Andara

"In the beginning, before time itself, there slept a great being. Unconscious in an inky void of nothingness, the being dreamed of opposites. Light and dark. Magic and mundane. Positive energy and negative energy. From this dream, energies swirled in the deepest recesses of the being's mind. Betwixt these circling energies, an embryonic world began to take shape. Though nothing more than rock, soil and water at first, the passage of time brought change to this world. Slowly, gently, life came to this world of dreams. By the time the first humanoids appeared, they found themselves in a land filled with lush groves, endless forests and frigid tundras. This was Andara."

- Halano Silvermill in 'A Catalogue of Creation Myths'

Etymology
The giants were the first to coin the name Andara for the land upon which they lived, and the other civilisations quickly adopted it. Born from an extinct dialect, Andara roughly translates to "The world that was imagined", in reference to the creation myth held by the giants prior to the beginning of recorded history.

History
Recorded history in Andara goes back just over three millennia; 3,159 years to be precise. This long history is split between three Ages, the Age of Dawn, the Age of Stillness and the Age of Arcana.

The Age of Dawn
Era length: 2,398 years

The beginning of recorded history is known as the Age of Dawn, and its first few years mark the point at which all the native peoples of Andara settled and founded their first civilisations. At the start of this age, there were five main civilisations spread throughout Andara. To the north of the continent, elves ruled in the forests to the west and halflings ruled in the hills and plains to the east. In the south, dwarves settled in the western tundra whilst giants ruled the mountains of the east. Occupying a thin region in the middle that stretched east to west were the humans, sharing a border with every other civilisation in Andara.

The centuries that followed saw countless wars for territory; borders ebbed and shifted as the burgeoning civilisations staked their claims, and the wars became fewer and fewer as time went on. In the latter half of this age, the first alliances and truces began to form. Borders became officially documented and agreed upon by all parties that shared them, and for the first time members of different cultures could look past their differences to forge bonds of trust and friendship. Lands were no longer looked upon with covetous eyes from across the border, and trade routes began to flow between the new kingdoms.

Towards the end of this age, a handful of new kingdoms had arisen. The elvish kingdom had split into two as the race itself split into two subraces; the high elves and the wood elves. The wood elves took to the forests, whilst the high elves sought the hills and coasts of the most north-western reaches of the continent. North of the halfing kingdom had been a hostile land of arid slopes and jagged peaks ruled by dragons up until this point. However, in the last three centuries of the Age of Dawn, first contact was made with a culture of dragon-men who called themselves dragonborn. They were far more civilised than any of the dragons that had been previously encountered, and the halflings wasted no time in establishing commerce with their new neighbours.

The Age of Stillness
Era length: 519 years

For reasons still largely unknown, the end of the Age of Dawn was marked by a decay of magic. Within a matter of five years, nearly every magically-capable individual was unable to cast spells or perform any other form of magic, and thus the Age of Stillness was ushered in. Many of the civilisations that had established themselves previously were heavily reliant on magic, and thus struggled to maintain a grip on their kingdoms. Famine, disease and wars ran rife and much of the population watched their very way of life crumble before them. The first century of the Age of Stillness is referred to in many cultures as the Hundred Years of Hell; populations plummeted and those who survived lead lives of great hardship.

The quickest to recover from such societal turbulence were the humans, as magic made up a small part of their civilisation relative to the other races. For them, the Age of Stillness was a time of prosperity. Their one contiguous kingdom of Humania was the largest ever seen on Andara, and they pushed back many of their northern borders in a series of brutal, calculated invasions. Humania did not invade the south, for dwarves and giants are formidable opponents even without magic. Though they had no human invaders to worry about, the southern kingdoms were not without troubles of their own. In the dwarvish kingdom, a land now known as the Hjelkar Tundra, the great citadels were suffering regular sieges from frost giants that had migrated north from the Ice Wastes. To the east, the giant kingdom of Kozgomogh was experiencing civil unrest under the rule of their cruel jarfang Akavor, and tensions were reaching a boiling point.

Towards the fifth and final century of the Age of Stillness, the land and its kingdoms had begun to stabilise and recover once more. The elves had secured their borders at the edges of what land they had left. The two kingdoms became the Crownlands, kingdom of high elves, and Deepwood, kingdom of wood elves. The halflings of Warmwood had lost a lot of their trade routes, either plundered by the humans or due to the other kingdom being unable to afford to trade much of their produce. Far to the north east, the Dragonlands were eerily silent. Its inhabitants, creatures who were wrought of magic, suffered greatly when their realm became disconnected from the arcane, and their bodies entered a state of dormancy as they were unable to function properly without magic.

The Age of Arcana
Era length: 242 years (current)

The golden age that Humania had paid for in blood was not destined to last forever. Its doom was heralded by the Adventus Arcanum, a supernatural event of cosmic proportions that shook the very fabric of reality as it brought magic back into the realm of Andara for the first time in centuries. When magic returned, it came back far stronger and more versatile than it had been before, and most individuals throughout the realm gained some form of magical aptitude. A small demographic of humans however, remained entirely untouched by magic.

