First Epoch

The dawn of the First Epoch is largely a mystery. The fairies disagree as to which came first: them or Serinor. Lukosian scholars have been unable to determine whether the fairies honestly don’t know or find it more amusing to keep the information to themselves. Regardless, the temporal and spatial concurrance of the fairies and Serinor is widely used to mark the start of the world’s history.

• Fairies arrive in Serinor.
• The Elder Gods make themselves known and begin to shape the world.
• Dragons appear in Serinor and appropriate most of the available land. They treat the world largely as a secluded resting spot during various interplanar travels, though many decide to retire there more permanently.
• Serinor brushes against the primal Wellspring of Life, giving rise to the elves as a sentient race.
• The orcs enter Serinor and found their capital at Eragdush.

Second Epoch

With the rise of the orcs, short-lived mortals had entered Serinor for the first time. This immediately disrupted the placid atmosphere of the world.

• The orcs begin hunting dragons to expand their own empire.
• After suffering significant losses, the dragons craft various races of wyrmkin and dragonspawn using blood rituals known only to them. Included in these creations are the lizardmen.
• Orcish settlers make first contact with the dwarves, who claim to have always existed in the caves beneath the surface of Serinor.
• The elven bard Carnok is elevated to true immortality by the Elder Gods after he discovers music that can warp the weave of fate itself.
• A village of halflings is discovered in territory disputed by orcs and dragons. Through determined inventiveness and dumb luck, the halflings manage to wrest land from both sides and create a peaceful homeland.
• Orcs perfect the art of alchemy and lay the rudimentary foundations of arcane power.
• Dwarves begin selling adamantium armaments to both orcs and dragons. Neither side can manage to locate or take the source of the metal from the dwarves.
• First anecdotal instances of people rising from the dead are recorded in elven epics, suggesting the arrival of the Hero Soul in Serinor around this time.
• Orcish settlers discover the Divine Light shining down from the summit of Mount Gela. They turn from the Elder Gods to worship the Light instead.

Third Epoch

Serinor’s Third Epoch was a time of great change, as the guiding hand of the Elder Gods began to fade with the advent of true divinity. As the orc cultists of the Light, who later called themselves humans to distinguish themselves from their barbaric kin, spread their gospel and divine powers across Serinor, old balances of power began to change. More and more people with Hero Souls appeared, and as Syn’s monsters began to shake off the nightmarish yoke of their master, it seemed that a golden age had begun for the mortals of Serinor.

• Humans found the Divine High Temple of the Light in their settlement at Gelaham and begin spreading their new gospel to all races.
• The halflings adopt the humans’ new religion outright, starting a close and enduring alliance with their nearest non-hostile neighbors.
• A group of gnolls steal aspects of the humans’ divine teachings and apply it to their own ancestral worship. They rename themselves kobolds to establish their independance from their creator, Syn, God of Nightmares.
• Orcs, nervous about losing territory to human converts, begin killing missionaries on sight when they approach orcish fortifications.
• Humans design the first resurrection rituals. They eventually reach success rates of 100% for those with Hero Souls, though results are spotty at best among the general populace. This becomes the best test of who truly has a Hero Soul.
• Elves manage some limited success with applying divine constructs to their reverence of nature, though most remain worshipers of the Elder Gods or devotees of the Wellspring of Life.
• Humans start a disastrous crusade against the orcs led by the hero Trulmaes, who founded the first order of paladins to defend and serve the Light.
• The dragons begin a gradual exodus from Serinor, leaving their lizardmen and wyrmkin to fight the orcs alone. Massive swaths of territory are lost during this time.
• Orcs apply human teachings to their Cult of the Warlord. Humans call this capitulation and end the crusade; the orcs laugh and agree to stop slaughtering them.
• Through judicious application of force and money, kobolds secure a lasting monopoly on sea travel. The dwarves retaliate by refusing to sell anything to kobolds, requiring massive land-based trade caravans to and from their seculded mines.
• The Elder Gods directly commission a group of adventurers to investigate the ruins at Miriliclyn. The adventurers enter the tower there but never return. The Elder Gods disappear from Serinor until after the Age of Heroes.
• A separeate band of adventurers explore the ruins at Miriliclyn to discover what had caught the attention of the Elder Gods. Only one returns, a human named Osric, who brings with him the first Hero Shrine and a ritual granting immortality to any with a Hero Soul.

Fourth Epoch

Also known as the Age of Heroes, time stopped during the Fourth Epoch. The sun froze in the sky, and all means to mark the passage of time vanished. With an entire side of the planet facing away from the sun, there was a massive exodus to the Light Side. All plant life on the Dark Side died, and the polar ice caps shifted to lock that side of Serinor in perpetual ice. Most modern geographical meaures are based on maps from the Fourth Epoch, where distances were measured from the Noon Meridian (where the sun was directly overhead) or the Dawn and Dusk Twilights. Most major events during this epoch occured at the periphery of the epoch; a huge, uncountable swath of centuries where nothing happened dominated the middle.

• Hero Shrines are established in every major city, and flocks of newly immortal heroes are created. There is a high death toll during the initial crop of would-be heroes, as the ritual to activate the Hero Soul requires the hero to be slain before the Hero Shrine, and the only way to be certain that the participant has a Hero Soul is if they come back to life afterwards.
• Shadowkin begin to appear in Serinor, stealing away heroes of the other races.
• The first instance of a monster with a Hero Soul is recorded. A werewolf named Luke is activated by shadowkin who expected the beast to die permanently before the Hero Shrine. Luke gathers as many other werewolf heroes to himself as he can, calling them all lukosians.
• A close alliance forms between the shadowkin and lukosians, as most other races mistrust both.
• Humans declare a new crusade against the shadowkin, calling them abominations outside of the Light, fit only to be destroyed. Unable to safely approach the Divine Light shining from Holy Mount Gela, the shadowkin go into hiding to avoid the conflict as much as possible.
• The lukosians, desperate for some way to distinguish themselves from their feral cousins and validate their existance to the other races, take up studying arcane secrets. Their ferocious and single-minded persistance quickly outstrip the arcane learning of any other race.
• The lizardmen reconstruct the blood rituals used by the dragons to create them with the hope of perpetuating their race and ensuring their continued existance.
• Lukosians appropriate an old draconic island to establish a library for all learning of any kind in all of Serinor, which they call Esselte.
• Halfling engineers, in concert with lukosian enchanters, create the first sentient clockwork creature in the Kipexu Hydrotheurgic Plant. The halflings take the most subservient models with them when a clockwork uprising forces the plant to be abandoned.
• Strange creatures begin to seep into Serinor from the astral planes. They seem determined to destroy and destabilize the world. Heroes flock to wherever a sighting is reported.
• The human city of Achiela is destroyed by demons.
• A group of heroes initially comissioned by the High Priest of Gelaham wins the trust of the shadowkin. They discover Bishop Osric, creator of the Hero Shrine, still amongst the ranks of the undead. He instructs the heroes how to reach the ruins at Miriliclyn and seal the first Hero Shrine and end the astral incursion into Serinor.
• Heroes enter the astral planes and destroy the anchors holding the Hero Shrines in place, keeping Serinor safe from future astral incursions but destroying their immortality in the process.

Time of Chaos