them, were stricken with a double blow. First, Elementals began to recede from the Material Plane, taking refuge in their Elemental Inner Planes to escape being enthralled by the Aboleth. Secondly, the newly empowered Ilithids started to make great strides in legitimate organization against the united Aboleth.
Eager and vengeful, the Ilithids now turned their full attention from the management of the new Gods they had created, to the destruction and overthrow of the Aboleth as masters of The World. During the First War, a majority of the Aboleth cities on the then-submerged peaks of Logasior were crumbled and brought to ruin, except for the Aboleth capital city of Bshagraghs, or modern-day Veckaoul. This gave the Gods the opening they needed to enact the first phase of their divine plan.
It was Io who first proposed that they try to trick the Ilithids into letting them close enough to the surface of The World to escape and unleash their built up power on both the Aboleth and the Mind Flayers. This became possible when the Ilithids were able to ambush the Aboleth position on a small subcontient from an artificial tunnel the Ilithids had summoned into place up from the deepest pits, through the primordeal ocean, creating a small artificial island (now known as Key Island). A construction project of such magnitude exhausted the greatest Ilithid sorcerers greatly, and as such, the Gods volunteered to travel up through Key Island to give the sorcerers access to fresh food and power.
After this Final Feeding, and when the Gods had once again obtained their divine (some would say magic-addled) minds, and for the first time, emerged onto the surface of The World. During this first age, The World was still very dark, with there being no sun or moon in the sky. Only the remnants of the emergence of positive energy, the stars, shone down with wan light on the face of Logasior. During those days, only rudimentary life roamed the dark beaches and seas; barely shaped monstrosities that swam, crawled and gasped at the fringes of their eventual potential.
Still, even just one of these creeping abominations was more than enough for the Gods. Huddled together in the dank firelight of the Ilithid feeding pits, Io bade the Gods to join together in thought and belief, focusing their will and wishes on the body of a small, scaly mote of life they had lured to them. They breathed their power into the tiny wretch, and with a great brilliance, it grew larger, larger, and larger still. Gruumsh bestowed it with incredible strength, Moradin with an unbreakable carapace, Io granted it legendary grace and speed, where Obad Hai gave it the cunning mind of a predator. Finally, Pelor, unbeknownst even to himself, granted the beast unending life. Such was how the Tarrasque came to be.
The Gods had no control over the Tarrasque, but they didn’t need to have any such reigns. The beast knew its purpose innately: destroy everything in its path. Devour everything in sight. The Ilithids had little to no time to prepare for the ensuing slaughter, and every last one of them on Key Island was eaten. Satisfied with its purpose, the Tarrasque descended down the column of Key Island, into the depths of The World, where it began its long sleep. Its bulk collapsed the main tunnel onto the surface, leaving the Gods to themselves, for the first time ever.
THE SECOND AGE, THE AGE OF GODS
When the Gods struck out across the face of The World, they were crestfallen to find it largely barren, and waterlogged. They weren’t sure what they were expecting, but it hadn’t been an almost endless ocean pierced by craggy, black rocks, frosted with thick ice. Pelor, who had always had an affinity with light and life, knew that nothing could prosper in this harsh land, and so with the help of his siblings, Pelor slowly pried open a great portal to the Positive Energy Plane, a portal which came to be known as ‘Sun’.
The searing heat of the immense, blinding white gate immediately began to boil away the great oceans, lifting the first clouds into the sky and killing thousands upon millions of Aboleth, driving them into the inky depths. Io, whose form had been granted wings, called upon his divine magic to hoist the Sun up into the sky, close enough to the World that it could provide heat and life, but far enough that it did not obliterate everything its power touched. Obad-Hai and Moradin, ever the forward thinkers, knew that the Sun had to remain in motion as well.
They worked together, pulling a slab of stone from The World, to inscribe the first Laws of Nature, and compel the Sun to follow them. Before the sun had set on that first day, the rest of the gods had begun creating the natural world as we know it. Plants, animals and the first beasts began to roam the world and prosper.
Much in the same way that the Aberrations had spawned them, and the elementals had in turn spawned their forbears, The Gods also wished to oversee and care for sentient beings that were lesser than they. Moradin dug into The World and carved seven stone statues to become the first Dwarves. Pelor and Obad-Hai worked together to pull sunlight into the living trees of the worlds, making the first fey and elves. Pelor further refined these living bodies into the forms of the first Humans. Io, the monstrous, wrought a race of scaled and elementally infused beings known as Dragonborn. Gruumsh, prolific in his creativity, set about making such races of strength as the Orcs, Giants, Hobgoblins, and so forth.
These first tribes quickly organized and went their separate ways, with the Elves first coming to occupy what is modern-day Deepwood. Obad-Hai, quickly tiring of overseeing his people, chose two Elves to ascend to great power and guide them through their dawning sentience; Corellon and Lolth. The Ancient elves quickly learned to be at peace with the Forest, and developed a deep love of the natural world.
The Seven Dwarves descended into the depths of the World, eager to return to their roots, and began to stoke the first great forges. In time, they would soften and proliferate amongst themselves, with the heretic dwarves heading for the surface, and the stone loyalists becoming the Duergar of the deep.
The Humans, the fastest aging and dying of all the new sentients, were the slowest to progress. Over the course of the first few thousand years, as the Gods continued to experiment, they and the equally ephemeral Dragonborn retained their tribal ways, barely mastering the lives of nomads while the Elves and Dwarves started building their very first civilizations. What the Humans did do, however, was spawn their very own God, an anomaly which rightfully worried the First Five. Kord, the god of dominion, tempest, and strength, would come to be equally if not more revered than Pelor, who himself put the very sun in the sky.
Though the Strong Races lived up to their name, they, aside from a few of the giants, were parasitic in nature, and relied on the progress of their more stable neighbors. It is this focus on raw strength that would forever put Gruumsh at a disadvantage, a fact which he resented the graceful and wise elves for, especially being the chosen children of Corellon, whom he assessed to be a lesser god. In time, Gruumsh came to fall in love with Lolth, Corellon’s beautiful sister goddess, and seduced her into having her loyal elven followers assist in undermining the growing Elven civilization.
Though Gruumsh’s attempt was successful, and the Faithful of Lolth were able to make way for the hordes of Gruumsh, devastating the first ancient cities of the elves, Corellon became wise of his Sister’s treachery, and cursed her and her followers to dwell in the shadows with the spiders for all eternity, thus creating the Drow.
Gruumsh, enraged, sought out single combat with Corellon, convinced his seniority over the elven god would see due justice served. Instead, the faithful battle, where Gruumsh’s fated eye was cut out by Corellon’s blade took place, and the God of Orcs went in to deep, shameful exile.
By this time, Io, prideful and arrogant, grew tired of watching his chosen Dragonborn fail to thrive in the new world they had conquered from the Aboleth and Ilithids. He envisioned a refined form for the Dragonborn, bestial, yet intelligent. Savage, yet urbane. Immense, yet graceful. Much like the Tarrasque before them, these new beasts would be the pinnacle of life at the time, and true inheritors of The World. To fuel their great power though, these beings would need a font of untold magical power, which he himself could not alone provide.
Calling upon Moradin, Io pitched his plan to the God of Creation, who all too eagerly agreed, assuming that these new beasts would be a net benefit to The World. They started with two templates, who had more magical and mental power than the Tarrasque ever could have had. Io named them Tiamat and Bahamut, and this brother and sister pair would serve as the templates for all future dragonkind. Moradin, having long been exploring the connection of Magic to The World, had discovered an untapped source of arcane power that could be used to fuel Io’s envisioned beasts. The dreams, the power emitted by sleeping minds at rest, had in and of itself created a plane of existence separate from that of the normal Inner Planes. This ‘Astral’ Realm could serve as a font of magic for all of Io’s Children, but they would need a way to access it.
The pair referred to the plans for The Sun, and once again, worked to tear open an immense portal to the Astral Realm. The silvery sphere, smaller than the sun, and nont nearly as luminant, bestowed such arcane power on everything its light touched, that it too had to be hoisted into the inky heavens, lest its influence warp the The World around it into becoming a twisted dreamscape. This new sphere, called The Moon, was also set in motion in accordance with the Laws of Nature, in opposition of The Sun. With the creation of The Moon, the goddess Ioun was brought into existence, descending and congealing from the silvery ether of the Astral Realm, a figment of thought and knowledge, condensed from the mental dream power of those creatures that sleep.
Satisfied that this new font of Arcane Power could be readily accessed by his creations, Io set about creating the Dragons with the help of his children, Bahamut and Tiamat. Bahamut, inspired by the silvery, shining light of The Moon, created the metallic dragons, whereas Tiamat, more impressed with the beautiful rays diffracted from sunlight, created the chromatic dragons. Dragons immediately began to proliferate throughout the land, conquering and destroying anything that stood in their way. Io, initially thrilled with the legacy he had created, immediately drew flak from the other First Five, who complained who the Dragons were upsetting the balance of nature, with their free use of Magic.
