What follows is a short view of the planet's history, particularly the northwestern landmass known as Erebu or Thera. This account tries to explain long-term racial and geographical migrations. Much of this account derives from ancient beliefs and speculations rather than fact. However, ancient ruins and relics justify some of the findings.

[Modern Translator's Note: Many regard this account to be pure fiction, naught but a load of fireside tales, but researchers have discarded the more far-fetched parts of the document and validated other parts through archaeological remains. We have annotated modern dates and race names in brackets for ancient ones.]

Part I: From the Beginning to the First Cataclysm

Around two million years ago [MYA], goblins [Homo habilis] and orcs [Homo rudolfensis], small-brained savages for the most part, are the dominant races. They occupy much of Bezwa [what is now Africa]. Also in existence are a number of older races, some of which are not humanoid. Although practically wiped out many ages earlier [c. 65 MYA], dragons and other reptilian beasts still roam parts of the planet. Around 1.6 MYA, the last great ice age [Pleistocene] begins, during which glaciers advance and retreat over much of the planet as many as 20 times until finally receding in the modern era.

Over one million years ago, gnomes [Homo ergaster] are the dominant species on the planet. They share it with larger, fiercer and less intelligent races best described as ogre or troll-like [Paranthropus robustus and boisei]. The ogres and trolls tend to prey on the gnomes, driving some of them underground or to distant continents, becoming "deep gnomes" [Homo erectus].

Sometime after this [c. 700,000 years before the current era, or BCE], taller humanoids begin to arise [Homo heidelbergensis] - the albar. An off-world race (cath-sidhe) visits the planet during this time. They transplant a large part of the albar to the alien forested home world, Sidhe. Around 400,000 BCE, dvergur or dwarves (Homo neanderthalensis) arise. The other races drive the gnomes further afield and underground. The albar have all but died out on earth, but the cath-sidhe have transplanted some from Sidhe to neighboring worlds (Asgard and Vanaheim). By 200,000 BCE, dwarves become the dominant race in much of the old world [Africa, Asia and Europe]. A colony of albar leaves Sidhe to settle yet another planet, which they name Terra in memory of their ancestral home.

Around 150,000 BCE, the descendents of the albar start to return to earth. Their alien host world, having enjoyed a favorable climate and enlightened civilization for many millennia, is slowly dying from radical climate change and geological upheaval. The first migration is that of the drow (svartalfar), who have lived underground on Sidhe for hundreds of thousands of years, being resentful of their alien masters and brethren who are friendly with them. Being intolerant of sunlight, they quickly go underground on earth, displacing and co-existing with the deep gnomes.

By 120,000 BCE, light elves (ljosalfar) return to earth from Sidhe, the atmosphere of which is becoming unbreathable. They settle mainly in Lemuria, a heavily forested continent [in what is now the Pacific]. The elves bring with them an advanced technology (some would call magic) which affects climate and spatial relations in some areas. Rumors of portals to other realms begin to arise. Necromancers begin to practice dark arts in their attempts to achieve immortality, but cause only diseases resulting in vampires (draugur) and wights (vaettir). Around this time, the last glaciation in the great ice age begins.

Humans [Homo sapiens] arise about 100,000 BCE, displacing dwarves in the old world and coexisting with elves in Lemuria. Other alien races begin to visit earth, including the risar [nephilim] from Niphel [this may be both a "Planet X" and a region on earth named for it] and the nommos, amphibious beings from the great star [Sirius] who begin to influence culture in Pont [Asia Minor] and Bezwe. By 75,000 BCE, the planet Sidhe is a barren wasteland. The last survivors of the planet, cath-sidhe and aes-sidhe (albar who became the most enlightened) flee to earth, scattered in sparse outposts around Erebu and the Western Sea [Atlantic]. Although orcs have become a fringe race for the most part, preying upon humans and dwarves, half-orcs first begin to arise.

Around 60,000 BCE a massive apocalypse obliterates the continent of Lemuria and leaves little of its technology behind, or its cryptic, dark religion and magical rites. The survivors flee to Bugora [what is now Australia and SE Asia] and the western fringes of Bankhtar [the American continents], seeking refuge underground from the destruction that continues to devastate the Lemurian [Pacific] Rim. Some few Lemurians survive on islands and preserve some of the Lemurian culture [Easter Island?].

Part II: After the Cataclysm

There was a time when beasts like none ever seen roamed this world, a time when manmade birds rules the air. A time when arrows were the size of pebbles, and chariots required no horses, yet could travel at a pace like none seen today. The relics prove such a time existed. It matters not, for they are nothing but mementos of what is no longer.

