The Age Before Names
Unknown(est. 10,000+ years before present) The deep past, before anything that could reasonably be called a record. What most scholars agree on is this: something happened, more than once, on a scale that makes the Luminary Court look like a market dispute.
The ruins are the evidence. Structures that don’t match any known civillisation’s methods or proportions. Stairways that climb into cloud and end nowhere. Vault entrances that hum in certain weather. Stonework that predates every language used to describe it.
Things were built here, by something, and then they weren’t. What caused it, what was involved, and why so little survived intact is contested. Theories exist. Most of them are either unprovable or uncomfortable, and the ones that are both tend to be the most popular.
The Dawnhewn Age
Est. 5,000 - 2,00 years ago (end date uncertain)
The age most historians point to when they want an example of what civilisation looks like when it’s working properly.
Dwarven construction, Dwarven infrastructure, Dwarven knowledge-keeping — more sophisticated than anything that followed, which is either impressive or depressing depending on your outlook.
They shared the world with Elves, human tribes, Ketari, Nerali, Halflings, Gnomes, Keth’ra, Vael, Toadfolk and others, but none matched their reach. Then, at some point, they pulled back. Not conquered. Not destroyed. They withdrew from the shared world, sealed or abandoned most of what they’d built, left basic teachings behind in forms other peoples could use, and became - and remain - almost entirely isolated.
Why they did this is one of the more actively pursued questions in Aetherian scholarship. Expeditions have been mounted. Letters have been sent. Researchers have spent careers on it. Nobody has come back with a satisfying answer, including the people who’ve tried asking the dwarves directly.
Era of Fractured Crowns
-1,421 to 0LC(1,421 years)
The chaos that followed the Dwarven withdrawal. Kingdoms rose and fell fast, faiths fractured and reformed, and the gods moved more freely through mortal affairs than was probably good for anyone. The Discordant did well out of it.
Toward the end, a coalition of Harmonious-aligned city-states started pulling together into what would become the Luminary Court. The Covenant of illumination came out of that - a set of divine-backed agreements about how mortal governments and the Harmony Pantheon were supposed to relate to each other. Whether it’s worked out quite that way is a longer conversation.
Luminary Court Era
0LC to Present (624LC)
The current age. The Covenant holds, more or less. The Luminary Court governs Eldoria, the Harmonious pantheon operates within the agreed boundaries, the Discordant do what they always do.
Six relatively stable centuries, which isn’t saying a great deal but is better than what came before. 624 LC has been an unsettled year. If you want to know why, you’re asking the right sort of questions.