The Shaping of KASHän
“Whatever broke this world did not intend for us to have it.”
- Pelana Sevurath c. 4400 BR
Age of Divinity
1.8M - 12000 BR [Very Rare Knowledge]
Not much survives from the first beats of The World’s Heart. According to Ꞇőläp si Hwēn scholars, the world of Kǝʂän was created by the gods for one purpose; to be a battlefield for celestial civil war. For a time, Dümǝzid, god of birth/creation, and Mőrdét, god of consumption/destruction, were open enemies, and set their children, demi-gods collectively known as Cemünꞇél, to undo the works of the other. Dümǝzid crafted a ‘sacred tool’ of great power for their first-born to wield against Mőrdét and their followers, the Ēr-fănen; Mőrdét learned of this and, using Üseꞇcän, created a dark corruption of Dümǝzid's tool for their own spawn to wield, called the Lēr-wüyăsǝ, meaning ‘sorrowful weapon.’ Ēr-fănen and Lēr-wüyăsǝ met only once on the battlefield, on Kǝʂän, and that cataclysmic collision saw the war finished after eons of celestial power struggles. All of the gods’ first-born were felled by the volatile communion of opposing energies, dispersing their stardust on the war-torn world of Kǝʂän and in so doing bringing sentient humanoid life to the world.
It is not at all usual to find so many humanoid species congregating in such numbers on one world. Mortal humanoids occur, in time, on every world where their origin god was “dispersed.” There are outlying instances of migration between worlds, but none to the extent that would produce the diversity that exists on Kǝʂän. The Celestial Civil War ended in a grand cosmic battle on Kǝʂän, involving nearly all of the Origin Gods, or Cemünꞇél; however, most of the war took the shape of a series of duels and celestial skirmishes scattered throughout the Eꞇērēǝm and involved far fewer gods in any single engagement. This created an Eꞇērēǝm where most worlds are populated by relatively few humanoid species, some being dominated by one or two sentient species. Kǝʂän is different in this way; the concentration of stardust there is unique, as is the congregation of so many types of people.
At the meeting of the Ēr-fănen and the Lēr-wüyăsǝ, Kǝʂän itself was devastated. There was but one massive landmass at the world’s inception: The World’s Heart. From the epicenter of the event rolled a shockwave that reformed the earth, raising the Warden and Drakespine Mountains above the beaches of the Northern Coast and the Blacksalt and Coral Ridge Mountains flanking the Inbrokari peninsula to the south. The World’s Heart fractured and broke at its edges, shedding landmasses into the deepening seas where the long drift took them to their present places; these would become the lands known as Nador’at, The Crescent Isles, Othrequent, and others. For hundreds of miles in any direction around the event’s epicenter, the land would no longer take to life; grass and rock turned to sand. It has remained dead ever since. It is now known as ‘The Desert of the Damned,’ but it would not earn that name for a long time; that story is not one of gods, but one of mortals.
The shape of the celestial battlefield defined the shape of early mortal life on Kǝʂän. Triton were born at the bottom of the sea, Aarakocra on the small northern continents, and dragonborn on the jagged islands of Othrequent because that is where Alzálxǝbӓn, Ērsü, and Grrrǝmmbǝlhīst, respectively, were dispersed after the cataclysmic meeting of the Ēr-fănen and Lēr-wüyăsǝ. Bőgänē was not present at the Battle of Kǝʂän; firbolg would later migrate to Kǝʂän in small numbers from Fărē’wől. Small goliath communities would later arrive from far reaches of the Eꞇērēǝm, seeking corners of the world where they could hide from any gods still bitter from The Origin Wars. Ädämēǝ, Ärümǝwӓn, Crēelӓ, Gärgőraʂ, Dőrkärin, Năsiꞇ, Sälǝmac, Seräfēn, Sővelis, and Zéd were all dispersed across The World’s Heart. That is where the first histories are written: in the bedouin communities of The Great Desert, before it earned the name ‘The Desert of the Damned.’
Age of the Yolk
12000 - 8000 BR [Very Rare Knowledge]
Early humanoids were primitive, and unaided by the hands of the still dispersed Origin Gods that might have guided their early life. They were not alone in the Eꞇērēǝm, however, for this was not the first world ravaged by celestial war. Old mortal powers brought their influence to the newest breeding grounds of humanoids. The dwarf kingdoms of Desterä discovered Kǝʂän at a time of great need for their people, during the War of Desterän Dominion, when dwarves struggled against orcs and goblinoids for dominance of their wasteland world. The Desterän dwarf kings were losing that war and badly needed to reinforce their numbers. They shepherded the primitive dwarves of Kǝʂän to the mountain ranges in the north where they instructed them in dwarven culture and warfare before sending them to the front lines on Desterä. It was a sudden and great boon to the alien dwarven armies, one that turned the tide of the foreign war in favor of the dwarves. It was, however, a monumental and expensive undertaking to accomplish. Every dwarf was needed for the front lines on Desterä, yet the housing and training facilities planned for Kǝʂän would take an army to build in itself. The dwarves of Desterä decided that the other “primitive” humanoids of Kǝʂän would become slaves to the dwarven war machine.
