Era III · 5200–2700 BC

Age of Vein Civilizations

As human kingdoms divided and checked one another, dwarven networks linked continents; Damar wealth reignited old struggles over access, labour, and passage.

Human powers began the age as many small kingdoms. Dwarven states, having withdrawn from the surface, resumed common action through mines, roads, and trade. Damar was not one people or state but an order of shared infrastructure binding related dwarven hearths, deep cities, surface markets, and dependent labour networks. As it grew continental, valuable metals and dwarven goods became harder to find on the surface, and other peoples pursued the dwarves again. The eventual severing of the veins, one by one, foretold a break no one could explain.

The Sacred Cause · 5200–4900 BC

Pact negotiations continued after the mass losses, but no state wished to stand still. Some peoples under population pressure rejected the pact. Piracy increased on trade routes humans could no longer protect, making commerce costly.

Dwarven states were still kin: Great Hammer and Hammerkin, Ironkin, and Goldteeth were treated as cousin houses. Duergar rebellion seized the era’s foundry as their own land. The dwarves did not want another subterranean war and accepted the terms. Their related houses then agreed to build joined routes and began the work through the Iron Veins Agreement.

The Irokua Confederation of flying peoples built its own transport diaspora, a network for important messages and valuables. Able to travel almost anywhere so long as they did not disturb dragons, the Irokuans amassed great wealth from the needs of peoples in difficulty.

Thieves and Faceless Unions · 4900–4600 BC

As great cities became denser, thief networks diversified. No people monopolized them, but records emphasize Bugbear organizations and the mafia networks their disproportionate power allowed inside empires. Giff, Loxodon, and Thri-kreen took different roles in these unions.

States’ hunger for information and their succession struggles created demand for new spies. Changelings filled it professionally. New settlements appeared in the Mist Isles and Eudaimonia; the Isles later declared independence and formed a demarchy. Its own name was Knoxiarh, though human accounts usually call it Noxiant.

War of Roses · 4600–4000 BC

High Elves established Astereth while Wood Elves split into three states and fought whenever they met in the forest. The division had become ungovernable. Other peoples exploited it, abducting Elves and selling them to the highest bidder. The Thorn Crown, White Leaves, and Birch Groves could not form a shared answer.

The Thorn Crown had sheltered Eladrin and sought a means to strengthen its protective thorn trees and flowers. It contacted drow, other elves, and Derro through Harengon intermediaries. It prepared a new army for roughly a century and invited sympathetic peoples into its lands. Firbolgs, treated as property by other Wood Elves, found real value there. At the century’s end the Thornbloods were successfully made; within twenty years, the whole forest was in Thorn Crown hands.

The Age of Veins · 4000–3200 BC

While the surface remained chaotic, dwarves completed and expanded the veins across continents. The network alarmed humans, Elves, and Irokuans, but gave Harengon immense employment. Dwarves employed Harpies in surface work and formed deep ties with them, even as Harpy numbers had fallen to roughly the thousands.

Nimrûn grew through dwarven wealth, yet cities near trade caused others to be abandoned; known Nimrûn cities fell to about eighteen. Kobolds found a place in their maintenance work and nearly all surface Kobolds moved below. Goblins formed guilds, drew other peoples into them, and worked to curb surface piracy. As piracy declined above, Duergar began producing early Warforged below; dwarven optimism and possession brought those Warforged into dwarven hands.

Damar Unions · 3200–2700 BC

Dwarven success created turmoil among human kingdoms. Autonomous small realms combined into four empires: Hun, Ottonian, Valois, and Stuart. Hun excelled at army order and strategy; Ottonian at trade, regulation, and technology; Valois at intrigue and strong leaders but struggled to hold some seventy cultures together through assimilation; Stuart was weaker by comparison, yet fought piracy and kept human peoples alive through its rich ports.

The four empires were not uniform enough to erase hundreds of city cults. Instead, they tried to count shrine faces, record which aškar might receive offerings in which market, and bind great feasts to tax and security systems. These shrine registers became an instrument of power, especially in Valois, whose seventy cultures were held together through assimilation. A licensed face could gain market rights and protection; an unregistered one could just as easily be called a fugitive quarter or a sign of revolt.

In the same human world, the small sacred basin of Vardûn was caught between four great powers around 3300 BC. Its cities did not remain beneath one crown for long, yet their shared water oaths, law of hospitality, and idea of one word spoken beneath the sky spread to surrounding markets. The fall of Vardûn around 3150 BC turned this local order into a religion of exile. The earliest journey accounts attributed to Eram, Nadûr, and Selmev began to proclaim not a city god, but the One Voice that could be heard everywhere.

The Root Tablets, compiled in 2900 BC, gathered the exiles’ common memory for the first time. They were not a declaration of unity: even then, people disputed which words were direct revelation and which were memories of the road. Still, the tablets became both sacred text and political language for the broad family now called Vardûni traditions.

Jealousy created by trade and wealth among related houses broke the Damar Union apart. Competition rose, exploitation of serving peoples intensified, and new dwarven kingdoms appeared on other continents. The network remained, but the bonds that made it a common order had come undone. Treating Root Gates as roads, taxes, and military supply in the next age was its most dangerous legacy.