In an initial attempt to meet Io in the sentient arms race, as it were, Obad-Hai took the existing forms of Humans and Elves and refined them into more compact, efficient forms, that could use their mobility and wits to their advantage. Halflings and Gnomes were brought into the world, woven from grass and loam, respectively. Obad-Hai even took the liberty of imbuing one Halfling with the power of a Goddess, much in the way he had done to Corellon and Lolth, and she came to be known as Ehlonna. Ehlonna refused to make her Little Ones fight the dragons, assessing that they were already safe as possible among the Elves, so ultimately, they contributed nothing. The two respective races were forced to seek shelter with the already powerful elves, dwarves and humans to avoid being stamped out by the rampaging dragons.
Pelor also did what he could to offset the tyranny, and chose two of his greatest Human warriors, chosen by Kord as the best among mankind, to act as champions against The Dragons of Io. Heironeous and Hextor, given divine power and legions of loyal warriors, lead many a great battle against the Dragon Flocks, but were turned back by the force of their Arcane Power every single time. Though the Gods themselves tried to intervene, they lacked the ability to be everywhere at once, something the Dragon Swarms had no trouble with, especially they themselves being led by three of the most powerful Gods in The World.
Ioun, Lady of the Moon, troubled by the lack of regret by her father and the nightmares sent to her by the troubled masses, used her great intelligence to devise a scheme that would, hopefully, lay the Dragons low. As usual, she turned to Moradin, the Architect of The World, for assistance in creating a great weapon to combat the power of The Dragons. Moradin, ashamed that his backing of Io had gone so terribly wrong, agreed to help Ioun in creating The Celestial Pendulum. A sort of Diaphragm, made entirely of black voidstone, that The Laws of Nature decreed to pass back and forth in front of The Moon in long cycles, so as to force the magical power of The Dragons to wane for weeks at a time.
On top of that, Ioun made an appeal to Bahamut, the more sympathetic of the Dragon Twins, and beseeched him to try and talk some sense into Tiamat and Io. It took some time, but Bahamut eventually agreed to try and convince his fellow draconic deities to encourage Dragonkind to cease its needless domination over The World, in just the same way that the Aboleth and Ilithids had done. Tiamat, loyal to her father, declined along with him, forcing Bahamut, with the help of Moradin and Obad-Hai, to do battle with the other Deities.
In the end, the Prodigal Betrayer succeeded and struck his now-hated father down into the depths of The World, where Moradin ordered his original Seven Dwarves to guard Io’s soul, bound to the Worldstone, for all of eternity. Io’s rage was so great, that the heat of his anger caused the core of The World to become superheated, causing the first tectonic activity and volcanic eruptions.
Bahamut did not, however, have the heart to damn his beloved sister to the same fate, and spared her existence, in the hopes she could be convinced to come around to see the good that Dragons could be for The World. Tiamat refused to give up on Io’s visions of Draconic dominance, however, and compelled her Chromatic Dragons to continue their eternal conquest for dominance. Bahamut, saddened but resolute, ordered the metallic dragons to oppose this dominance for all eternity, and so the Shism of the Wyrms was fomented.
Meanwhile, The Schism of Wyrms, coupled with the Cycle of Serpents or Phases of the Moon, gave Heironeous and Hextor enough of an edge in their fight against the now cornered chromatic dragons to see the beasts reduced in number to the point where they could no longer impose total conquest of all of mankind. Tiamat, however, seeing that Hextor was a man of substance, seduced the God of Tyranny to side with her, with the promise that they could one-day rule Logasior. The inherent greed of Hextor’s heart saw him agree, and abandoned Heironeous without further comment. The God of Valor and the God of Tyranny have not spoken a word to one another ever since.
Over time, the influence of The Moon, and the Cycle of Serpents did see enough exposure upon the face of The World to see rise to the emergence of Fey, Monstrosities and other magical beasts that evolved through the now unknown touch of The Far Realm. Magic, The Far Realm, could not have asked for a more convenient way to taint the physical plain of Logasior with the creation of The Moon, and it is for this reason that certain people still feel a sense of unease on nights when The Celestial Pendulum has fully swung away from The Moon’s face.
This intial Scouring of the Dragons showed the Gods that perhaps even they did not understand the full nature of their abilities. Even among the violent and ethically dubious deities, it was agreed that The World should be left largely to fend for itself, with no more direct interference. Only a catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions could justify anything further. This agreement became known as the Celestial Concordat. As such, The Gods went their separate ways, and began to experiment with other planes of reality, freely shaping the Outer Planes as they saw fit. Thus, Logasior and The World as we know it came to be, setting stage for a new element in the progression of the world; nations.
THE THIRD AGE, THE AGE OF MORTALS
As it was, at this point, due to the scouring of the Dragons, all of the races were still huddling in natural shelters with crude stone weapons to fend off the magical beasts of the realm. Only the Dwarves, perhaps, had the closest semblance of a civilization, with their old cave systems and early access to soft metals, but even then, these were barbaric tribes deep within the mountains of Logasior. At some point, however, the Dwarves migrated from their ancient homes in the Rusted Mountains to the open plains of Central Logasior, and laid down the foundations of what would become Gurn’Gedat, though it only started as a haphazard huddling of tents and fire pits.
The Elves, in an effort to escape the lingering threat of Dragons and avoid competition with the Dwarves, departed the Mainland, and traveled to the then-volcanic isle of Ereb Taure by way of crude kayaks and rafts. They left behind a legacy of megalithic ruins in the protected valley that is modern Deepwood, though the Gnomes and Halflings who had bedded with them stayed behind. Some Elven tribes, notably the Cunnien people, retreated deeper into the Feydom, and would hide among the trees for countless eons to come.
Dragonborn, now hunted and hated as bloodkin of the Dragons, remained scattered in small tribes for a long time, never really developing a civilization to call their own. Most Humans migrated to the west, leaving Logasior altogether for the Unsettled Lands, and were never heard from again. Those who stayed behind scattered all across Logasior, with a fair number learning to live in what is known as the Feydom in modern times, though they centralized in the south eastern reaches of Central Logasior.
Southern Logasior, at this time, was still mostly verdant and lush with jungle, but a great perturbation deep within the depths of The World (An experiment with the Worldstone at the hands of the Ilithid Fireseeker cult), caused the Charred Vault to erupt violently. The eastward winds of Logasior saw the western half of the peninsula choked in smog and darkness, killing off most of the plant life, beginning a slow desertification. The runoff from the rivers, however, caused the eastern half of Southern Logasior to become even more lush.
Over the next several thousand years, The World was mostly stable, with the humanoid races learning to minister and control ever increasing swaths of land. There were the Hootoh and Jinkai tribal nations in the West, which merged to form Sinjai after a great marriage between the nobles of those two ancient cultures. The Hootoh, who were adept at taming the land early on, admired the then marvelous technical advances of the Jinkai, and vice versa. Full integration into Sinjai would take another few millennia, but when it was complete, it already saw Sinjai as the local superpower. In those days, however, Sinjai was not as peace loving as it is today, and saw the rumors of other developing cultures as a credible threat. This period also marked the beginning of writing, and therefore recorded history.
Keldren Øsst started out as a mass of petulant and war loving giants and frost dwarves, but found a common enemy in the weak and vulnerable gnomes and Halflings of the Deepwood valley, starting a long tradition of slave raids across those mountains. Enterprising Frost Giants, however, saw this unified goal as a way to unite the squabbling tribes into a singular force.
There were the Ironbloods, who specialized in pulling valuable resources from the mountains, the Snowcarvers, who were expert mountain survivalists, the Hoarbloods who were outstanding warriors, the Beastmen of Mount Norben who trained the very first war beasts; oxen. Then there were the Cloudeaters, the only tribe who, to this day, refused to unite in the Keldren Øsst coalition, and suffered the more for it. They are considered to be part of Keldren Øsst today, but refuse to acknowledge it themselves, preferring to stick to their long traditions of pensive isolation, despite being oppressed by the threats of the Frost Giants.
Regardless, the tribes of Keldren Øsst united as one, eager to array their combined strength against the Dwarf families of Gurn’Gedat and the farming hordes of the united Hootoh and Jinkai. At this time, Keldren Øsst held much more land under its rule, including much of modern-day Deepwood and Helvanya.
Gurn’Gedat, still a far cry from its contemporary glory, was slowly expanding its reach across the forested hills of Central Logasior, with over a thousand dwarven fiefdoms all vying for supremacy, unlike their more peaceful Sinjai neighbors to the west, who were much easier to contact, as it would not be several hundred years until The Feydom became the impassable barrier it is today. Much like Keldren Øsst, however, the warring Dwarven families saw a mutual target in the Frost Giants and Frost Dwarves to the north, despite the latter being their ancient ancestors. What the Dwarves lacked in arable land and raw materials, however, they made up for in sheer audacity and ambition.
An example of this was the souther families of the dwarves being the first to cross the deadly Oath Mountains, named so because of the sworn loyalty the mountaineers had with one another. There they discovered the verdant bounty of modern-day Bastion, a place they referred to as Kiron Ibruk, or ‘Land of Blessed Ash’. Being the pioneers they were, the tunnel city of Krez Durel was founded and digging on Kardanh began.
