The Great Dark was a catastrophic event of unknown origins that devastated the Known world, causing the collapse of multiple civilizations, the death of hundreds of thousands and forever transformed the known world. The nature of the Great Dark isn't very understood today, for those that survived that cataclysm were more likely concerned with survival than writing their accounts of the events. As such, the earliest known written sources on the Great Dark date from a couple generations after the event. Those sources are, thus, understandably vague and uncertain in many accounts, but there are some consistency even in reports from opposite parts of the world, as well as the oral tradition present in the more tribal cultures.
The Longest Night
Someday, most likely mid-summer, in what is now the Year zero of most calendars, great black clouds rolled across the heavenly dome, sending the lands into deep darkness in the middle of the day. This strange night persisted for days, though the exact count is understandably uncertain. Temperatures dropped abruptly and crops died out all across the world. Panic took over the population as many believe the end days had arrived. As the night persisted, temperatures continue to drop and even in the hottest regions of the world, rivers froze over, as did the water in the wells. People froze inside their homes not prepared for this type of weather, and whole forests began to die without the kiss of the sun. Social order began to collapse as the God-Kings of the past could not do anything to drive away from the darkness, and violence and murder ran rampant. Without water and proper feed, the livestock, and beasts of burden that had not froze to death as quick to succumb to starvation and illness.
The Dawn of Blood
After what some scholars believe was a fortnight, the Long Dark ended gradually, with the thick dark cloud thinning sufficiently for sunlight to come through, and temperatures rising again for water to unfreeze. The great cities of the past had their street littered with bodies, and many buildings had collapsed in ranging fires brought for by people's desperate attempts to heat themselves in the cold blackness of the days before. Even as people sighed in relief that the light as once again upon the world, this wasn't the end of their troubles, for all crops had died and so did many beasts. Most cities had some stocks of food, but not enough to see their whole population through the next harvest, and many cities were without leaders, killed in fits of religious panic, angry revolt or just frozen to death in their gold-gilded thrones. The lack of authority to oversee rationing meant soon stocks were depleted, and even nature was waning in the wake of the catastrophe, so even that hunters and fishermen who took their sustenance not from the worked soil, but from the forests, rivers, and seas, found themselves starving. Famine killed more in the months that followed than the cold did in the days before. Soon civilized people turned into marauders, killing their neighbours over scraps. The few cities that somehow survived this, found themselves targetted by the ravaging hordes of survivors from elsewhere, who sought to sack them for food and resources or simply burn them to the ground in insane rage against their own fate. And when these hordes ran out of targets, they were unable to feed themselves, having killed everyone in their path that could attempt to farm again the lands.
A New Age
The devastation of the Great Dark and it's aftermath was such that we barely know anything from the Kingdom's that were before, except what can be learned from their ruins and the few surviving accounts. Yet, we do know that Helen led her people from whatever lands they had been enslaved into freedom, and that she built many ships and colonized many islands, spreading the Helenian Culture across the seas. We also know that in the deserts of the
Sun Kingdom , the Solari had organized the survivors around a new High Solar, and they began farming anew. In the north, beast and man had learned to survive the cold and nights that lasted months, and while many died for not being ready for a sudden winter, the survivors maintained their ancient traditions and customs. The Old World was dead, it's great cities now abandoned and left to ruins, but the great races had survived, somehow, and they began building anew.
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