Blog - Timeline

I’ve been musing and angsting over the timeline of the world for a while now. I figured I should just get around to posting something and then change it later if it doesn’t fit.

Year 3996
This is now.

The Dark Ages
This period lasted from roughly year 1000 to year 2500. Characteristic for this time period is what came to be called “the Northern Terror”. This mostly consisted of barbarians from the northern parts of the world pillaging and ravaging the rest of the known world.

In the coastal regions the barbarians were favoring longships for their traveling (yeah, just like the vikings). Inland, on the steps and grasslands most travel was by horseback.

Year 0
In this world, none of the gods have fathered offspring with any of the mortal inhabitants of the planet meaning something else of significant happened this year. However, the technical, political and social evolution was at this point roughly the same as it was in the real world in year 0.

This year marks the eradication, by dragons, of the Haman Empire. At this time the empire spanned large parts of the known world. It had been expanding for a long time and had been involved in wars of conquest for the past 60 years. Lately it had also been plagued by famine, pestilence and infighting. I will eventually get around to describing this in more detail, but to sum things up; the despair and frustration of the people caused a large number of dragons to manifest and eventually plunge the entire empire into chaos and ruin. Millions of people died.

Year -1000
First contact between humans and dwarves. The dwarfs had existed for much longer, possibly longer than the humans, but had not until now made any contact with the humans. They had likely been in contact with the elves long before this.

Year -7500
Gods start arriving on the planet. These are lesser gods having left their original planets to search for new homes. They are collectively known as the Gods, but are sometimes referred to as the Young Gods.

Year -8012
The elves arrived through a hole in the sky. Late in the afternoon in the middle of summer. Actual location to be figured out at some other point.

Comments:

If the tech-levels of this world and the real world were at the same level at year 0 (for both worlds), it has taken this world nearly twice as long to reach the the tech level we have today. During most of history the men (and occasionally women) with the magic have been the one with the power. They may not always have been the regents or chiefs of their nations or tribes, but they were always close enough to have significant influence. To put it bluntly; old men with power don’t like change. Year 1950
 * 1) svrtnsse says:2011/07/06 at 20:53Why is it taking so long?
 * 1) svrtnsse says:2011/07/06 at 21:51

Hobbits are created.
 * 1) svrtnsse says:2011/07/08 at 01:49

How is history recorded?
The original elves were able to inscribe data into threads of volcanic glass (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pele%27s_hair). At first they had to seek out the areas around active volcanoes in order to obtain the threads, but eventually they developed a way to spin their own threads. These threads were rarely let on their own but were often used in crafting. Particularly common is to include them in tapestries but sometimes also in embroidery. There are also a few known cases of the threads being made into garments, mostly cloaks. This goes against what I wrote about cryptography and magic in some other post. The reason reason for this is that the original elves are able to use non-aether based magic to obscure the meaning of their message. This ability to wield non-aether based magic is unique to the original elves and it has not manifested in any of their offspring.
 * 1) * svrtnsse says:2011/07/08 at 01:57The art of recording data onto threads of volcanic glass is only known to the elves. Theoretical mages have succeed in extracting the data from the threads but have not yet been able to read it.

Still, contemporary science holds that no code is unbreakable.
 * 1) ** svrtnsse says:2011/07/08 at 08:23Scratch the above. It’s still possible to extract the message once the data is known, it’s getting the data out of the thread that’s the tricky part.