The northernmost families were the first to unite in common cause against Keldren Øsst, conducting regular raids across the Orclands and attacking Blueskin settlements. They gained powerful metal weapons and slaves of their own in this incursion, and many of the rest of the Ancient Dwarf Lords grew jealous of this bounty.
It was by near, total coincidence that Keldren Øsst decided to retaliate in force against Gurn’Gedat at the exact same time that Sinjai launched a surprise attack through the mountains on the core Blueskin settlements. The Sinjai hordes, armed with technological terrors such as rudimentary catapults and ballistae, were more than a match for the few Keldrish forces that had stayed away from the fighting to the Southeast. As the Keldrish armies got cut off from their supply routes, the dwarves began to push them back over the northern mountains of Deepwood, the Bluewall Mountains, and dug in by building great fortresses.
Despite initial success against Keldren Øsst, the unwitting cooperation between Sinjai and the Families of Gurn’Gedat (Categorized into three larger kingdoms as Nabidolmol, Zamnuth, and Orgavúsh), were unable to do much against the Blueskins in their mountainous homeland, where eons of harsh living had taught them how to defend their terrain with great expertise. As such, the first Great War ended not with a decisive conquering, but a slow fizzle into peace. In the latter years of the war, Keldren Øsst, Sinjai and the The Kingdoms of Gurn’Gedat came to be known as the Three Beasts, represented by an Eagle, a Lion and a Boar, respectively. What the Three Beasts had not counted on, however, was that in this time, the Gnomes and Halflings indigenous to the hills of the Deepwood Valley had developed something new; druidic magic. Pulling on the power itself to mimic the abilities of the dragons, the smaller races seized their chance during this lull in the Great War to assert their dominance over the core regions of Deepwood, along with the help of their Kenku native allies who taught them well in the way of subversive warfare. A token retaliation from the bruised egos of Sinjai and Gurn’Gedat was mounted, but with the strength of the natural barriers in the area, coupled with the might of this new form of Magic, the Small People gave no ground.
It would be some time before Gurn’Gedat ceded control of its last few fortresses in the Bluewall mountains to ownership of the druids, but for all sakes and purposes, the Domain of Deepwood had been formed as quietly as one would expect from the quiescent province.
In a similar fashion, the war had caused Keldren Øsst to lose its already tenuous grip on the eastern reaches of its holdings, and so Helvanya came into being as the Keldrish did not have the manpower to both hold its ground against the other two Beasts and keep martial control over the salt marshes.
During the time that the Three Beasts had been fighting in the reaches of Northern Logasior, the disenfranchised race of Humans retreated to the far fringes of the subcontinent. Some migrated west like their ancestors, but others massed together in the newly established Helvanya and newly accessible Southern Logasior, hoping to stay out of the path of the Three Beasts.
It is to be noted, however, that Humans were the first to truly master the art of sailing and naval navigation. It is by this mastery that the Humans were the first to reestablish contact with the lost elves of Ereb Taure, whose nation had flourished greatly in the Millennium that they had been there. The Elves, having been isolated from the events of the mainland for so long, saw only war-crazed and uncivilized masses when they sent their first diplomatic forays back into Logasior proper. This set in place for a sense of inflated superiority in most of elf-kind that still persists today. What the elves did respect, however, was the great strides in construction the dwarves had made, especially in the form of Kardanh. The Drow and the High Elves, having long been forced to coexist, had seen the dark elves put in place as secondary citizens; unwanted anathemas of society. Now with access to the mainland restored, the High Elf nobles, the first of the Nenharma Dynasty, were able to forcibly relocate the Drow to the tunnels and passageways built into and around Kardanh.
Human sailing also saw the discovery of the greater Feral Island chains, as well as the Gnarl Islands to the south. Though the efforts of the Northern Sviga tribes (the primary rulers of the nascent Helvanya) to explore and colonize the Feral Islands would result in lost voyages and tales of towering beasts, the collaboration between the migrant Quilo and Aruas tribes in Souther Logasior saw successful colonization of Saskirn. These two tribes would eventually combine to form the foundations of the Kingdom of Bastion.
At this juncture, many of the nations of modern-day Logasior were beginning to fall into place. The only thing that was absent was the presence of significant Arcane magic. Divine magic, whose power was derived from the Gods or the World, had long been understood, though far from developed to its full potential. Only the dragons, and their intrinsic connection to The Moon had access to the true might of Arcane spells and abilities, though this was to soon change.
THE FOURTH AGE, THE AGE OF DRAGONS
During most of the Third Age, Dragonkind had largely kept to themselves, establishing the roots of draconic tradition and culture and the interspecies dynamics we see today. A particularly visionary white dragon by the name of Pasterenox would, however, see this general policy of non-interference shattered in the most fabulous of fashions. At the spritely age of 1,000 years, Pasterenox was chosen by the will of Tiamat herself to once again bring all of dragonkind to their rightful place as masters of Logasior, just as Io had envisioned. As such, Tiamat did wittingly violate the terms of the Celestial Concordat, but it would be a transgression that Pasterenox took to the grave. Though Pasterenox, a lonely and dark-minded individual, did not have the physical might to overthrow the Frost Giant Jarls of Keldren Øsst, he possessed a strangely keen intellect for a white dragon. As such, he set in motion a chain of events whereby he would come to be the sole male heir of Stana Bosek, one of the more powerful Frost Giant landowners in the high courts of Veckaoul. He did this by mating with and marrying Stana’s eldest daughter. When eventually Jarl Bosek passed away, Pasterenox became one of the most powerful players in the brutal politics of Keldren Øsst.
In time, through similar underhanded maneuverings, Pasterenox would come to be crowned as the Great Jarl of Keldren Øsst, despite there being no precedent for such a monarch in Keldrish law up until that point. With the full might of The Eagle now at his disposal, Pasterenox launched a campaign of revenge against the dwarves of Gurn’Gedat. Though he was only ever able to muster petty border skirmishes along Gurn’Gedat’s northern border, the mere fact that a dragon had become the ruler of a country sparked an idea in the minds of all other Wyrms in Logasior. By Dragon interpretation, Pasterenox had effectively incorporated an entire nation of supplicants and their wealth into what could be considered his hoard. To possess a nation was the ultimate treasure.
Other dragons swiftly followed suit, laying claim to vast swathes of territory and declaring themselves rulers, whether or not that land was inside a true nation’s borders. Fighting quickly broke out, as both metallic and chromatic dragons competed for illegitimate stakes to land. Notable examples include Asandredastriox, Senkentadrassa, Barteloveraxcholerian, and even Thelldrenalokan. The latter is a unique example, in that the Amethyst Dragon did not himself want to claim any land, preferring a life of quiescence and seclusion among his Druid compatriots. The recently formed Ashen Council saw that the natural order of Logasior was changing, and elected Thelldrenalokan as the leader of Deepwood, so that another, perhaps less culturally sound Wyrm did not try to muscle their way into the same position. Only Thelldrenalokan, among almost all of dragonkind, was able to peacefully rule the willing subjects of Deepwood, and therefore largely stayed out of the Second Great War. The other famous dragon monarchs, in the coming Second Great War, were just as hostile to humanoids as the rest of their kind, but this is a fact that has intentionally been lost in the mists of time.
Regardless, the humanoids of Logasior swiftly took great offense to this sudden rash of draconic interference, and began to mount joint efforts to eradicate, if not exterminate, the presence of dragons within their borders. It did not take long for the dragons to take a collective sense of racial offense to this, and in retaliation, mustered armies of their own, comprised mostly of heretofore scattered Dragonborn tribes, to combat the encroaching humanoid threat. One of the first great conflicts was against Shelzenkadol, a particularly fearsome red dragon that had commandeered the lands around Krez Durell. Gurn’Gedat was able to contain the fires of Shelzenkadol from spreading across the land, but lacked further resources to stamp the ancient dragon out completely. It is during those years of ceaseless fire that Krez Durell came to be known as the Black City, due to its constantly charred ramparts.
Sinjai was able to send aid through the Feydom, since Asandredastriox had not yet seen to the enchanting of the southern reaches of the great forest, and flanked Shelzenkadol in his lair from the far side of the Oathspur. It was the first example of one nation coming to the witting aid of another, and set the stage for the brotherly relationship between the Lion and the Boar for centuries to come. The consequences, however, were more grave than either of them could have anticipated. If there was any doubt before that this new, Second Great War, was arrayed as Dragons against Humanoids, the cooperation of two nations against one dragon convinced the wyrms of Logasior that this conflict was no longer simply about land; it was about the supremacy of sentient lifeforms. It is by this twisted logic that the Metallic Dragons found reason to work with the Chromatic Dragons against the humanoids, despite the deep compulsions set in place by the Schism of Wyrms, being that it was a matter of survival.
Despite their newfound sense of unity, however, humanoids were at a complete disadvantage against Dragons, not just because of their inherent fearsome might, but because of their complete mastery of Arcane magic. Divine magic, though powerful in its own right, has never had the same kind of destructive potential as that of the Arcane. Because of this the armies of the Three Beasts could not match the sheer firepower of the Dragon Armies, they stood little chance in open combat. Even with the Elves of Ereb Taure, who had begun to unravel the secrets of the arcane themselves, could not match the magical might of the Dragons. The loss of humanoid life was staggering, to the point that even monstrous races started to feel like they might be targeted next. Over one third of all sentient humanoids were slain by dragonkind in this period.