Whether that age was more dangerous than the one that followed is questionable. Remnants of diaries suggest a time of great peril. The palaces of the richest emperors fail to compare to the ruins of what these leaders of old had built. The powers-that-were destroyed all they had and hid everything in vaults. Those lucky enough to move into these vaults survived, but at the cost of their world and their freedom. After that, there was nothing. Even the wisest of sages found that no cultures had built anything for tens of thousands of years, maybe more.

Most of the vaults discovered had collapsed, trapping and killing all inside. Ruined buildings in the ocean hinted at more civilizations destroyed, sunk below the sea. The weapons of the lost ages took out the land beneath the great cities. The great cities were gone and only mountains, deserts and oceans remained. The powerful weapons reshaped the world into a wasteland.

Everything represented death in the ages after the cataclysm. The deserts held no food. The waters hosted beasts and disease. Even the air was lethal to those that roamed the land. A dingy fog obscured the sun and made scaling the great mountains or resurrecting the steel birds impossible. This fate greeted the first arising from the vaults.

It was centuries ago that the first surviving adventurers came to the surface. They met with a foul sun and little else around them. The vault had exhausted the resources once thought to be self-sustaining. In an area now known as the Barren Desert, these survivors began to build shelter for the rubble they found. As they did, they uncovered lost methods and technologies, allowing new culture to develop. Soon, other vaults began to emerge, doing the same research and rebuilding to try to resurrect society.

It was clear that the future was in recreating the past. It was time for rebirth. The Age of the Phoenix had arrived.

Part III: Rise of the Centaurs

When the first vault opened, it was apparent that the city that once was around could aid humankind never again. They had plenty of livestock left, though they would soon deplete their fresh water. Using the wreckage around them, the inhabitants constructed massive wagons to move their food and supplies away from the desert. It soon became apparent that they would have to travel farther than anticipated. They began to breed their horses, dropping supplies to transport the colts and their mothers.

Eventually the nomads became dependent on their horses and began to spend all of their time tending to them, hunting with them, or riding through the desert sands. The poisons in the air caused the nomads to begin to mutate, taking the properties on their loyal horses. At first, the nomads killed such mutants, but the crossover was inevitable. The entire tribe merged and abandoned the old ways of life. The tribe left their wagons in the desert as they continued their journey.

It was the day that the tribe discovered the Forest of Kagnia that their journey ended. The tribe settled on the edge of the forest, where the land was fertile and there was plenty of room to hunt. They grew the city quickly and raised many one-story longhouses, large enough for the centaurs to move freely.

The town of Tashauda lived in peace for a long while, forgetting about their past and the earlier parts of their journey. They began to regard horses as their brethren, allowing them to roam freely and share what they had. It was not until the arrival of the towns of Tae and Ollorn that Tashauda began training in the arts of warfare. The newly arrived two-leggers used horses to fight against each other, leaving many of them dead in a war that was not theirs. Those of Tashauda wrote a new decree, pronouncing the cities of Tae and Ollorn as evil. Tashauda declared war against these cities, as well as any other who used the horse race for their own selfish purposes.

Part IV: Rise of the Jaguar Cult

Known as the Blessed Land, Banquetor was the place least harmed by war and ages of decay. The ancients built the vault far from any city in ruins old even in the days now regarded as ancient. Temples stood high over the land, but through war, fires had incinerated the libraries and left the writings on the walls too mutilated to allow translation.

The people of the lost ages had built a vault branching down far from the chamber of a long forgotten king's tomb. The ancients did not plan well for how long they would need fuel supplies. The air purifiers began to shut down and the people needed new fuels. They burned books to keep those inside alive. It was when the last book burned that they created the game.

It started with a culling of the weak. The tribe put down prematurely those closest to death. They were the fuel so that others could survive. It became a threat to life to allow anything less than top physical shape to survive. Even then, there just was not enough. With more fuel needed, the tribe chose a way to thin the herd further. They would hold a competition once a year. They placed human targets high on the wall and all participants would compete to be the first to strike each target. The batons used to play became weapons of violence in the game. Each man fought for his survival.

Of those that lost, one must go to the surface to see if the world was safe once more. The tribe would jail the rest and save them for when they needed more fuel to last the year round. The society knew it was brutal, but it was the only way to survive. In time, the sacrifices desensitized the people of Banquetor. The number of tournaments had become innumerable by the time a losing scout returned.

The scout who returned brought hope for the dying society, and the people immediately climbed to the surface. Monuments and temples covered the landscape. Most of these monuments paid homage to a figure with the head of a great black feline. The scout who had once been damned to a surface thought to be immediate death became the ruler of the land. His discovery of the new land established his power to lead. He reassured his people through the proclamation that the jaguar figure, now named Monateco, had summoned him to lose in order to lead the people to the surface.

