Era II · 9000–5200 BC

Age of First Awakenings

The first awakenings were not merely the appearance of peoples: war, accommodation, coerced labour, migration, and mutual need spread those peoples across Avarra.

There is no single founding account. Dwarven halls foreground depth and wealth, Nimrûn records survival, human epics expansion, and elven memory withdrawal. What recurs in every account is that no people could rule another simply by naming it or drawing it on a map.

Dwarven Awakenings · 9000–7000 BC

With riches discovered underground, the dwarves attempted one of the first great hegemonies. It grew through the forced labour of Nimrûn, Myconids, Grung, and other deep communities. The structure ended amid the anger this coercion created and an attack by a dwarven coalition on the Eight Human States. Humans won a Pyrrhic victory: they won the war, but not at a cost their order could easily sustain.

Many dwarves then abandoned surface settlement, retreated to deeper places they could defend, restricted city entrances, and sought help from the era’s drow mage circles to protect their cities with magic. That does not make drow an extension of the dwarven states; the same records show them protecting some cities while sheltering other deep peoples.

Human civilizations then tried to claim dominion over elven presence. Elven communities changed position, differentiated into the peoples known today, and refused that dominion. Many elven groups considered the attempt pitiful; surviving records say regular trade with humans did not resume before the age ended. Humans turned against one another.

The Eight Giants · 7000–6000 BC

Human records describe a population boom and nomadic plain alliances taking their share of trade between eight human empires. The alliances worked with Harengon and Hadozee to sell plunder to other continents and cities. Hadozee sailors turned Kıskaç Island into a pirate-trade centre they had noticed on long routes. It remained difficult for human ships to reach, and sea monsters kept almost every non-pirate from finding it.

As piracy grew, bandit groups multiplied, vast thief networks appeared in imperial cities, and abduction increased. The abducted were enslaved, with exploitation often divided by gender. Human accounts say that admiration for humans among Orc groups treated as distant and exotic was abused through forced unions and violence; Half-Orcs emerged under these conditions. The continuity of enslaved labour also enabled sustained raids on human villages.

The later name for these cities’ guardian faces is Aškari. Campaign records from the Eight Giants describe removing a city’s black stone, metal face, or shrine mask as the sign that it had been fully taken. A carried face was not simply plunder: it claimed to hold the city’s guardian hostage. As slave routes and plunder networks widened, such faces reached ports, colonies, and exile quarters. Defeated communities commonly answered that only the shell had been stolen, while the true aškar remained in a well bottom or in public memory.

The Age of Trading Companies · 6500–6000 BC

Human empires established colonies on other continents, opened trading companies within other states, and hunted Hadozee to preserve income and power. Hadozee populations, once said to approach half the human number, were driven close to extinction. Wood Elf protection prevented their erasure. Many Hadozee later worked with elven communities, and piracy ceased to define their people as strongly.

Sea territories were claimed; human powers tried to sustain them by collecting tax from humans through other peoples. The records do not agree on the scheme’s success, but Kıskaç Island endured. Company expansion and colonialism provoked rebellion across the continents. Lack of work inside the two largest empires triggered mass human migration—perhaps twenty to thirty million people. Rival human empires ended the two weakened giants.

The Broken Tooth Freedoms · 6500–5000 BC

Human powers tried to tax deep peoples as inhabitants of their own territory. The broken tooth of a Nimrûn worker struck in a slave line became the revolt’s emblem. The rebellion broke the human empires into smaller kingdoms.

Nimrûn communities settled deeper still. A journey to the surface could take fifty-six days, making food, oxygen, water, and route security matters of survival. City Gnomes played a decisive part in building the desired order and cities; freedom records list twenty-two Nimrûn cities. High Elves, impressed by the gnomes, requested their help for new realms because coexistence with Wood Elves in the forest had become untenable.

Tortles came to dominate piracy, aided by Tabaxi networks. Kenku, Owlin, and Aarakocra rejected being reduced to ornaments or captive birds and founded a mountainside state. Within it, Owlin specialized in engineering, Aarakocra in war, and Kenku in espionage and tracking. Dhampirs, hunted by humans, tried to form settlements as well. Their groups failed to unite, creating many small villages whose Dhampir origin was later forgotten beneath human settlement. Cities still hide Dhampirs, but villages gave them the first shelter they could keep.

Widespread Mass Losses · the threshold around 5200 BC

At the age’s final threshold, communities vanished one after another. Witnesses spoke of strange tentacles emerging behind the heads of people they knew. States closed their borders and collectively killed those marked by the change. Later, investigators connected the transformation to people entering ancient sites, which came to be called mind-eater remnants.

This catastrophe moved Avarra’s peoples toward a common pact. The presence of the Fey courts was expected to accelerate it. The pact did not yet exist, but its later terms were shaped by the age’s fear, loss, and mutual suspicion.