Welcome to Tal'Dorei

Tal'Dorei. A land no stranger to interesting times. A land full of heroes, villains, misunderstandings and opportunities, where it's easy to find your fortune and to lose your way.

The Cobalt Soul holds full details about the origin of civilisation in Exandria, but the main points are these:

The Founding

• Long ago, the gods looked upon the unbridled landscape of fire and rock, new and formless themselves. They saw the opportunities before them, the potential for beauty, and the chance to learn what they were. They formed the Elves, the first children, long lived, graceful, and said to reflect the gods' own divinity; then the Dwarves, masters of craft and invention, intent on taming the land; then the Humans, whose short lives burned bright with passion. Other species came to be along the way. The gods watched their creations struggle to survive in such a chaotic world, and took pity on them, lending them their own power to change and shape the world to better ensure their survival. This was the origin of the Divine Magics, wielded by clerics, paladins, and druids. Driven to further protect their creations, the gods created the Metallic Dragons.
• And so, the elves, dwarves, and humans began to tame the land. Little to their knowledge, or the knowledge of their gods, there were ancient beings who already dwelled in Exandria: the Primordials. The Elemental Titans rose from where they once hid, deep beneath the land and sea, and wreaked havoc upon the land once more. As the gods watched in horror as their creations were attacked, demons spawned from the Abyss to feast upon the resulting carnage.
• Some of the gods, in despair, wished to leave Exandria to its chaos. Others desired to stay and fight for the sake of their Children. This caused a deep divide in the gods. Some left to join the forces of Chaos, convinced it was better to join what they could not beat, and becoming known as the Betrayer Gods. Celestial forces locked into war with the Abyss, which fell to hate and tyranny, with a fallen angel now claiming lordship over them.
• The remaining gods were forced to take up arms and learn to defend themselves and their children. They were then referred to as the Prime Deities. They organised their followers, taught them how to draw from the very powers of creation to bend the world around them to their will, all for themselves without divine aid. This gift was the beginning of the Arcane Magics. With the Divine and Arcane magics, the children of creation were able to drive back the Betrayer Gods to their prison-like planes of existence, and to destroy the Primordials, scattering the chaotic elements to their own planes of existence on the verges of this one.
• In the resulting peace, the first city was founded - Vasselheim. The Dawn City, Cradle of Civilisation - and the land was named Exandria for the first time.

The Age of Arcanum

• Over time, some of the peoples grew arrogant, believing their arcane magics were proof that the gods held no sway over them, and they could become as powerful as the gods themselves.
• Great kingdoms sprung up, castles being built in a day spurred on by the arcanists' newfound power. Their curiosity knew no bounds, and they soon began to unlock strange and dangerous new forms of power. Arcanists became filled with insatiable greed for power, fuelled by rumours of immortality through perfected arcanum. One unnamed mortal mage, her name either lost or stricken from history, crafted now-forbidden rites to challenge the God of Death. She felled him and took his place among the pantheon as the Raven Queen, making her the only mortal ever to ascend.
• Inspired by her success, one archmage named Vespin Chloras sought the guidance and power of the banished gods, only to unlock the gates of their prisons and release the Betrayer Gods into the mortal realms. The Betrayer Gods had spent their banishment creating a seemingly never-ending horde of horrors, which they unleashed upon the world. The Hells and the Abyss began to push their way into creation, eventually making a terrible new kingdom at the far end of the world - Ghor Dranas. They corrupted the minds and souls of the easily swayed, and with an army behind them, waged an assault on Vasselheim itself.
• The city was saved by an intervention from the Prime Deities, and through the valiant fighting of their children. The Prime Deities then descended to wage war on their former family, the Betrayer Gods. For twenty days and nights, the battle raged, until the Betrayer Gods and their forces had to retreat.
• In the wake of this battle, the Prime Deities were forced to admit that if even their creations while under their supervision could be swayed by the Betrayer Gods, who could truly be trusted and called an ally? The species of their children, feeling the same sense of distrust, decided on one outcome. For the first time since the age of the Primordials, the focus of magic was on warfare. The humans created artefacts of immense power that could be wielded by singular heroes. The dwarves, always driven to tame the land, turned toward isolation as they burrowed beneath the mountains, creating mighty fortresses within the earth and animating golems to protect their halls. The elves used their understanding of creation - its intricacies and beauties - to weave spells of destructive force never seen before. The gods themselves agreed to join their children on the field of battle for the war now known as The Calamity.

The Calamity

• No record remains of the war, but its effects are still felt to this day. The forces unleashed that day were enough to fray the edges of reality that held back elemental chaos, spilling destruction into the world. It permanently altered the flow of ley lines of magic energy across Exandria. The dark kingdom of Ghor Dranas was brought to ruin, but at a terrible cost. Most cities were reduced to ash, and historians believe only a third of Exandria's population survived the war, leaving only Vasselheim as the remaining bastion of civilisation.
• The world entered a dark period of recovery. In order to keep the Betrayer Gods in their prisons, the Prime Deities knew that they would have to close off the divine gateways. However, this meant closing them off for all divine entities. With heavy hearts, and clinging to the knowledge that it would prevent such ruin befalling Exandria again, the Prime Deities retreated to their own planes, dragging both Betrayer and Abomination behind them, and sealed the pathways with the Divine Gate.
• This is commonly referred to as The Divergence, and it marked the end of the Age of Arcanum.

