Age of Strife

The first human city-states were founded during the era known as the Age of Strife, which began roughly 18,000 years ago. Cities such as Erethu, Gessh, and Ur on Libynos grew large, built surrounding walls, and conquered the neighboring countryside. Around the same time, the explorer Koshag of Ur sailed the Sinnar Ocean and established the City-State of Xantollan on Pontos Island, the earliest city on Akados. And about 15,700 years ago, colonists from the northeastern coast of Libynos (the location of the modern Jaati) found their way to the west coast of Akados (legend says by crossing Mother Oceanus the long way), where they founded Gtsang.
During this period, the worship of many gods spread throughout the human realms, along with the understanding that the deities belonged to various groups, or pantheons. Many of the gods first to be worshipped were benign, of light and agriculture, of land, sea, and air. But not all. Some stories suggest the malign influence of older, non-human races in the introduction of the worship of various evil deities. However it occurred, certain human realms adopted the ways of beneficent deities, while others devoted themselves to gods of darkness. Soon, strife between these city-states and kingdoms of Libynos erupted into war.
The legends of the elves and dwarves indicate that those races first arrived on Boros over the course of this age. Some 17,000 years ago, the elven god Wayland the Smith unlocked the secret to passing between the elven homeland of Alfheim and the world of Boros, and some among the elves, or Alfar, crossed through. For many years, the way was kept a closely guarded secret; the earliest visitors were limited to the noblest of the elves, whose descendants are said to be the grey elves of the Emerald Mountains of Akados. Over time, some other Alfar passed between the worlds, but only in small numbers, and settled in remote locations, and for reasons yet to be determined.
Some two millennia after Wayland first discovered the secret of the planar gates, the dwarves of Niðavellir (which, depending on who you ask, is either a region of Alfheim, or is closely connected to it) came into conflict with the elves of a realm called Svartalfheim, who in time became the drow, or dark elves. During the course of this war, the dwarves discovered the secrets of the gates of Wayland the Smith and proceeded to construct gates of their own. Unlike the Alfar gates made by Wayland that broached wild areas of Boros little populated by sentient folk, and through which only small numbers of Alfar were permitted to pass, the dwarves opened multiple gates into the deep places of Boros, and in no time the conflict between the dwarves and dark elves spilled through unchecked.
The world they found was one already at war, scarred by the clash of great powers. The strife between the followers of the gods of good and the gods of evil had spread to the Outer Planes, into a conflict known as the Gods’ War. The drow soon joined with the evil gods in the Gods’ War, while the dwarves and Alfar allied with the deities of good. Eventually, at great cost, the last general of the forces of darkness was overthrown, and the god Thyr ended the Gods’ War, and with it the Age of Strife.
Oddly, the dwarves of Ankhura, in the Tsendarkar Mountains of northwestern Akados, are said to have already been in their mountain fastnesses when Gtsang was founded. If that is true, the dwarves of this realm would have arrived independently of, and substantially earlier than, their fellows who used the dwarven gates created at the time of the Gods’ War. The dwarves of Ankhura do not provide any insight as to when or how they may have come to their homes in the Tsendakars, simply maintaining that they always lived in those mountains.