Age of the Founders

In the beginning of the Age of Founders, the Seven Sisters had finished their experimentation with primitive life, laying the Titans of the world to rest -- those that remained, anyway. Aellor set to creating the foundation of a new kind of life. One which would be smaller, but much more numerous -- a suggestion brought on by Umos' newly emerged domain of Community. The idea to imbue life with properties of their own divine portfolios came from Lys, who suggested that each race should resemble their creator in some way. The sisters decided that they would begin with a single race and observe it for some time before creating another, and being that it was Aellor's planet, she was given the honor of creating the first race -- the Dwarves.

Aellor spent years creating the foundation of these new life forms, and when she finished, she created the very first Dwarves on Reshyk at the base of the mountain where her Wellspring resided. The first group she created numbered only seven -- three males, and four females. She spent years teaching them the nature of the world and observing them before creating more, eventually choosing to usher in another thousand. These original seven Dwarves acted as guides to the new Dwarves and taught them how to survive.

Eventually, the Dwarves grew restless. Though they craved new knowledge, it felt as though something was missing. They did not have the language or concepts to explain the problem to Aellor, but she understood when one day a Dwarf named Grunyar approached her. Aellor realized that what Grunyar craved was not to explore the land, or to discover the various fruits and ores found in them -- Grunyar craved knowledge of a different sort. He wanted to understand how everything came to be, and why they were there. It was then that Aellor decided it was time to teach the Dwarves magic. She decided to teach it to the original seven, as they were the oldest and most likely to understand, and had the means to instruct others. This was the origin of the Runescribe, the first form of magic mortals learned. Aellor believed giving the Dwarves free access to learn Aurum and how to communicate with The Aura would be disastrous, as she had already begun to witness some of the Dwarves create conflicts with one-another. So, Aellor bestowed upon the seven Dwarves the knowledge of seven basic runes. This would allow them to experiment and do things they couldn't even imagine yet.

Introducing magic into the world, Aellor satisfied a craving the Dwarves didn't even know was possible to fulfill. They became nearly obsessed with it, and Aellor waited a good long time before giving them more, despite their frenzied requests, knowing that they needed to learn the control and discipline required to wield it properly first. But the Dwarves didn't yet have the patience to wait for such things. In the early days, the Seven Sisters were more hands-on, and made frequent appearances among mortals. The goddesses had their own language which made usage of Aurum. The Dwarves would listen to the sisters speaking and learn bits of the Aurum language. This divided the Dwarves into two camps -- those that believed Aellor knew best and they should follow her will, and those who believed they should take the opportunity to attempt to learn the magic of the goddesses themselves.

The latter of the two factions began to experiment using the handful of words they had picked up while listening to the sisters. Some attempted to use them in the methods they were taught, scribing them and observing what would happen. The others tried something else -- using their limited vocabulary, they managed to create very simple spells, distinctly different than Runescribing. However, in their bumbling attempts, there were several accidents which got the attention of Aellor. She was furious at the Dwarves for disobeying her and trying to recklessly learn magic on their own without understanding of how it could go wrong. She briefly considered destroying the Dwarves who attempted to do so, but Lekaris cooled her temper and convinced her to show them grace.

Aellor was convinced to try a different approach. She knew that being imbued with the essence of the domains of Magic and Knowledge would give the Eldenfolk, as they came to be called, with a craving for not just knowledge, but knowledge of magic. She knew that they could not help themselves, and thus decided to protect them from themselves, knowing they would continue to try. And thus, Aellor instructed The Aura to expel an invisible cloud of energy into the world via the Wellsprings, called Flow. Aellor changed the magic that the Dwarves used so that more powerful magics would require the consumption of this "Flow" to take effect. And further, she created a limit of the amount of Flow that a mortal could "direct" within a day. This limit, called a "Flow Lock", would enable mortals to experiment with magic, but prevent them from using it at will with wild abandon, and prevent them from using very strong magics until they had gained more proficiency using it, increasing the amount of Flow they could use per day. This meant that only those who diligently practiced the basic magic until they learned to control it, and learned the discipline required, could gain access to more complicated runes and spells.

The many centuries after this event saw the Dwarves spread across Aellorah, determined to seek out all of its secrets, and to expand their knowledge of magic. They would go on to establish several civilizations, including the Drakantal Empire of Arak, which persisted until late into the Age of Creation, until it was destroyed by the Voidspawn. Reshyk also saw the emergence of its first monarchy, called the Kingdom of Dalwar, in which a popular Dwarven man of a large settlement instituted himself as the sole leader of first his home town, and then moving on to use this support to bully smaller settlements into submission until he had a large enough force to control other territories. Of course, this required the most skilled magic users of their day, as Dwarves respect magic and technical knowledge more than anything. This kingdom lasted until well into the Age of Creation, but was eventually overthrown. Reshyk briefly saw a period of anarchy before order was restored by its next monarchy -- the Gulnar Dominion, the only ruling body of Reshyk to ever commit war crimes more atrocious than the Kingdom of Derunadel in Arak, or the Rathmore Empire of Myr.

The Age of Founders ended when Lys decided that she had learned enough from watching the Dwarves that she wanted to try her hand at creating her race, and proceeded to create the Elves.