Foundations
The Deep Past
The ages before any era of this book: the long history that every era inherits, the threads that run through it, and the worlds that came and went.
Overviews
- Ages and Events 135
Most Named in This Part
- Dwarves PeopleOne of the oldest peoples of Caeldon, a dense and durable people stabilized under the Ironspine from an inheritance marked by the Iron Backbone; their branches are the Ironspine and Stonewake Dwarves.
- Elves PeopleOne of the oldest peoples of Caeldon, stabilized in the Elderweald from an inheritance marked by the Verdant Expanse that shows in presence more than in anatomy; their branches are the Wood, Thorn…
- Humans PeopleThe young, fast people of the cradle-web's basins and headwaters, of the balanced adaptive field, who emerged c. 300,000-c. 220,000 BR; what marks them is pace, and they form regional peoples rather…
- Kobolds PeopleA small, careful, underwork-adapted people who live wherever surface and underworld meet imperfectly, in mine-edges, drains, vents, and ruin underlevels; their civilization is the Underhouse Compacts.
- Trolls PeopleA people of wounded frontiers, whose bodies carry Failed Mending, found where land and works refuse to heal and holding the crossings no one else will keep; their civilization is the Crossing-Oath…
- Goblins PeopleA ruin-adapted people, not a malicious one, who live well in abandoned works, failed towns, and road shadows and know every gap and culvert in them; their strongest country is the Broken Marches and…
- Reedfolk PeopleA secondary species of the wet threshold, at home where land and water never settle which is which, and no branch of Humans, Elves, or Dwarves; their strongest country is the lower Confluence Basins…
- Ogres PeopleA load-bearing people, living where settled worlds need heavy work but will not let the workers belong; their custom is hearth-weight and their civilization the Hearth-Weight Compacts.
- Kavari PeopleA resident freshwater people of the far side's tributary braids, gravel runs, and deep pools, neither Thaluren nor a river branch of the Reedfolk; their civilization is the Bankright Circles.
- Thaluren PeopleAn ancient oceanic people of the Tidebound Reaches, no branch of the Elves despite the misnomer "sea-elves"; they live at sea but are born upriver, and the return to spawn shapes all their custom and…
- The Unrecorded Age AgeThe sixth age, c. 120,000-c. 40,000 BR, after writing ended in the cradle, when peoples kept their customs and genealogies in breath and its graves and hoards are still turned up by the plough.
- Salvage Peoples PeopleA people defined less by descent than by practice, risen from survivor lines who walked the abandoned colossal roads: travelling, reading structures, recovering material, and keeping broken works…
- The Last Keeping c. 150,000-c. 120,000 BRThe span, c. 150,000-c. 120,000 BR, in which the archive-law world shut its rolls and sealed its last cities, while the keepers who would not let the record die carried its oath forms, scripts, and…
- Ozhar the Pyre-King ResonantThe god of the elder Ash-Furnace world, a Resonant of Ignis and the terrible face of fire, whose name is still forbidden near any furnace.
- The Edgeway Kindreds CivilizationThe first civilization of the Salvage Peoples: kin-linked companies who travel known circuits between ruin zones, keep the works along them, and share one mark-language and a calendar of…
- The Elder Worlds AgeThe vanished elder civilizations, Upland Colossal, Ash-Furnace, Archive-Law, and Sepulchre-Kin, and the fourth age, c. 300,000-c. 120,000 BR, named for them, in which the first Humans emerged and the…
Terms
BR · BR (Before Reckoning) · The circuit · CR (Common Reckoning) · The First Regional Differentiations · Hollow Descendants · Keepright · The Last Census · The Last Registrar · The Medieval Era · The Oral Tradition · Outer Blood · The Sepulchre-Kin