Centuries later, the scout turned emperor, Jor, has passed, but the tournament lives on. At the tenth turn of the sun, the greatest warriors, including the current emperor, assemble to battle for the leadership of the country. He who is the victor rises to power, while he who places last goes before the temple of Monateco to offer his life to the protector of the land and its people.

Part V: Migrations and the Second Cataclysm

By 50,000 BCE, humans and other races have driven descendents of the risar out of Pont. These giants (jotuns) flee to the remote glacial mountainous regions of the world, which they name Jotunheim (also another word for their home world). Surviving Lemurians in Bugora discover a diminutive race called ebugogo or "halflings" [Homo floresiensis] due to their height in relation to humans. Aesir and vanir (offshoots of the albar and sidhe) arrive in the steppes north of Pont and east of Erebu. They move westward, calling their newfound home "Middle-Earth" or the Mid-World (Midgaard). Some humans and elves begin to worship them, observing their ability to travel between worlds using portals, one of which seems like a rainbow bridge (Bifrost). The aesir teach some of their secrets to humans, who take on heroic traits, making them the first einherjar.

By 45,000 BCE, some of the survivors of Lemuria have crossed the Bankhtar [Central American] isthmus and subjugated the natives on a continent in the Western Sea. Temples (and institutions even more sinister) spring up within years. Thus, Atalan [Atlantis] is born, having within it the seeds for its own destruction some 25,000 years later. These events affect Erebu only indirectly, by sending waves of various invaders eastward into it.

By 40,000 BCE, Atalani [Atlanteans] have immigrated to Erebu in the fertile regions of the west [what is now Spain and SE France], calling the realms Bal Ascua ("kingdom of the sea") in the west and Bal Arna ("kingdom of the sun") in the east. Separating these is a glacial mountainous region populated mainly by dwarves. The Forest Isbara in the southwest [much of what is now Portugal], populated mainly by elves. Atalan itself holds a stronghold in the south called Gador. They consider people living to the north and south to be largely barbarians and savages, unaware of the influence of the aesir or nommos. Halfar (half-elves) first begin to arise [Cro-Magnon man].

In 37,000 BCE, a minor cataclysm brought on by geology and dark magic has crippled Atalan, but it rebuilds. The "Sons of Woden" (worshippers of the aesir) occupy much of Central Erebu, establishing a capital first called Midgaard, a name that later becomes associated with the realm of men in general. A king is crowned and a calendar established. Later the capital is renamed Tharsbad. The Sons of Woden discover jotuns to the north [Scandinavian icecap], a region called Niphel (or Niflheim). Jotuns also inhabit mountains in the south [the proto-Alps], wherein colonies of dwarves and other races also live. Elves occupy many of the central forests, with dark elves and gnomes living in caverns far below. A colony of halflings lives to the northwest, beyond which is an untamed wilderness [including present day Britain and Ireland, joined to the mainland], in which the sidhe and jotuns wage war. Musphel (or Muspelheim) is a barren island of fire and ice to the northeast [Iceland].

Around 36,000 BCE, another minor cataclysm destroys part of an outpost to the east of Tharsbad, called Lagash or Thalos. The drow arise briefly and sack Lagash from their underground city (Svartalfheim). Even deadlier creatures of the drow (such as the beholders of the Underdark) may also have played a role in the destruction. The survivors of Lagash flee into the southeast deserts, where they established the sultanate of Taz Lagash (New Thalos). The last heir to the throne of Midgaard vanished soon after the sack of Thalos, and Tharsbad has been governed by an elected mayor ever since.

Part VI: Recent History and the Third Cataclysm

Rumors of dragon sightings persisted in Ugrit (Ofcol) until around 35,500 BCE, but the village escaped any destruction. Indeed, it experienced a great expansion after the last sighting, and a prosperous district sprung up nearly overnight, known as Taz Ugrit (New Ofcol). The Dragonlords of the Golden Citadel are a fierce yet noble order of knights. Allegedly, minotaurs exist far to the east, perhaps results of some ancient Lemurian experiments involving humans and bulls. Seismic upheavals rend the world asunder - lands vanish, new ones appear and most of the population practically disappears. Many other changes have affected the world in the last 500 years, too numerous to chronicle here. It is now 35,000 years before the current era, or the year 1293 AK (after the first king of Midgaard). The few survivors of previous eras search for the Dark Tower - a mythical monument or realm never discovered but said to exist throughout the ages. Thus, a new history begins...