The Third Epoch

from 1700 BCB to 471

 

-1700 to Year 471

The Third Epoch is loosely dated to about 1700 years prior to the founding of Briunida. This timing coincides with a general return to a ‘normal’ climate, following the end of the Ash Winter. The Third Epoch stretches beyond the official founding of Briunida, and the creation of the first correct annual calendar by Matriarch Briuni IV, 181 years later (which then permitted backdating to establish the Year 0 as being the year the city was founded). The Third Epoch ends with the Orcish Conquests that last from the Year 327 until the Orcish Hordes are finally eliminated at Briunida in 471, marking the beginning of the Fourth Epoch.

The Third Epoch is often referred to as The Sowing, as it is considered by historians to be an era in which many conceptual ‘seeds’ were planted that would have lasting repercussions on later eras. This long period of nearly 2200 years is marked by geological stability, environmental recovery, rapid population growth, agrarian and urban expansion, and technological and magical development.

The Beginnings of Civilization

The first few centuries of The Sowing see the near simultaneous emergence of agriculture on all of the major Continents except Obersch and Inik. The broad distribution of many species, and their willingness to consider mutually beneficial co-existence led to many nomadic tribes settling to form mixed species settlements that could more efficiently divide labour and share resources than could single species settlements.

Semi-permanent or seasonal settlements adapted with the development of agriculture, pottery and fermenting and salting techniques to become permanent settlements. Humans, Halflings, Porcine and Canis species flourished in these mixed settlements. Taurans, Avians, and in some cases Spriggan, Lizari and Ursan tribes would expand these settlements and become ‘seasonal time-sharers’.

The continually shifting demographics of these settlements created a rich context for knowledge sharing and trade. By the middle centuries of the Third Epoch, mathematics, writing, and the calendar had been reinvented. While there were many different early calendars, none of them were in sync, and none of them were correct, but they did provide the basis for later scholars to more accurately date events in the last half of the Third Epoch.

The Rise of Tatra

Sometime about 500 years before the founding of Briunida, with the invention of the magnetic compass (-350) a settlement referred to in many early records as Tatra began to grow in prominence. With easy access to the fertile lands of northern Tulosz and the rising importance of sea-trade, Tatra entered a golden era characterized by explosive growth in population and in economic and political power.

In the Year -309, the Matriarch Briuni The First, was elected to govern Tatra. While her rule was not particularly remarkable, it is important because it is the earliest known event that can be precisely backdated from multiple independent records. Prior to this, all dates are estimates that require cross-referencing multiple ancient records to try to pin-point an exact date.

Briunida

Between Year -309 and the year that would come to be known as the Year 0, Tatra grew to become the most important trade center in the world. Other major settlements, particularly those in the Senecian Archipelago and on the east coast of Golanicja expanded rapidly also. At the same time, similar expansions were happening in Marcosta, Jumira and Ayodesh. Important settlements were expanding at Kovstepovi, Miga, Calighenna, Careronhas and Port Cevic, among several other places.

In the Year 0, the then Elected Matriarch Briuni III of Tatra mandated that governance be turned over to a Council. The position of single elected ruler was dissolved and the first Council was elected. Among the hundreds of operational and bureaucratic changes that were adopted was the mandate to officially Charter the city, and to rename it Briunida. Due to the political and economic prominence of Briunida, many other cities around the world followed suit, restructuring their governance to at least a limited extent, and developing their own Charters.

The Charter of Briunida becomes a template constituting document defining the rule of law, the rights and responsibilities of citizens and government, as well as establishing a collaborative offer by the city to the surrounding autonomous rural areas after [FIX 240 years] of work, the Passage of Miga is completed, it includes over 40 systems of locks and 11 major canals, the longest running over 12km. It is the largest engineering project in history, with two of its canals being the 2nd and 3rd largest.

In the Year 180, scholars at the Natural University of Briunida finally managed to accurately measure the planetary motion of Vehira, Azane, Tear and the Siblings and formalize a correct calendar for the first time since the First Epoch. The Natural Calendar of Briunida was made official on 1 Ember the following year and was backdated to the Chartering of the city, 181 years previously, making 1 Ember Year 181 the first day under the new calendar. The Natural Calendar of Briunida was rapidly adopted around the world and remained in use until the end of the Fourth Epoch.

(While conflict in the Third Epoch was rare, the period of rapid expansion in the seven or eight centuries prior to and the Year 181 was exceptionally peaceful. Resources were plentiful, the land was bounteous, and there was lots of room to expand. People who were unhappy with their lot could strike out with comparative ease to make a new life for themselves, and many did.)

It wasn’t until the last two centuries of the Third Epoch that resource constraints started to be an issue. An unusual cold snap in the late spring of Year 198 devastated crops across Tulosz. For the first time in recorded history, there were serious food shortages. The cities were the hardest hit, as the lack of centralized national governance meant there was no way to press the smaller villages and towns that supported the cities to collaborate in rationing. Food riots and disorder began sweeping Tulosz and the Senecian Archipelago.

Fortunately, Briunida was wealthy enough to spend the Continent out of famine and anarchy by buying grain and other foodstuffs from overseas, but by this time, other large cities around the world were starting to feel the pinch as well. The soil enrichment provided by the Ash Winter had fueled rapid population growth for hundreds of years, but most of that benefit was gone. Agriculture had been getting harder for centuries, even as the populations swelled and spread. Whether the land could sustain so many rapidly growing societies was a question no one had ever thought to ask.

