Malianen

The pen that authored life into our world is ever moving, and I suspect the last word has yet to be written.

  It's not known when life first began. Despite the impressive archives of Celiayrn and extensive museums of Centrerium, we simply do not know when the gift of consciousness was first breathed into a being. However, we do know who these beings were: the so-called "Origin Races¹." These four distinct, yet intertwined, peoples were the Elves, Dwarves, Halfings, and Orcs. Each of them perfectly adapted to the lands they called home. It was these four races that founded the first great empires (with perhaps an exception to the Halflings) and spread across the world in the days before the First Cataclysm. It was during those fateful years that shadow rained from the skies and civilizations were burned away, that two new races walked the realms². The Humans, with their great empires of wheat, and the Gnomes, an isolated and industrious people. They had emerged from the shadows fully formed, independent people who the world was now forced to share. Despite their unannounced arrival, these two races established themselves homes and culture onto themselves, and spent the next thousand years planting roots and building great kingdoms. It was the Second Cataclysm, nary 920 years ago to the day, that brought about a level of diversity yet unimaginable. Through the destruction and the violence emerged many more races. The Goblins, small and gritty, along with their cousins the Hobgoblins. The Tengu, those mountain dwelling bird-folk and their extensive mythology. The Fetchlings, those dark shadowy people who are feared by the world for their otherness. The Grippli, Kobolds, Ratfolk, and Vanaras, all of whom resembling the monsters of old but distinctly sapient. These new beings were largely shunned by the world (aside the Tengu, who have established themselves a respectable domain in the Chojuk valley) prompting endless upheaval and migration. To this day the world continues to shift. The authors in charge of our story remain editors as well. Ancient ruins continue to revive and dissapear. Empty tombs collapse and rise out of the ground as magical towers. No amount of modern technology has managed to disrupt this process, and it seems to grow more chaotic by the year. The patterns are evident, we are approaching the next millennium, and many (including myself) doubt whether or not a Third Cataclysm will even wait for then. The world is changing, steel and fire dominant even the tallest mountains, and never before has a world been as divided as today. We sit on the precipice, there is no doubt. The tide of tyranny rolls ever forward against the bulwark of democracy, and while we shall fight with pride, our victory remains unassured. If there is a Third Cataclysm, if we have been so condemned, I fear it might be of our own design.   - Tecindo Cel
Excerpt his seminal 921 work Architects of Calamity