The beginning of the first decade saw the collapse of the empire of Humania. This downfall began with the human civil war, a great conflict which saw the magical humans rise up against their mundane rulers, and much of the western half of Humania split off into the new kingdom of Westerlent. Though a few outposts remained south of Deepwood, they were soon cut off when magical, sapient woodland critters appeared, driving out human and elf alike and establishing the new forest kingdom of Calar Dunn. Shortly after their loss in the civil war, what remained of Humania was attacked viciously from the north and east. The Great Stone Spine; a mountain range that separated most of Humania from the fens to the east became populated with orcs, and these stalwart tribes prevented all passage through the mountain range and its surrounding forests, staking claim to the lands that would come to be known as Bargob. The smallfolk of Warmwood fiercely pushed in from the north and reclaimed much of their stolen territory, fatally underestimated by the mundane humans who did not expect their small foes to be armed with such powerful magic. Finally, the few settlements of Humania that remained in the fens of the east were cut off and isolated, and quickly fell prey to marauding goblin tribes and drow night skirmishes as the new inhabitants moved into what would become Shadowfen.

By the end of the first decade, the civil unrest in Kozgomogh had come to an end with Borrig, a challenger to the throne, slaying Akavor and casting his corpse into an area of the Dawn Sea that would come to be known as Akavor's Grave. Borrig succeeded because the ancient magic of the Stuurkong was bolstered by the new magic of the Adventus Arcanum; allowing him to grow to a height of 60 feet in less than a week. In the Hjelkar Tundra, the dwarves were rejoicing a decisive victory over the frost giant invaders who had fallen to the armies of Clan Bastion; a burgeoning fourth clan of humans, elves and half-dwarves who established the northernmost dwarvish city of Türhelm. Finally, the Dragonlands began to stir to life once more with the return of magic, and the metallic dragons formed an alliance with the dragonborn, and the two allied races founded the great city of Odinex as a home for all civilised dragons.

Today, the kingdoms of Andara live in a state of relative peace and prosperity. Humania still remains bitter towards the rest of the world, and relations between Calar Dunn and Deepwood are tense due to their shared forest and heavily contested border, but the rest of the nations are largely friendly towards each other and often engage in trade and diplomacy.

Geography
The continent of Andara is a varied land, from frigid tundras in the south to arid badlands in the north. It is bordered on all sides by great seas and oceans, save for the south; where an uncharted expanse of hostile ice sheet lies beyond the southern mountains. Several rivers and mountain ranges break up the land, and many serve as borders between kingdoms.

The North
Northern Andara is generally accepted to be the region of characteristically warmer climate that extends as far south as the river Werg. Kingdoms in the north generally experience hot summers and mild winters, though rainfall differs greatly across the region, with Deepwood being categorised as temperate rainforest whilst the Dragonlands are dominated by arid shrubland. The north is generally less mountainous, though the Crownlands and Dragonlands have mountain ranges of their own. The Great North Ocean is the largest body of water in the known world, and it borders almost every coastline in the north. Trader's Bay sits in the centre, separating the north-west from the north-east. The Western Gulf and Dawn Sea are shared with other regions in Andara.

Kingdoms in the north include:


 * Calar Dunn
 * The Crownlands
 * Deepwood
 * The Dragonlands
 * The Isle of Tydor
 * Warmwood

Central Andara
Central Andara comprises of mostly flat plains and meadows periodically broken up by small mountain ranges, save for a wide expanse of steppe and sheer mountains in Bargob. To the far east, the province of Shadowfen is composed entirely of treacherous wetlands and a scattering of deadly sinkholes. The largest of these sinkholes, Yarrig's Maw, is the main entrance to the Underdark. The Western Gulf connects Westerlent to the Great North Ocean, and is separated from Surön's Bay by a large headland known as Yeera's Reach. To the east, Shadowfen is bordered by the Dawn Sea and Akavor's Grave, allowing the outer fringes of this province to support lush salt marshes.

Kingdoms in central Andara include:


 * Bargob
 * Humania
 * Shadowfen
 * Westerlent

The South
Southern Andara is home to only two kingdoms, but these are the largest on the continent. In spite of their size, large portions of these territories are unsuitable for living due to the perilously cold climate, particularly in the Hjelkar Tundra. Kozgomogh in the east experiences some seasonality, though winters are still bitterly cold. The Hjelkar Tundra however, exists in a state of almost perpetual winter, with a few months of sun and relative warmth around the height of summer. Surön's Bay and Akavor's Grave are the two main bodies of water bordering the south, though an expanse of ice floes and sea ice known as the Neversea lies to the west of the Hjelkar Tundra, and there is some debate as to whether this is actually a sea in its own right.

Kingdoms in the south include:


 * The Hjelkar Tundra
 * Kozgomogh