The History of Tal'Dorei

• Following the Divergence, not more than 800 years ago, the dwarves built the subterranean city of Kraghammer under the banner of the ruling clan, Jaggenstrike.
• The surviving elves found sanctuary in the otherworldly peace of the Feywild, returning a generation later under an elven sorceress named Yenlara. Under her guidance, they found a mighty forest born from the surging energies of the Calamity, and founded the elven city of Syngorn within the Verdant Expanse. They came to refer to the continent of Tal'Dorei as Gwessar (the Fields of Joy in the elven tongue).
• While the elves and dwarves with their long lives remembered the Calamity with ease, the humans, with their short lives, did not. The humans survived, unlike their histories, and some survivors braved the Ozmit Sea, and sailed to what is now Western Tal'Dorei. The ruins of their first city still stand to this day: the port city of O'Noa. They ventured further inland over time, and unknowingly founded a city that would become the heart of a great empire: Emon.
• The elves, vexed by humans felling forests for wood for their ever-expanding cities, found their tempers frayed. The tensions did not rise to outright war, but peace was more tenuous.
• A handful of human houses named themselves nobles, arising in Emon and establishing law and structure, but stacked the deck in their favour. Corruption ran rife among them, turning their citizens against each other while they stockpiled every resource they could.
• Among these nobles was a loudmouth braggart warrior named Warren Drassig, who seized power in Emon as its supreme monarch. Drassig severed any connections with elves, and forged new ones with the dwarves in the name of securing the immense wealth the dwarves possessed.
• The elves were furious, and sent an ambassador to Emon, the grandson of the still-living Yenlara, hoping to resolve this democratically. Upon his arrival, he was apprehended, tortured, and slain. Syngorn, outraged by this treatment of an ambassador, rose up in a long and terrible war between Yenlara's kin and Drassig's bloodline known as The Scattered War.
• The Scattered War lasted 32 years, and spanned throughout the Cliffkeep Mountains and into parts of the Verdant Expanse, with human colonies spread between them. Determined to prevent uprisings of opportunity while he was at war, Drassig set out to brutally subjugate his own people. With no way to ensure long-range communication, these settlements, towns, and cities had no warning, leaving Drassig able to attack them with little or no resistance, using shadow tactics to break them from within before attacking.
• King Warren Drassig eventually sent his troops to what was believed to be the nearly abandoned village of Torthil, rumoured to be a haven for refugees. Finding only a ghost town, Drassig gave a pompous speech to his troops. Halfway through, the first arrow struck, followed by a deluge that clouded the sky. After 9 years of Drassig's oppressive rule, Yenlara's elves had formed an alliance with the rebellious human outposts, and slew Warren Drassig.
• His son, Neminar Drassig, took up his crown. He became known as Neminar the Black-Fingered, as his dabbling in necromancy left one arm withered and useless. However, he militarised infernal magics and forbidden rites, becoming a terrifying adversary. He and his troops marched on Torthil, where his father was slain, and piled high the bodies of the humans and elves who had died in the battle, and burned them to ash. Torthil was little more than an ashen scar on the land.
• By far, the darkest days of the war were under Neminar Drassig. He introduced tactics and magics to fuel his soldiers beyond humanity's limits, mutating them with foul necromantic magics. His forces became perfect weapons of war, blessed by the Strife Emperor of the Betrayer Gods.
• Among the orphans and heroes made in the war, one named Zan Tal'Dorei became instrumental in the conflict. A human, raised in Syngorn, she quickly proved to be a mighty warrior and an inspiration leader. Rallying the broken ranks of the resistance, she lured Neminar and his vanguard into the mysterious brush of the Verdant Expanse, a realm where fey magic was to work in Syngorn's favour. Ambushing them, the forests of the local and Zan's forces defeated Neminar.
• Despite this, Warren Drassig's second-born son, Trist Drassig, took the throne, determined to end the war. Trist was not as charismatic as his father, or as darkly brilliant as his brother, and found his forces stretched thin. The people rose up against him. The forces, led by Zan Tal'Dorei, soon had Trist's army retreating to the base of the Cliffkeep Mountains, north of Westruun.
• Zan and her rebels, allied with Syngorn, pursued Trist Drassig to a valley in the Umbra Hills, but fiends fought in the ranks of their enemies. Despite all the odds, Zan and her allies ended the Drassig bloodline, and with it, the infernal pact they had made. The grass and flowers of the now-named Umbra Hills grow black and burnt as an echo of this battle, their sap coursing with the blood of the demons that was spilled that day.
• Society having all but collapsed in this decades long conflict, the leaders of the Verdant Expanse assembled a council of trusted and proven minds, but the people were used to a singular leader, a king. The council nominated war hero, Zan Tal'Dorei to take the seat. She did so, but rejected the title of king or queen, taking only the title of "Sovereign" if one was required. Despite her protests, the council unanimously declared the realm should be named "Tal'Dorei". With power divided between the Sovereign and the Council, Emon's leaders cleared their realm of most corruption and brutality. The leading clans of Kraghammer claimed they had been manipulated, and spent many years making amends, but the trust took long to heal.
• Icelost Years

The Cinder King, and the Chroma Conclave
The Future of Tal'Dorei