The Millenium Empire

The current year is 585 CY (Common Year). It is more than 2,000 years since the original inhabitants of the Flanaess, the Flan tribes, were driven from their lands by Oeridian and Suloise invaders fleeing magical cataclysms far to the west.

Only much later, some 700-800 years ago, the strongest of the Oeridian tribes, the Aerdi, settled the rich lands to the east of the Nyr Dyv and founded the Kingdom of Aerdy. A century and more of growth saw the Great Kingdom expand, with the Flan driven north and the Suloise driven south to the margins of the Densac Gulf. At its height, the kingdom stretched from the lands of the Sea Barons to the borders of modern Perrenland, and from Sunndi to the south to the forbidding Griff-Corusk mountains in the north.

The Aerdy calendar dates from the crowning of the first overking, Nasran of the House of Cranden, in Rauxes in CY 1. Proclaiming universal peace, Nasran saw defeated Suloise and Flan—rebellious humanoid rabbles of no consequence and no threat to the vast might of Aerdy.

The high history of the Aerdi people is a tale very long in the telling. Hundreds of warriors, mages, seers, and others are much more than footnotes to that history. Aerdi history before the founding of the Great Kingdom is a rich, fabulous tapestry; and the lands the Aerdi came upon were hardly bereft of legends, wonders, and luminaries of their own. Those histories, however, would fill books on their own. So it is the Great Kingdom's own history we consider here.

The ruling house of Aerdy became the Rax-Nyrond House after the death of Nasran's grandson, Tenmeris, in CY 75. Tenmeris's Queen, Yalranda, was a formidable diplomat and mediator who had done much to support her husband and was the true power behind the throne. Tenmeris, it was said, had a brain as small as his flatulent belly was vast.

Yalranda was accepted as the only overqueen in Aerdy history because of her prowess in establishing dynastic marriages between the royal houses of Aerdy and her uncanny gift for forging alliances (and because of her strange, magical allure and ability to calm angry or confused nobles). That she died young, at age 40, is one of Aerdy's great tragedies.

Her eldest son, Manshen, broke with tradition and took the name of the Rax-Nyrond Royal House. This house was to rule for nearly 400 years. (Aerdi Royal marriages involved the lesser party taking the familial name of the more elevated partner of the marriage, so that any spouse of the Crandens normally became a Cranden.)