For thousands of years, Kǝʂän’s diverse humanoids blended peaceably, surviving simply in small groupings throughout the generous desert that covered most of The World’s Heart. They had not known war before the dwarves of Desterä began their slave campaigns and were wholly unequipped to resist the veteran alien legions. The dwarves worked their slaves to death and threw their bodies back into the desert, where the sands would take them into obscurity. To escape the dwarf slavers, many communities stayed small and in motion; these calloused bedouin tribes were able to evade capture while resisting the harsh elements of the desert. Few static settlements survived by tight control of scarce resources, including people; authoritarian oasis offered slave tributes to the dwarves in exchange for peace.
Even with such a large workforce, the hollowing and hallowing of the Warden and Drakespine Mountains would take more than eight centuries. When the work was done, the Desterän funded slave campaigns ended, but slavery continued commonly on Kǝʂän for millennia until 8,431 BR, when it was finally outlawed by most major powers. The Desteräns had ushered in the darkest age of Kǝʂän's history, lasting four thousand years, and they had only been active there for a fraction of it. After so long the foreign dwarves had won dominion of Desterä and no longer needed the domestic dwarves of Kǝʂän; they abandoned the world to its corrupted fate. The dwarves of Kǝʂän inherited a vast undermountain-kingdoms stretching from the White Death to the Duerhagi Ocean, along with a standing army and the knowledge of the ancient Desterän kingdoms. The other mortals of Kǝʂän inherited untold generations of trauma. It was during this time The Great Desert was renamed The Desert of the Damned.
Age of Shifting Sands
8000 - 5400 BR [Rare Knowledge]
The small bedouin communities that had so tediously survived the Age of the Yolk continued on, growing yet never shaking their cautious nomadic roots. For a long time they feared the dwarves would once again come for them, but as centuries passed and the sands covered the bones of their ancestors, the histories became stories and the stories were largely forgotten; survival was a challenge in the Desert of the Damned, and there was enough to tend to in one's own life.
Free towns began to last, growing around common watering holes in the desert. Sprawling camps of tents and temporary structures rose beside oasis and seasonal rivers, tentative roots of a would-be great civilization. The largest of these formed in the hills above Narad Tobor, at the meeting of the Dabowhaz and Qapinyi Rivers. On that spot, in 8112 BR, Inbrokar was founded; it was the first free mortal city on Kǝʂän. For nearly three thousand years this order continued; small nations of nomadic peoples vying for life in a harsh landscape. Peoples would rise and fall in small instances of humanoid nature as fortunes passed from one to another, generation to generation.
All the while the aura of old horrors and ancestral trauma pegged the peoples south of the Warden and Drakespine Mountains. It is the people of this era that produce The Book of Eꞇērēǝm, as well as ancient saga's such as TheVallageid.
Age of Discovery
5400 - 4400 BR [Uncommon Knowledge]
Time eventually washed away old fears of the mountains to the north, as the fears of today had grip enough on the hardy desert people. Some bedouin nations believed in a paradise hidden beyond those mountains; some believers did not fear the old tales of dwarven terrors within them. In 5400 BR, thirteen such nations risked everything for a chance at this imagined paradise; they were called the Léʂik, or “fearless,” nations. The Léʂik crossed the Desert of the Damned in one great group, a harrowing journey that saw their weakest fall to the sands beside their enslaved ancestors. Those who survived the crossing arrived at a feature of their oldest nightmares, the dwarven gates of Kor Kadrakin, now called The Dead Pass. None would pass through, yet none would turn back. To go around would mean another harrowing journey, and to uncertain ends.
The Léʂik nations were determined to cross the mountains, yet couldn’t agree how to do so; they split into two groupings. The Léʂik Ǝp’hőwü, or “fearless hunters,” traveled east to the Duerhagi Ocean and crossed the Borim canals where their first glimpse of paradise was in the Green Wastes. The Léʂik Kätsü, or “fearless knowers,” traveled west to the White Death and crossed the Harruk River to behold their paradise in the western lakes. The first free folk had discovered The Spectral Coast, as lush and radiant as they had imagined. In this place manifested from the dreams of countless generations, the southerners thrived. Nomadic traditions were cast away as free cities emerged across the generous Spectral Coast.
Throughout the Age of Shifting Sands and much of the Age of Discovery, The Kǝʂäni dwarves lived isolated in their vast mountain holdings inherited from the Desterän Dominion War. Whether in shame, self-indulgence, or valid domestic occupations we do not know; what is certain is that they remained hidden from the world for thousands of years. It was the success and vibrancy of the free cities founded in the wake of the Léʂik migrations that finally drew them out in 4828 BR. The gates of Kor Kadrakin opened for the first time in four thousand years, and trade was reopened to the south. By then, the scattered nations of the desert had long formed the Behondӓri Confederation with its sprawling capital of Inbrokar. Of all the free cities of the Spectral Coast, only one rivaled it, the city of Malikesh. It was founded in 4385 BR by a fledgling organization of do-gooders called Ꞇőläp si Hwēn, and in less than four hundred years it grew larger in size and importance than Inbrokar could in four thousand years. Free trade opened up between The Spectral Coast, the dwarven kingdoms, and the Behondӓri Confederation, paving the way for a golden age of social, economic, and intellectual advancement.
Radiant Age
4400 BR - 0 R [Rare Knowledge]
Ꞇőläp si Hwēn’s golden age.