Those humans who still traveled listlessly across the plains of central and western Logasior now migrated in earnest to fabled paradise south of the Oath Mountains. This made a majority of them easy pickings for draconic sympathizers, who either enslaved or outright massacred the migrant humans for the sake of it. The country of Bastion was solidified at this point in time, and a well-founded fear and loathing of non-human races was infused into the previously idyllic communities of Southern Logasior. The Humans were not to be left entirely alone, however, and would suffer the wrath of Blue and Brass dragons of the Sapphire Desert until the end of the Second Great War. In this regard, it could be said that the Sapphire Expanse was also founded during this period of time.
It would take the interference of the Gods, for the first time in an Age, to turn the tables. Ioun, Heironeous, and Bahamut all saw the ravages that Bahamut had unleashed upon The World. Up until this point, they had (as far as they knew), all been abiding by the Celestial Concordat, but seeing the unrivaled death that now spread far and wide, they called a great council of the Gods, and by majority vote, it was decided that steps would be taken to bring balance back to Logasior. First, Bahamut tugged upon the souls of his metallic dragons, and reinforced their noble ideals to the point that it was no longer an instinct, but an utter, overpowering drive to see justice and peace prevail in the world.
The sudden shift in heart of the metallic dragons was certainly enough to halt the advance of the Dragon Armies, but it would take more divine intervention for the course of the Second Great War to be reversed completely. Thus, with Bahamut’s blessing, Ioun sent divine visions to the dragon allies of humanoids everywhere, encouraging them to finally bestow the secrets of Arcane magic upon the lesser mortals of Logasior. It was a process that would take time, but it was ultimately this sharing of knowledge that would conquer the Dragon Armies.
Finally, in an act of intervention that is as direct as possible, Kord, Heironeous, Corellon, Gruumsh and even Hextor descended from their Outer Planes to aid the Armies of the Beasts directly in their combat against the now universally reviled chromatic dragons. With these compounded factors, it did not take long to see the aggressive dragons beaten back into their position in the natural order of things. Once all open warfare had ceased, and the Dragon Armies dispersed, the Gods left The World as abruptly as they had arrived. A troubled, sickly peace settled over Logasior, though the devastation and appalling loss of life to all sentient life forms would not recover for hundreds of years.
Meanwhile, in the outer planes, Hextor began to grow suspicious of Tiamat. The Dragon Queen had indeed intended The Second Great War to serve as a platform for her own shortsighted dominance over The World, and she had intentionally left Hextor in the dark, despite her promises to the God of Tyranny millennia prior. Though Hextor could not prove anything, it was enough to drive the previously allied gods apart from one another for the rest of time.
THE FIFTH AGE, THE AGE OF MAGIC
The Fifth Age would see the first real explosion of scholarly pursuits across the lands of Logasior. For the first time, the scholars of the great nations would put their long memories to use to try and recall history as best they could up until their current era. Of course, they did leave out a lot, and also got a lot wrong, much of which still holds up as the generally accepted history of the realm, but I digress.
With the power of Arcane magic bequeathed upon the humanoids of Logasior, wizards and other practitioners of The Art began to cluster together to see if they could push what had been taught to them to its absolute limit. Blue Dragons had, for the most part, stayed out of the Second Great War, content to build their own prosperity within the Sapphire Desert, rather than impose themselves on the hapless humans of Bastion, who they perceived as a non-threat. When it became a widely known fact that humanoids now had Arcane magic within their grasp, the Blue Dragons were the first to capitalize on the opportunity, rather than rail against it.
In a period of only a few short years, many Blue Dragons had pulled together the efforts of their kin and many thralls to form the foundation of the Sapphire Expanse. Much of the development was centered around the Azure Citadel, a place which quickly became touted as the center of all arcane research within the whole of Logasior. Initially, it was hardly any better than any of the other institutions which had cropped up on the mainland, but through sheer force of conviciton, the conniving Blues managed to convince Logasior at large that they were the prime location.
It would be some time before the Azure Citadel became the revered headquarters for wizard kind that it is today, though for the first few centuries of the Sapphire Expanse’s existence, it did serve as the capital of the nation. Only after We’Darastri, originally a small fishing and farming community, expanded exponentially, did that city become the new capital. This was thanks to the sudden influx of immigrants and travelling scholars who began to pass in and out of the port in almost inconceivable numbers, as it was easier to access The Azure Citadel by water than by land.
THE FIRST AGE, THE AGE OF STARS
There is no ‘true’ beginning to Logasior, or the material plane for that matter. It was created outside the reference of time and space, conceived purely by the unfathomable will of the Far Realm. The Far Realm is a universe entirely separate from the known cosmology, filled with minds and what could loosely be referred to as entities that are simply incompatible with contemporary mortal comprehension. It is a bloated, sickly universe, if such a thing can be said, and in order to progressively sustain its overgrown mass, it needs to encroach on new, empty realms of time and space, slowly corrupting them with its own instability. It does this through a concept known as ‘existence’, a facet which many minds take for granted as something they themselves foment.
The Truth is far more depressing. Simply by their existing, and the very minds they use to reaffirm that existence, they invite the Far Realm to fruition within their beloved cosmos, especially those who consider themselves the most August thinkers as spellcasters. You see, what we call ‘Magic’ is actually a process by which we invite the Far Realm to upset the natural order of the cosmos. Be it divine or arcane, all spells and magical rites can trace their power back to the threads of the Far Realm. To push the limits of what is possible, to use magic to completely destroy the natural order of all things, is the ultimate goal of The Far Realm. When all sanity has been sacrificed in the name of power and knowledge, the cosmos will have come ripe for The Far Realm to harvest, and we will then know the depth of absolute doom.
But I digress, how indeed did this process start? Despite the myriad connotations associated with it, the Negative Energy Plane could very well be considered the only truly ‘natural’ part of our world. Static, draining, empty and lifeless. This was the natural state of our cosmos, this fragment of the multiverse, before The Far Realm cast its attention upon her.
Into this dead nothingness, The Far Realm used a considerable amount of its own power to cause the very fabric of Logasior to fold in on itself, crunching more and more densely until the first solid matter was formed; voidstone. This mote of solid mass goes by many names; Io’s Phyle, The Dragon Stone, The World Heart, The Gate to Madness, but in essence, it is the first appearance of the one of the four Elements within Logasior. Earth. With its appearance, the first Inner Plane, Earth, was created astride the Material Plane. Its existence propagates the concept of Earth, an anchorpoint, if you will, for the Far Realm to maintain its grasp on Logasior.
From The Dragon Stone, The Material Plane grew, building up more and more Earth until The World was formed. At first, every inch of The Material Plane was made of voidstone, but that was to soon change. At some point, the solid matter of the Material Plane could expand no more, lest its growth go out of control and the Far Realm lose its grasp on the machinations of the universe.
Like any recipe, the Far Realm needed to add more ingredients to Logasior to achieve its ultimate goal. Once The World had been formed, the next step was to add a spark for the creation of The Far Realm’s most insane creation; Life. This medium would come to be known as Positive Energy. In direct contrast to the natural state of Logasior, The Far Realm perverted the fabric of The Cosmos to the point where it inverted completely, thus causing a brilliance of frenetic and boundless energy to explode into existence. The remnants of this explosion can still be seen scattered about the heavens to this day, in the form of stars.
The Positive Energy that did not escape the grasp of the hungry voidstone World was absorbed into the solid matter, cancelling out the degrading effects of Negative Energy while leaving the weight and mass of the congealed reality behind, thus creating the first stone. Now, with a stable canvas on which to paint its twisted masterpiece, The Far Realm introduced the next ingredients; Water and Air.
The Far Realm bade the Stars, its shining progeny, to fall to The World and overwhelm the surface stone with more and more positive energy, until it began to soften and expand. This continued until the first Great Ocean and the atmosphere had formed. Finally, the stage was set for the introduction of sentience into the world, but to do that, The Far Realm needed to create something that could flicker, grow, and die within Logasior. A final star was cast down to one of the small, solemn islands in the darkness, where it came to rest and blossom as the first Fire.
Fire did not have a mind, per se, but it did have a directive; consume, persist, propagate. The first fire elemental was born, and this First Fire was blessed as an agent of the Far Realm. All that it touched and breathed on was suddenly awoken with the same drive and vigor as the First Fire. Air, Earth and Water soon were also walking on and within The World, the first sentient beings. Thus began The Process, as mortal minds took shape.
In those days, access to the elemental planes was as simple as turning a corner. Elementals came and went from the Material Plane as they pleased, and before long, were finding ways to combine their aspects to create more complicated forms of life. Deep within the unholiest of depths of The World, The Elemental Progenitors painstakingly (and through no small amount of trial and error) create the first true Life. Though these First Four were conglomerates and collaborations between the four Elemental species as well as The Far Realm, each one was the brainchild of a particular element.
