Design Diary: The Time Before Years

Earlier (has it really been a year and a half??), I posted a slimmed-down timeline of “known events” for the Throne of Stars Blackmoor Chronology (which I have termed “Thorn’s World That Was.”)

That answered a few of the players’ questions about ‘recent events,' covering the arrival of the Twins in the North, and the legends that have sprung up about them in the time since.

Before the World That Was, though, there was a span of ages which Rowena refers to the Time Before Years: both the time before they stepped from the Twilight Realm within the Evershard, as well as the eons before their spirits were anchored to the land by Becoming. 

We know a little of the pre-history of the world based on events outlined in the annals of the Immortals, songs and legends of the elves, some of which they say were sung by the Summer Queen herself.

Havard recounts some of these events in his first draft for an elven timeline.

I have taken the liberty to fill in yet more of the blanks.

-5.000 The Cthonian Age comes to an end. 

End of the Carnifex-Immortal War. Sar Aigu driven from the Blackmoor Peninsula by a mysterious force, in the shape of a Black Sphere. (HW, DoCBM, MT) 

The Carnifex-Immortal War was locked in stalemate for a millenia, but the balance was slowly tipping in favor of the black sorceries of the Carnifex. There was a schism in the court of the fey, an Aetheric folk of the multiverse: some wished to lend aid to the war effort, despite edicts from their queen forbidding involvement with the Immortals. The princess of one of the leading Houses, Morganna, argues that the Sun Lord’s betrayal — though not forgotten — need to be left to the past. Ashira's sacrifice would come to naught, if time and the universes themselves come unraveled, which would come to pass if the Carnifex tip the scales of war any further in their favor.

Morganna rallies nearly half of feydom to her cause. The Court is split, into Twilight and Dawn factions, and Morganna is named titania of the Twilight Court. She loses close to half of her people in aiding Ixion and the other Immortals against the Carnifex. As their magics were integral in crafting the trap that sealed the Carnifex within the prison dimension, the Twilight Court pledge to guard the prison, to atone for their late arrival to the war.

A faction within the Court of Dawn attempts to awaken the Summer Queen's daughter, Ashira, in order to activate the Dream of Fire. Enraged, Ixion casts the Dawnfae out, stripping them of their immortality, cursing their descendants to be incapable of full reincarnation, as was the way of all of the fey folk.

Fallen from the Celestial Realms, the fey of the Dawn Court settle in the isles of Evergrun, on the planet of Mystara….