Timeline
Years marked from ‘After Sudden Existence’
Year 0 - The world, gods and goddess are created, along with life and the concept of time and reality. Upon seeing the majesty of all that was and could be, the gods and goddess remarked that they could have done a better job of it and went off to work on their own ‘better’ version of creation.
1000 - A war between the first creations of the gods devastated the land, ending with the deaths of the celestial defender's at the hands of nightmarish hellspawn, who in turn were driven to the point of near extinction. Sensing the inevitably tragic end, the more rational members of both sides team up to escape over the sea before the last great battle.
Year 2000 - The first dwarves emerge from the mountains and behold the world outside of their caves for the first time and declare that they will build a great city on the surface and forever abandon their cold, dark homes. A week later these early dwarves discovered the effects of sunlight on hangovers and promptly moved their planned cities back underground.
2400 - Elves are born into the world and waste no time in having their first leader rise into divinity. The dwarves meanwhile invent a means of mass producing whisky. Both races claim that they have definitively proven their superiority.
3100 - Wildmen begin to appear throughout the lands, though unlike the dwarves and elves, they don’t bother settling down or staking claim to any great power.
4550 - The first recorded war with the Hellspawn. The war begins after an elven couple eloped into a cave which turned out to be the resting ground of the sleeping monsters. Woken by the smell of flesh, the Hellspawn swarmed out and were only stopped by a desperate alliance of dwarves and elves.
4560 - Having only barely begun to recover from the war, the dwarves make demands of the elves for starting the whole mess off in the first place. Angered, the elves call the dwarves heartless profiteers and the bad blood between the two races deepen.
4600 - The second Hellspawn war is triggered when a wildmen tribe summons another sleeping colony of the monsters in an attempt to turn a losing war against a neighboring tribe. After eating both tribes the Hellspawn move on to the rest of the continent. While both dwarves and elves fight together against the Hellspawn, both openly accuse the other of being at fault. The war turns badly against them and is only saved when a third player enters the fray from the coast, using powerful magics to turn the tide.
4605 - Post war, the Demon Empire is founded as the grateful dwarves and elves agree to permit them freedom to be left to set and enforce their own laws, an agreement they will come to regret. The Demons do not mention that they are descended from the celestials and hellspawn who fled the war, feeling that might spoil their image as valiant heroes.
4610 - Portals open near the west coast and the first human expedition into the realm arrives, lead by Lord Gius Libidine. After establishing a new home with the help of the elves, Lord Libidine is crowned King Gius by his adoring new subjects.
4700 - Queen Sarai the Generous moves the human capital from Niu Heym to the newly renamed Giusburg, shifting the seat of human power and influence from the west coast and the portal, to the east. This symbolically moved the positions of the humans from visitors to the world, to full and established residents, abandoning their roots in their old world. With this move, the slow shift of population from west to east would speed up considerably until almost every human on the continent lived somewhere on the eastern coast.
4800 - The last human settlements on the west coast of Aphrodisia are abandoned due to economic reasons or are claimed to have been overrun by wildmen and demons, though little evidence of this exists and the event is regarded as one of the greatest mysteries of the continent. Nearly all remaining humans have migrated to the east, settling primarily in several large cities on the east coast.
5120 - The skeletal body of a Hellspawn is found near an elven settlement and before it can be confirmed that a third war was not imminent, both elves and dwarves are at one another's throats over who would be to blame. By the time the threat was verified to be a false alarm, enough forces had been mustered that both races simply decided to just use that as justification for accusing the other of preparing a surprise attack.
5123 - The war costs thousands of lives and nearly breaks the back of the elven people, though not without inflicting deep wounds onto the dwarves as well. Before a decisive and likely genocidal conclusion can be reached, humanity with the help of the Demon Empire steps in. The humans to avoid the loss of either ally and the demons to avoid losing either group of potential slaves.
5125 - Peace is achieved after almost two years of negotiations spearheaded by the human king. The lasting peace that would come from this would be seen as a golden age for elf and dwarf relationships.
5487 - The human king publicly disrespects the then dwarven king, Isaac Hammerhand at a feast, later known as the Insult of King Jeremiah the Rude. Jeremiah later allows several major trade treaties to lapse, believing that the human cities were better on their own and needed to be more self-sufficient. While trade between dwarves and humans continues informally between private merchants, the volume of trade goods greatly diminishes, as do relations between the two races.
5503 - The human ruler King Jeremiah the Rude makes the bold and unprecedented proclamation that all lands within a hundred kilometers of any human settlement belongs exclusively to humans, expelling elves and wildmen who have long been friendly neighbors. Several skirmishes break out and many humans find themselves being ambushed by stubborn wildmen, but the humans ultimately triumph and contact with the other races become even more rare for the standard human city-dweller.
5579 - The human ruler Queen Jessica the Fool declares that magic does not exist and forbids human priests from taking lessons from elves in the arcane arts. Three days after the proclamation, a mischievous elf transforms Jessica’s royal robes into silk lingerie during a public speech. She later orders that her obviously false declaration be stricken from all royal historical records but her command to forbid the teaching of magic remains and is selectively enforced for several years before being repealed, but by this time few elves wanted to teach humans anyway.
5600 - King Harold takes the throne at the turn of the century and is believed by both mankind and its allies to be the herrold of a golden age for humanity, marking their triumphant 1000 year reign with a glorious rise to new heights. Harold also believes this and sets out to do what no king had done before him--bring about the downfall of the Demon Empire.
5608 - King Harold sends an emissary to Emperor Felatitius to order one of his demon subjects to vacate a fortress supposedly being built near the human border. Feltatius seduces the emissary and sends him back to Harold as a giggling waif who claims she has legally sold the entire human kingdom to the demons for a single minute of being made love to by Emperor Felatitius himself. Enraged, Harold sends a regiment to destroy the fortress before it can be completed only to find that it has already been built, but only at 1/100th scale in the middle of an empty field, a mocking gesture.
5609 - One year prior to the one millennia anniversary of humanity's first arrival into the realm, Harold, now referred to as the mad king, orders his best assassins to kill the Emperor Felatitius and bring back his head. This attempt fails and the king is instead sent back a handwritten letter from the Emperor, tied in the lead assassin’s sash and conveying his thanks for sending along such a lively concubine as a millennial gift and requesting that the king join him as well once the difficult work of throwing the celebration had been finished.
5610 - Foregoing the advice of his former allies, driven away by the king's own arrogance and bigotry, but worried for his people, King Harold orders the human army to march on the Empire. This unfortunately was just as planned, as Emperor Felatitius sprung his trap, wiping out the human forces with a spell by the 13 Queens and counter attacked, now fully protected by the laws of the land for his ‘defensive’ invasion. The capital fell with hardly a fight and from that day, the humans of the realm have been fleeing in droves as Felatitius has declared open season for any demon looking to bag a few new slaves. With one final act of goodwill, the dwarven clans along the southern coast of Aphrodisia ferry all humans under the age of eighteen and most over forty to Niu Hymn on a massive steamship, the only ship strong enough to withstand the powerful and erratic storms that prevent regular naval passage. The remaining humans are left to travel across Aphrodisia by land.