The Water Elementals desired a creature that was wise beyond belief, patient, and adapted to living within their beloved oceans. Through this, the first Aboleths were spawned. At the same time, Fire craved to create a race that possessed boundless ambition and minds ablaze with power. Ilithids are their progeny. Air, chaotic and free, jealously threw together a jumble of ideas and intents, creating the first Beholders. Finally, Earth, in its infinite patience, crafted forms of life so enduring, so pragmatic, that they would never change in the slightest. To this day, all Oozes call the depths of The World their home. All of this took place within the darkest pits and caverns within The World, and with the natural evolution of fungi and other forms of sedentary life, the Underdark slowly took shape.
Though they claim unsurpassed intelligence today, in the earliest days of the World, Aboleths and Ilithids were no more cunning than feckless apes. Despite this, their proximity to the primordial world gave them an intuitive connection to the Far Realm, or as they named it, Magic. The opposing races of Fire and Water, carefully watched by their Elemental forerunners, soon found themselves at odds with one another.
Aboleths, though power-hungry and scheming, were ultimately self-sufficient and cooperative with one another, insofar as they were able to keep out of each others’ business where it really counted. More importantly, their diet of any organic matter was much easier to sustain than the Ilithid craving for fresh, sentient brains, and so often had to turn on each other for sustenance. This made the Ilithids vulnerable to the already expanding empires of the Aboleths, who thrived among the primordial lifeforms that the Elementals continued to create; the sorts of ‘normal’ creatures that we today continue to be mundane animals.
Ultimately this resulted in the Aboleths moving closer and closer to the surface of The World, their hallowed tunnels and flooded passageways leading them into the first true oceans of Logasior, while the Ilithids were doomed to roam the dark pits of The World for the rest of the foreseeable eternity. The Aboleths began to build great cities in tribute of themselves, caring little for reverence of their elemental creators, and declared themselves de facto rulers of the nascent universe. These sprawling cities, founded on the peaks of what we now call mountains, stood for untold millennia. As time passed, the four original sentient races began to drift apart and cease to associate with one another completely. The Beholders and Oozes, though just as ancient as their brothers, were too chaotic and mindless respectively to form any lasting culture of importance.
So it was, with Aboleth in the oceans above and Ilithids in the darkness below, that the first great war began. The Ilithids chafed against the self-proclaimed rule of the Aboleth, but could not stand against the self-sufficient might of the united Aboleth kingdoms. Though the Ilithid’s raw, destructive magic potential made them fierce in small scale skirmishes, their handicap of near-constant starvation made them no match for the already booming infrastructures of the Aboleth.
One Ilithid, however, had an idea; if the Elementals could create their own life, why could they the Ilithids not do the same? This one Ilithid, who went by the name Gaahad, propsed that the Ilithids dedicate research into creating an easy, vulnerable livestock that was ideal for them to prey upon. The idea in and of itself was instantly well-accepted, but in keeping with what would become Ilithid tradition, they did their job too well.
The idea was to create lifeforms that carried so much potential Life and Magic within themselves that they essentially could not be killed. Their eternal life and ability to recover from even the most grievous of injuries would make them long and reliable sources of food and energy for all of Ilithid kind.
Vain as they were, the Ilithids created these livestock in their own image, for the most part. A head, two arms, a torso, and two legs. There were some variations in these prototypical humanoids, however, and each strain had its own name. Their names were thus; Moradin, Pelor, Amaduy (Later Obad-Hai), Io, and Greuhms (Later Gruumsh). Initial tests surpassed expectations. The Ilithids could feast on the rich, active, powerful brains of these Entities of Gaahad (A title eventually shortened to ‘God’), indefinitely, with the Gods’ brain growing back swiftly and whole.
What the Ilithids did not count on, however, was interference from The Far Realm. So infused were the Gods with the power of Magic, of The Far Realm, that their connections to its whims were almost instinctual. Through this, The Far Realm was able to grant each of the five original Gods a sense of true self. Each time one of the Gods’ brains was consumed and regenerated, their ability to pull on The Far Realm for their own means was strengthened. I suppose it should go without saying that the Gods did not appreciate being mere livestock to the Ilithids, and so it was that The Five began to collaborate a plan to break free from their masters.
Meanwhile, the war between the Aboleth and the Ilithids had begun to reach a stalemate. The Aboleths, who had long used the power of magic to subdue and command the Elementals that had bore them, were stricken with a double blow. First, Elementals began to recede from the Material Plane, taking refuge in their Elemental Inner Planes to escape being enthralled by the Aboleth. Secondly, the newly empowered Ilithids started to make great strides in legitimate organization against the united Aboleth.
Eager and vengeful, the Ilithids now turned their full attention from the management of the new Gods they had created, to the destruction and overthrow of the Aboleth as masters of The World. During the First War, a majority of the Aboleth cities on the then-submerged peaks of Logasior were crumbled and brought to ruin, except for the Aboleth capital city of Bshagraghs, or modern-day Veckaoul. This gave the Gods the opening they needed to enact the first phase of their divine plan.
It was Io who first proposed that they try to trick the Ilithids into letting them close enough to the surface of The World to escape and unleash their built up power on both the Aboleth and the Mind Flayers. This became possible when the Ilithids were able to ambush the Aboleth position on a small subcontient from an artificial tunnel the Ilithids had summoned into place up from the deepest pits, through the primordeal ocean, creating a small artificial island (now known as Key Island). A construction project of such magnitude exhausted the greatest Ilithid sorcerers greatly, and as such, the Gods volunteered to travel up through Key Island to give the sorcerers access to fresh food and power.
After this Final Feeding, and when the Gods had once again obtained their divine (some would say magic-addled) minds, and for the first time, emerged onto the surface of The World. During this first age, The World was still very dark, with there being no sun or moon in the sky. Only the remnants of the emergence of positive energy, the stars, shone down with wan light on the face of Logasior. During those days, only rudimentary life roamed the dark beaches and seas; barely shaped monstrosities that swam, crawled and gasped at the fringes of their eventual potential.
Still, even just one of these creeping abominations was more than enough for the Gods. Huddled together in the dank firelight of the Ilithid feeding pits, Io bade the Gods to join together in thought and belief, focusing their will and wishes on the body of a small, scaly mote of life they had lured to them. They breathed their power into the tiny wretch, and with a great brilliance, it grew larger, larger, and larger still. Gruumsh bestowed it with incredible strength, Moradin with an unbreakable carapace, Io granted it legendary grace and speed, where Obad Hai gave it the cunning mind of a predator. Finally, Pelor, unbeknownst even to himself, granted the beast unending life. Such was how the Tarrasque came to be.
The Gods had no control over the Tarrasque, but they didn’t need to have any such reigns. The beast knew its purpose innately: destroy everything in its path. Devour everything in sight. The Ilithids had little to no time to prepare for the ensuing slaughter, and every last one of them on Key Island was eaten. Satisfied with its purpose, the Tarrasque descended down the column of Key Island, into the depths of The World, where it began its long sleep. Its bulk collapsed the main tunnel onto the surface, leaving the Gods to themselves, for the first time ever.
THE SECOND AGE, THE AGE OF GODS
When the Gods struck out across the face of The World, they were crestfallen to find it largely barren, and waterlogged. They weren’t sure what they were expecting, but it hadn’t been an almost endless ocean pierced by craggy, black rocks, frosted with thick ice. Pelor, who had always had an affinity with light and life, knew that nothing could prosper in this harsh land, and so with the help of his siblings, Pelor slowly pried open a great portal to the Positive Energy Plane, a portal which came to be known as ‘Sun’.
The searing heat of the immense, blinding white gate immediately began to boil away the great oceans, lifting the first clouds into the sky and killing thousands upon millions of Aboleth, driving them into the inky depths. Io, whose form had been granted wings, called upon his divine magic to hoist the Sun up into the sky, close enough to the World that it could provide heat and life, but far enough that it did not obliterate everything its power touched. Obad-Hai and Moradin, ever the forward thinkers, knew that the Sun had to remain in motion as well.
They worked together, pulling a slab of stone from The World, to inscribe the first Laws of Nature, and compel the Sun to follow them. Before the sun had set on that first day, the rest of the gods had begun creating the natural world as we know it. Plants, animals and the first beasts began to roam the world and prosper.
Much in the same way that the Aberrations had spawned them, and the elementals had in turn spawned their forbears, The Gods also wished to oversee and care for sentient beings that were lesser than they. Moradin dug into The World and carved seven stone statues to become the first Dwarves. Pelor and Obad-Hai worked together to pull sunlight into the living trees of the worlds, making the first fey and elves. Pelor further refined these living bodies into the forms of the first Humans. Io, the monstrous, wrought a race of scaled and elementally infused beings known as Dragonborn. Gruumsh, prolific in his creativity, set about making such races of strength as the Orcs, Giants, Hobgoblins, and so forth.
These first tribes quickly organized and went their separate ways, with the Elves first coming to occupy what is modern-day Deepwood. Obad-Hai, quickly tiring of overseeing his people, chose two Elves to ascend to great power and guide them through their dawning sentience; Corellon and Lolth. The Ancient elves quickly learned to be at peace with the Forest, and developed a deep love of the natural world.
