Just over two hundred thousand years ago, another rift to another plane opened, this time to a world similar to Ancathra but home to strange people ruled by unfamiliar monsters. The strange people were elves, humans, and orcs. Their rulers were dragons - the first dragons Ancathra had ever seen. The rift was open for several years - long enough for dozens of dragon lords to mobilize their armies of enslaved humans, orcs, and elves to invade Ancathra. When the rift finally closed and the draconic infighting had ground to a standstill, there were hundreds of dragon fiefdoms spread across the world, though five dragon-emperors dominated the others:
- Kythera, Empress of the Sea,
- Erashion, Emperor of the Night,
- Tarcellian, Emperor of the Wind,
- the anonymous Empress of Twilight, and
- the anonymous Emperor of the Light
The only lands that remained free from the Emperors were the
Carentan Forest (last enclave of the ancient treants), the fey homeland of
Cernoa, the underground
kingdoms of the dwarves, and the mountainous gnomic stronghold of
Tanatra, Capital. The giants were almost exterminated by the invaders in the early waves of attack, while the dwarves closed the gates of their underground cities, rarely to be heard from again.
The Emperors were each powerful enough to keep the others in check, while the native strongholds of
Tanatra,
Cernoa, and the
Carentan Forest served as beacons of freedom. The millennia passed in detente, with the long-lived draconic dynasties providing political stability to the continent, supported by tens of thousands of slave-citizens. Soon to be known as
ausrani, these human, orc, and elven slaves adjusted to their new homelands. Over tens of thousands of years, some evolved into goblins, halflings, ogres and other humanoids.
There were many attempts to overthrow the rule of the dragons over the course of their two hundred thousand year rule. 17,000 years ago
a series of powerful uprisings erupted across the Five Empires, all but the last unsuccessful. By sixteen thousand years ago, the inbreeding of the imperial draconic bloodlines had much weakened the Emperors. At the end of the
Thousand Year Uprising the corruption, incompetence, and cruelty of the imperial courts provoked what would become known as the
Last Rebellion.
The Rebellion began with an uprising among the herding wild elves of
Kuroshar far in the north. Inspired by the Kuroshari example, and quietly backed by the
Tanatran gnomes and the sea kingdoms, the Rebellion spread quickly across Ancathra. While there are many myths, legends and heroic figures associated with the Last Rebellion, the best remembered is the half-orc
Mother Ausra. Ausra was a revolutionary leader in the last years of war, leading guerilla units against the remains of the Five Emperors’ slave armies. In some stories, she was a druid of
Brea, Mother of All, performing miracles of healing as well as being a masterful tactician. Little is known of the historical Ausra, though her influence is so great that even today, the elves, humans, orcs and the humanoids descended from them refer to themselves collectively as the
ausrani .
The Invasion
- The Kindred
- The Tamineh King Harrukan the Great
The Fall
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