The Seven Dwarves descended into the depths of the World, eager to return to their roots, and began to stoke the first great forges. In time, they would soften and proliferate amongst themselves, with the heretic dwarves heading for the surface, and the stone loyalists becoming the Duergar of the deep.
The Humans, the fastest aging and dying of all the new sentients, were the slowest to progress. Over the course of the first few thousand years, as the Gods continued to experiment, they and the equally ephemeral Dragonborn retained their tribal ways, barely mastering the lives of nomads while the Elves and Dwarves started building their very first civilizations. What the Humans did do, however, was spawn their very own God, an anomaly which rightfully worried the First Five. Kord, the god of dominion, tempest, and strength, would come to be equally if not more revered than Pelor, who himself put the very sun in the sky.
Though the Strong Races lived up to their name, they, aside from a few of the giants, were parasitic in nature, and relied on the progress of their more stable neighbors. It is this focus on raw strength that would forever put Gruumsh at a disadvantage, a fact which he resented the graceful and wise elves for, especially being the chosen children of Corellon, whom he assessed to be a lesser god. In time, Gruumsh came to fall in love with Lolth, Corellon’s beautiful sister goddess, and seduced her into having her loyal elven followers assist in undermining the growing Elven civilization.
Though Gruumsh’s attempt was successful, and the Faithful of Lolth were able to make way for the hordes of Gruumsh, devastating the first ancient cities of the elves, Corellon became wise of his Sister’s treachery, and cursed her and her followers to dwell in the shadows with the spiders for all eternity, thus creating the Drow.
Gruumsh, enraged, sought out single combat with Corellon, convinced his seniority over the elven god would see due justice served. Instead, the faithful battle, where Gruumsh’s fated eye was cut out by Corellon’s blade took place, and the God of Orcs went in to deep, shameful exile.
By this time, Io, prideful and arrogant, grew tired of watching his chosen Dragonborn fail to thrive in the new world they had conquered from the Aboleth and Ilithids. He envisioned a refined form for the Dragonborn, bestial, yet intelligent. Savage, yet urbane. Immense, yet graceful. Much like the Tarrasque before them, these new beasts would be the pinnacle of life at the time, and true inheritors of The World. To fuel their great power though, these beings would need a font of untold magical power, which he himself could not alone provide.
Calling upon Moradin, Io pitched his plan to the God of Creation, who all too eagerly agreed, assuming that these new beasts would be a net benefit to The World. They started with two templates, who had more magical and mental power than the Tarrasque ever could have had. Io named them Tiamat and Bahamut, and this brother and sister pair would serve as the templates for all future dragonkind. Moradin, having long been exploring the connection of Magic to The World, had discovered an untapped source of arcane power that could be used to fuel Io’s envisioned beasts. The dreams, the power emitted by sleeping minds at rest, had in and of itself created a plane of existence separate from that of the normal Inner Planes. This ‘Astral’ Realm could serve as a font of magic for all of Io’s Children, but they would need a way to access it.
The pair referred to the plans for The Sun, and once again, worked to tear open an immense portal to the Astral Realm. The silvery sphere, smaller than the sun, and nont nearly as luminant, bestowed such arcane power on everything its light touched, that it too had to be hoisted into the inky heavens, lest its influence warp the The World around it into becoming a twisted dreamscape. This new sphere, called The Moon, was also set in motion in accordance with the Laws of Nature, in opposition of The Sun. With the creation of The Moon, the goddess Ioun was brought into existence, descending and congealing from the silvery ether of the Astral Realm, a figment of thought and knowledge, condensed from the mental dream power of those creatures that sleep.
Satisfied that this new font of Arcane Power could be readily accessed by his creations, Io set about creating the Dragons with the help of his children, Bahamut and Tiamat. Bahamut, inspired by the silvery, shining light of The Moon, created the metallic dragons, whereas Tiamat, more impressed with the beautiful rays diffracted from sunlight, created the chromatic dragons. Dragons immediately began to proliferate throughout the land, conquering and destroying anything that stood in their way. Io, initially thrilled with the legacy he had created, immediately drew flak from the other First Five, who complained who the Dragons were upsetting the balance of nature, with their free use of Magic.
In an initial attempt to meet Io in the sentient arms race, as it were, Obad-Hai took the existing forms of Humans and Elves and refined them into more compact, efficient forms, that could use their mobility and wits to their advantage. Halflings and Gnomes were brought into the world, woven from grass and loam, respectively. Obad-Hai even took the liberty of imbuing one Halfling with the power of a Goddess, much in the way he had done to Corellon and Lolth, and she came to be known as Ehlonna. Ehlonna refused to make her Little Ones fight the dragons, assessing that they were already safe as possible among the Elves, so ultimately, they contributed nothing. The two respective races were forced to seek shelter with the already powerful elves, dwarves and humans to avoid being stamped out by the rampaging dragons.
Pelor also did what he could to offset the tyranny, and chose two of his greatest Human warriors, chosen by Kord as the best among mankind, to act as champions against The Dragons of Io. Heironeous and Hextor, given divine power and legions of loyal warriors, lead many a great battle against the Dragon Flocks, but were turned back by the force of their Arcane Power every single time. Though the Gods themselves tried to intervene, they lacked the ability to be everywhere at once, something the Dragon Swarms had no trouble with, especially they themselves being led by three of the most powerful Gods in The World.
Ioun, Lady of the Moon, troubled by the lack of regret by her father and the nightmares sent to her by the troubled masses, used her great intelligence to devise a scheme that would, hopefully, lay the Dragons low. As usual, she turned to Moradin, the Architect of The World, for assistance in creating a great weapon to combat the power of The Dragons. Moradin, ashamed that his backing of Io had gone so terribly wrong, agreed to help Ioun in creating The Celestial Pendulum. A sort of Diaphragm, made entirely of black voidstone, that The Laws of Nature decreed to pass back and forth in front of The Moon in long cycles, so as to force the magical power of The Dragons to wane for weeks at a time.
On top of that, Ioun made an appeal to Bahamut, the more sympathetic of the Dragon Twins, and beseeched him to try and talk some sense into Tiamat and Io. It took some time, but Bahamut eventually agreed to try and convince his fellow draconic deities to encourage Dragonkind to cease its needless domination over The World, in just the same way that the Aboleth and Ilithids had done. Tiamat, loyal to her father, declined along with him, forcing Bahamut, with the help of Moradin and Obad-Hai, to do battle with the other Deities.
In the end, the Prodigal Betrayer succeeded and struck his now-hated father down into the depths of The World, where Moradin ordered his original Seven Dwarves to guard Io’s soul, bound to the Worldstone, for all of eternity. Io’s rage was so great, that the heat of his anger caused the core of The World to become superheated, causing the first tectonic activity and volcanic eruptions.
Bahamut did not, however, have the heart to damn his beloved sister to the same fate, and spared her existence, in the hopes she could be convinced to come around to see the good that Dragons could be for The World. Tiamat refused to give up on Io’s visions of Draconic dominance, however, and compelled her Chromatic Dragons to continue their eternal conquest for dominance. Bahamut, saddened but resolute, ordered the metallic dragons to oppose this dominance for all eternity, and so the Shism of the Wyrms was fomented.
Meanwhile, The Schism of Wyrms, coupled with the Cycle of Serpents or Phases of the Moon, gave Heironeous and Hextor enough of an edge in their fight against the now cornered chromatic dragons to see the beasts reduced in number to the point where they could no longer impose total conquest of all of mankind. Tiamat, however, seeing that Hextor was a man of substance, seduced the God of Tyranny to side with her, with the promise that they could one-day rule Logasior. The inherent greed of Hextor’s heart saw him agree, and abandoned Heironeous without further comment. The God of Valor and the God of Tyranny have not spoken a word to one another ever since.
Over time, the influence of The Moon, and the Cycle of Serpents did see enough exposure upon the face of The World to see rise to the emergence of Fey, Monstrosities and other magical beasts that evolved through the now unknown touch of The Far Realm. Magic, The Far Realm, could not have asked for a more convenient way to taint the physical plain of Logasior with the creation of The Moon, and it is for this reason that certain people still feel a sense of unease on nights when The Celestial Pendulum has fully swung away from The Moon’s face.
This intial Scouring of the Dragons showed the Gods that perhaps even they did not understand the full nature of their abilities. Even among the violent and ethically dubious deities, it was agreed that The World should be left largely to fend for itself, with no more direct interference. Only a catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions could justify anything further. This agreement became known as the Celestial Concordat. As such, The Gods went their separate ways, and began to experiment with other planes of reality, freely shaping the Outer Planes as they saw fit. Thus, Logasior and The World as we know it came to be, setting stage for a new element in the progression of the world; nations.
THE THIRD AGE, THE AGE OF MORTALS
As it was, at this point, due to the scouring of the Dragons, all of the races were still huddling in natural shelters with crude stone weapons to fend off the magical beasts of the realm. Only the Dwarves, perhaps, had the closest semblance of a civilization, with their old cave systems and early access to soft metals, but even then, these were barbaric tribes deep within the mountains of Logasior. At some point, however, the Dwarves migrated from their ancient homes in the Rusted Mountains to the open plains of Central Logasior, and laid down the foundations of what would become Gurn’Gedat, though it only started as a haphazard huddling of tents and fire pits.
The Elves, in an effort to escape the lingering threat of Dragons and avoid competition with the Dwarves, departed the Mainland, and traveled to the then-volcanic isle of Ereb Taure by way of crude kayaks and rafts. They left behind a legacy of megalithic ruins in the protected valley that is modern Deepwood, though the Gnomes and Halflings who had bedded with them stayed behind. Some Elven tribes, notably the Cunnien people, retreated deeper into the Feydom, and would hide among the trees for countless eons to come.
Dragonborn, now hunted and hated as bloodkin of the Dragons, remained scattered in small tribes for a long time, never really developing a civilization to call their own. Most Humans migrated to the west, leaving Logasior altogether for the Unsettled Lands, and were never heard from again. Those who stayed behind scattered all across Logasior, with a fair number learning to live in what is known as the Feydom in modern times, though they centralized in the south eastern reaches of Central Logasior.
Southern Logasior, at this time, was still mostly verdant and lush with jungle, but a great perturbation deep within the depths of The World (An experiment with the Worldstone at the hands of the Ilithid Fireseeker cult), caused the Charred Vault to erupt violently. The eastward winds of Logasior saw the western half of the peninsula choked in smog and darkness, killing off most of the plant life, beginning a slow desertification. The runoff from the rivers, however, caused the eastern half of Southern Logasior to become even more lush.
Over the next several thousand years, The World was mostly stable, with the humanoid races learning to minister and control ever increasing swaths of land. There were the Hootoh and Jinkai tribal nations in the West, which merged to form Sinjai after a great marriage between the nobles of those two ancient cultures. The Hootoh, who were adept at taming the land early on, admired the then marvelous technical advances of the Jinkai, and vice versa. Full integration into Sinjai would take another few millennia, but when it was complete, it already saw Sinjai as the local superpower. In those days, however, Sinjai was not as peace loving as it is today, and saw the rumors of other developing cultures as a credible threat. This period also marked the beginning of writing, and therefore recorded history.
Keldren Øsst started out as a mass of petulant and war loving giants and frost dwarves, but found a common enemy in the weak and vulnerable gnomes and Halflings of the Deepwood valley, starting a long tradition of slave raids across those mountains. Enterprising Frost Giants, however, saw this unified goal as a way to unite the squabbling tribes into a singular force.
There were the Ironbloods, who specialized in pulling valuable resources from the mountains, the Snowcarvers, who were expert mountain survivalists, the Hoarbloods who were outstanding warriors, the Beastmen of Mount Norben who trained the very first war beasts; oxen. Then there were the Cloudeaters, the only tribe who, to this day, refused to unite in the Keldren Øsst coalition, and suffered the more for it. They are considered to be part of Keldren Øsst today, but refuse to acknowledge it themselves, preferring to stick to their long traditions of pensive isolation, despite being oppressed by the threats of the Frost Giants.
Regardless, the tribes of Keldren Øsst united as one, eager to array their combined strength against the Dwarf families of Gurn’Gedat and the farming hordes of the united Hootoh and Jinkai. At this time, Keldren Øsst held much more land under its rule, including much of modern-day Deepwood and Helvanya.
Gurn’Gedat, still a far cry from its contemporary glory, was slowly expanding its reach across the forested hills of Central Logasior, with over a thousand dwarven fiefdoms all vying for supremacy, unlike their more peaceful Sinjai neighbors to the west, who were much easier to contact, as it would not be several hundred years until The Feydom became the impassable barrier it is today. Much like Keldren Øsst, however, the warring Dwarven families saw a mutual target in the Frost Giants and Frost Dwarves to the north, despite the latter being their ancient ancestors. What the Dwarves lacked in arable land and raw materials, however, they made up for in sheer audacity and ambition.
An example of this was the souther families of the dwarves being the first to cross the deadly Oath Mountains, named so because of the sworn loyalty the mountaineers had with one another. There they discovered the verdant bounty of modern-day Bastion, a place they referred to as Kiron Ibruk, or ‘Land of Blessed Ash’. Being the pioneers they were, the tunnel city of Krez Durel was founded and digging on Kardanh began.
The northernmost families were the first to unite in common cause against Keldren Øsst, conducting regular raids across the Orclands and attacking Blueskin settlements. They gained powerful metal weapons and slaves of their own in this incursion, and many of the rest of the Ancient Dwarf Lords grew jealous of this bounty.
It was by near, total coincidence that Keldren Øsst decided to retaliate in force against Gurn’Gedat at the exact same time that Sinjai launched a surprise attack through the mountains on the core Blueskin settlements. The Sinjai hordes, armed with technological terrors such as rudimentary catapults and ballistae, were more than a match for the few Keldrish forces that had stayed away from the fighting to the Southeast. As the Keldrish armies got cut off from their supply routes, the dwarves began to push them back over the northern mountains of Deepwood, the Bluewall Mountains, and dug in by building great fortresses.
Despite initial success against Keldren Øsst, the unwitting cooperation between Sinjai and the Families of Gurn’Gedat (Categorized into three larger kingdoms as Nabidolmol, Zamnuth, and Orgavúsh), were unable to do much against the Blueskins in their mountainous homeland, where eons of harsh living had taught them how to defend their terrain with great expertise. As such, the first Great War ended not with a decisive conquering, but a slow fizzle into peace. In the latter years of the war, Keldren Øsst, Sinjai and the The Kingdoms of Gurn’Gedat came to be known as the Three Beasts, represented by an Eagle, a Lion and a Boar, respectively. What the Three Beasts had not counted on, however, was that in this time, the Gnomes and Halflings indigenous to the hills of the Deepwood Valley had developed something new; druidic magic. Pulling on the power itself to mimic the abilities of the dragons, the smaller races seized their chance during this lull in the Great War to assert their dominance over the core regions of Deepwood, along with the help of their Kenku native allies who taught them well in the way of subversive warfare. A token retaliation from the bruised egos of Sinjai and Gurn’Gedat was mounted, but with the strength of the natural barriers in the area, coupled with the might of this new form of Magic, the Small People gave no ground.
It would be some time before Gurn’Gedat ceded control of its last few fortresses in the Bluewall mountains to ownership of the druids, but for all sakes and purposes, the Domain of Deepwood had been formed as quietly as one would expect from the quiescent province.
In a similar fashion, the war had caused Keldren Øsst to lose its already tenuous grip on the eastern reaches of its holdings, and so Helvanya came into being as the Keldrish did not have the manpower to both hold its ground against the other two Beasts and keep martial control over the salt marshes.
During the time that the Three Beasts had been fighting in the reaches of Northern Logasior, the disenfranchised race of Humans retreated to the far fringes of the subcontinent. Some migrated west like their ancestors, but others massed together in the newly established Helvanya and newly accessible Southern Logasior, hoping to stay out of the path of the Three Beasts.
It is to be noted, however, that Humans were the first to truly master the art of sailing and naval navigation. It is by this mastery that the Humans were the first to reestablish contact with the lost elves of Ereb Taure, whose nation had flourished greatly in the Millennium that they had been there. The Elves, having been isolated from the events of the mainland for so long, saw only war-crazed and uncivilized masses when they sent their first diplomatic forays back into Logasior proper. This set in place for a sense of inflated superiority in most of elf-kind that still persists today. What the elves did respect, however, was the great strides in construction the dwarves had made, especially in the form of Kardanh. The Drow and the High Elves, having long been forced to coexist, had seen the dark elves put in place as secondary citizens; unwanted anathemas of society. Now with access to the mainland restored, the High Elf nobles, the first of the Nenharma Dynasty, were able to forcibly relocate the Drow to the tunnels and passageways built into and around Kardanh.
Human sailing also saw the discovery of the greater Feral Island chains, as well as the Gnarl Islands to the south. Though the efforts of the Northern Sviga tribes (the primary rulers of the nascent Helvanya) to explore and colonize the Feral Islands would result in lost voyages and tales of towering beasts, the collaboration between the migrant Quilo and Aruas tribes in Souther Logasior saw successful colonization of Saskirn. These two tribes would eventually combine to form the foundations of the Kingdom of Bastion.
At this juncture, many of the nations of modern-day Logasior were beginning to fall into place. The only thing that was absent was the presence of significant Arcane magic. Divine magic, whose power was derived from the Gods or the World, had long been understood, though far from developed to its full potential. Only the dragons, and their intrinsic connection to The Moon had access to the true might of Arcane spells and abilities, though this was to soon change.
THE FOURTH AGE, THE AGE OF DRAGONS
During most of the Third Age, Dragonkind had largely kept to themselves, establishing the roots of draconic tradition and culture and the interspecies dynamics we see today. A particularly visionary white dragon by the name of Pasterenox would, however, see this general policy of non-interference shattered in the most fabulous of fashions. At the spritely age of 1,000 years, Pasterenox was chosen by the will of Tiamat herself to once again bring all of dragonkind to their rightful place as masters of Logasior, just as Io had envisioned. As such, Tiamat did wittingly violate the terms of the Celestial Concordat, but it would be a transgression that Pasterenox took to the grave. Though Pasterenox, a lonely and dark-minded individual, did not have the physical might to overthrow the Frost Giant Jarls of Keldren Øsst, he possessed a strangely keen intellect for a white dragon. As such, he set in motion a chain of events whereby he would come to be the sole male heir of Stana Bosek, one of the more powerful Frost Giant landowners in the high courts of Veckaoul. He did this by mating with and marrying Stana’s eldest daughter. When eventually Jarl Bosek passed away, Pasterenox became one of the most powerful players in the brutal politics of Keldren Øsst.
In time, through similar underhanded maneuverings, Pasterenox would come to be crowned as the Great Jarl of Keldren Øsst, despite there being no precedent for such a monarch in Keldrish law up until that point. With the full might of The Eagle now at his disposal, Pasterenox launched a campaign of revenge against the dwarves of Gurn’Gedat. Though he was only ever able to muster petty border skirmishes along Gurn’Gedat’s northern border, the mere fact that a dragon had become the ruler of a country sparked an idea in the minds of all other Wyrms in Logasior. By Dragon interpretation, Pasterenox had effectively incorporated an entire nation of supplicants and their wealth into what could be considered his hoard. To possess a nation was the ultimate treasure.
Other dragons swiftly followed suit, laying claim to vast swathes of territory and declaring themselves rulers, whether or not that land was inside a true nation’s borders. Fighting quickly broke out, as both metallic and chromatic dragons competed for illegitimate stakes to land. Notable examples include Asandredastriox, Senkentadrassa, Barteloveraxcholerian, and even Thelldrenalokan. The latter is a unique example, in that the Amethyst Dragon did not himself want to claim any land, preferring a life of quiescence and seclusion among his Druid compatriots. The recently formed Ashen Council saw that the natural order of Logasior was changing, and elected Thelldrenalokan as the leader of Deepwood, so that another, perhaps less culturally sound Wyrm did not try to muscle their way into the same position. Only Thelldrenalokan, among almost all of dragonkind, was able to peacefully rule the willing subjects of Deepwood, and therefore largely stayed out of the Second Great War. The other famous dragon monarchs, in the coming Second Great War, were just as hostile to humanoids as the rest of their kind, but this is a fact that has intentionally been lost in the mists of time.
Regardless, the humanoids of Logasior swiftly took great offense to this sudden rash of draconic interference, and began to mount joint efforts to eradicate, if not exterminate, the presence of dragons within their borders. It did not take long for the dragons to take a collective sense of racial offense to this, and in retaliation, mustered armies of their own, comprised mostly of heretofore scattered Dragonborn tribes, to combat the encroaching humanoid threat. One of the first great conflicts was against Shelzenkadol, a particularly fearsome red dragon that had commandeered the lands around Krez Durell. Gurn’Gedat was able to contain the fires of Shelzenkadol from spreading across the land, but lacked further resources to stamp the ancient dragon out completely. It is during those years of ceaseless fire that Krez Durell came to be known as the Black City, due to its constantly charred ramparts.
Sinjai was able to send aid through the Feydom, since Asandredastriox had not yet seen to the enchanting of the southern reaches of the great forest, and flanked Shelzenkadol in his lair from the far side of the Oathspur. It was the first example of one nation coming to the witting aid of another, and set the stage for the brotherly relationship between the Lion and the Boar for centuries to come. The consequences, however, were more grave than either of them could have anticipated. If there was any doubt before that this new, Second Great War, was arrayed as Dragons against Humanoids, the cooperation of two nations against one dragon convinced the wyrms of Logasior that this conflict was no longer simply about land; it was about the supremacy of sentient lifeforms. It is by this twisted logic that the Metallic Dragons found reason to work with the Chromatic Dragons against the humanoids, despite the deep compulsions set in place by the Schism of Wyrms, being that it was a matter of survival.
Despite their newfound sense of unity, however, humanoids were at a complete disadvantage against Dragons, not just because of their inherent fearsome might, but because of their complete mastery of Arcane magic. Divine magic, though powerful in its own right, has never had the same kind of destructive potential as that of the Arcane. Because of this the armies of the Three Beasts could not match the sheer firepower of the Dragon Armies, they stood little chance in open combat. Even with the Elves of Ereb Taure, who had begun to unravel the secrets of the arcane themselves, could not match the magical might of the Dragons. The loss of humanoid life was staggering, to the point that even monstrous races started to feel like they might be targeted next. Over one third of all sentient humanoids were slain by dragonkind in this period.
Those humans who still traveled listlessly across the plains of central and western Logasior now migrated in earnest to fabled paradise south of the Oath Mountains. This made a majority of them easy pickings for draconic sympathizers, who either enslaved or outright massacred the migrant humans for the sake of it. The country of Bastion was solidified at this point in time, and a well-founded fear and loathing of non-human races was infused into the previously idyllic communities of Southern Logasior. The Humans were not to be left entirely alone, however, and would suffer the wrath of Blue and Brass dragons of the Sapphire Desert until the end of the Second Great War. In this regard, it could be said that the Sapphire Expanse was also founded during this period of time.
It would take the interference of the Gods, for the first time in an Age, to turn the tables. Ioun, Heironeous, and Bahamut all saw the ravages that Bahamut had unleashed upon The World. Up until this point, they had (as far as they knew), all been abiding by the Celestial Concordat, but seeing the unrivaled death that now spread far and wide, they called a great council of the Gods, and by majority vote, it was decided that steps would be taken to bring balance back to Logasior. First, Bahamut tugged upon the souls of his metallic dragons, and reinforced their noble ideals to the point that it was no longer an instinct, but an utter, overpowering drive to see justice and peace prevail in the world.
The sudden shift in heart of the metallic dragons was certainly enough to halt the advance of the Dragon Armies, but it would take more divine intervention for the course of the Second Great War to be reversed completely. Thus, with Bahamut’s blessing, Ioun sent divine visions to the dragon allies of humanoids everywhere, encouraging them to finally bestow the secrets of Arcane magic upon the lesser mortals of Logasior. It was a process that would take time, but it was ultimately this sharing of knowledge that would conquer the Dragon Armies.
Finally, in an act of intervention that is as direct as possible, Kord, Heironeous, Corellon, Gruumsh and even Hextor descended from their Outer Planes to aid the Armies of the Beasts directly in their combat against the now universally reviled chromatic dragons. With these compounded factors, it did not take long to see the aggressive dragons beaten back into their position in the natural order of things. Once all open warfare had ceased, and the Dragon Armies dispersed, the Gods left The World as abruptly as they had arrived. A troubled, sickly peace settled over Logasior, though the devastation and appalling loss of life to all sentient life forms would not recover for hundreds of years.
Meanwhile, in the outer planes, Hextor began to grow suspicious of Tiamat. The Dragon Queen had indeed intended The Second Great War to serve as a platform for her own shortsighted dominance over The World, and she had intentionally left Hextor in the dark, despite her promises to the God of Tyranny millennia prior. Though Hextor could not prove anything, it was enough to drive the previously allied gods apart from one another for the rest of time.
THE FIFTH AGE, THE AGE OF MAGIC
The Fifth Age would see the first real explosion of scholarly pursuits across the lands of Logasior. For the first time, the scholars of the great nations would put their long memories to use to try and recall history as best they could up until their current era. Of course, they did leave out a lot, and also got a lot wrong, much of which still holds up as the generally accepted history of the realm, but I digress.
With the power of Arcane magic bequeathed upon the humanoids of Logasior, wizards and other practitioners of The Art began to cluster together to see if they could push what had been taught to them to its absolute limit. Blue Dragons had, for the most part, stayed out of the Second Great War, content to build their own prosperity within the Sapphire Desert, rather than impose themselves on the hapless humans of Bastion, who they perceived as a non-threat. When it became a widely known fact that humanoids now had Arcane magic within their grasp, the Blue Dragons were the first to capitalize on the opportunity, rather than rail against it.
In a period of only a few short years, many Blue Dragons had pulled together the efforts of their kin and many thralls to form the foundation of the Sapphire Expanse. Much of the development was centered around the Azure Citadel, a place which quickly became touted as the center of all arcane research within the whole of Logasior. Initially, it was hardly any better than any of the other institutions which had cropped up on the mainland, but through sheer force of conviciton, the conniving Blues managed to convince Logasior at large that they were the prime location.
It would be some time before the Azure Citadel became the revered headquarters for wizard kind that it is today, though for the first few centuries of the Sapphire Expanse’s existence, it did serve as the capital of the nation. Only after We’Darastri, originally a small fishing and farming community, expanded exponentially, did that city become the new capital. This was thanks to the sudden influx of immigrants and travelling scholars who began to pass in and out of the port in almost inconceivable numbers, as it was easier to access The Azure Citadel by water than by land.
And, we dream of home I dream of life out of here Their dreams are small My dreams don't know fear I got my heart full of hope I will change everything No matter what I'm told How impossible it seems We did it before And we'll do it again We're indestructible Even when we're tired And we've been here before Just you and I
Don't try to rescue me I don't need to be rescued
Don't try to rescue me I don't need to be rescued
![[Image: Logasiormap_zps2a04da45.jpg]](http://i1301.photobucket.com/albums/ag103/Tearen0/Logasiormap_zps2a04da45.jpg)