In the late Third Epoch, populations continued to grow and cities continued to expand in size and power. At the same time, societies began to stratify - the wealthy got wealthier and poor got poorer. Working the land got harder, and increasingly, those who were not satisfied with their lot found themselves with nowhere to go. Hungry and afraid, they would just have to work a little bit hard, for a little bit less.

Disagreements between cities often boiled over into trade wars, which, in turn, increasingly gave way to actual conflict. In the last hundred years of the Third Epoch, many skirmishes were fought, raids were common, and piracy was on the rise. It is unclear whether the Orc Conquests directly caused the City States of the late Third Epoch to merge into Imperial States, or whether they were merely a catalyst for an inevitable transformation that would soon have happened anyway.

The Early Orc Conquests

Prior to the beginning of the Orc Conquests in 327, tensions were already on the rise in most areas of the world. The Cities, once flourishing epicenters of opportunity, were increasingly overpopulated, crime-ridden, and falling into disrepair. The indirect influence that the Cities had over their surrounding regions was fine in a time of plenty, but as resources became scarce the lack of formal, centralized governance started to create serious problems. In the Cities themselves, the rich were getting richer, the poor were getting poorer, and power was aggregating in and among a few important families. Most Chartered Cities were still run by elected Councils, but many of these Councils had either become de facto hereditary monarchies, or were simply controlled from the shadows by the powerful trade families that actually ran the Cities.

When the first Orc Armies marched out of the Iron Ridge Mountains, no one was prepared to stop them. A few short decades of raiding villages and towns in the early 4th Century only served to put smiles on the faces of the rulers of Cities like Kovstepovi and Potovic, who were happy to have the ‘uncooperative peasants’ turn to them for military help. This lackadaisical attitude toward a growing threat not only disaffected the rural population and left them disinclined to support the cities, but also emboldened the Orc Chieftains.

Scholars believe that in 326 several Orc Chieftains went to war with one another over the spoils of their raiding down the east coast of Golanicja. This war led to the emergence of Golga as the most powerful and feared warlord of all the Orc Chieftains, and suddenly, a dozen marauding tribes became an army larger than that of any existing City.

Golga realized the power she had just seized, and decided on a whim to rule the world. In 327, an Orc army numbering perhaps 50,000 strong, supported by hundreds of trained Ogres and thousands of subjugated Goblins destroyed the City of Dumi in a single day. The massacre was horrific - tens of thousands were slain, and as many more were enslaved. Thousands of them were marched across the Iron Ridge Mountains to deliver the spoils of war to Orc Chieftains in the west - most of whom pledged allegiance to Golga. Those who didn’t were swiftly eliminated and their armies rolled into the Orcish Horde.

Orcs had never been known to put to sea, so many powerful families and the ruling Councils in major cities on other continents gloated over the destruction of their rivals as the Orcs razed city after city in Golanicja. But Golga’s ambition was not to conquer Golanicja - it was to conquer the world, and while Orcs could not sail, slaves could. By 334, with the port cities of Brinjevi, Potovic and Coal Harbour under her control, among others, hundreds of ships set sail for other Continents.

No one expected that before even a third of Golanicja had fallen Orc Armies would be coming ashore in Marcosta, Jumira and Ayodesh. Golga’s swiftness and aggression continued to take everyone by surprise. In 336, Golga landed in Tulosz, and in 338, following a brutal winter siege, Briunida fell, and was razed to the ground.

Golga, drunk on power at having conquered the greatest city ever built, declared herself Empress of the World, and continued her campaign eastward across Tulosz. By 344, the entire world was gripped with terror. The Orcs were coming, and they were coming from every direction, and soon. The Orcish willingness to subjugate Goblins and particularly Tuckers - who breed quickly and give birth to combat-ready young - meant that their armies were virtually always operating at full strength.

By 345, every major city north of the Shining Mountains in Golanicja, and every major city below the Plains of Bulostioi in Tulosz was either under her direct control, had capitulated and was sending tribute and supplies, or had been destroyed. In addition, her extended armies had strong footholds in Jumira and Ayodesh, having captured the powerful port cities of Sathirajan and Goldport.

In less that 20 years, Golga had brought more of the world under her control than any other leader in history, and was on her way to ruling the entire world. Some scholars in the Fourth Epoch have speculated that the reason for her sudden defeat is that the subjugation of Goblins and Tuckers created a killing frenzy that necessitated constantly accelerating conquest - unable to keep the pace required, her commanders turned against her and murdered her in Year 345.

The Middle Orc Conquests

But Golga’s assassination did not end the Orcish Conquests. It was only the end of the beginning. The Chieftains commanding the Orc Armies in Golanicja, Ayodesh and Jumira were now free of needing to show fealty and pay tribute back to Golga in Tulosz, and they became autonomous. They continued to press their attacks westward across the Odeshi Wastes and into the heartland of Ayodesh, and southward across the Passage of Miga in Golanicja

In Jumira and Marcosta, however, Golga’s potential successors began squabbling over power. This led to destructive in-fighting between the fragmented Orcish Armies, and even Cities that had capitulated to avoid being destroyed were now being targeted as aspiring Chieftains looked to consolidate power.

Thirty years of constant infighting led to the total collapse of centralized Orcish Command - the once world-spanning Horde was now a thousand scattered armies, raging and pillaging wherever they could, without any goal or direction. This chaos finally opened the door for resistance.

Sometime prior to Year 380, Dwarves who had been rounded up and sent to work the mines in the Iron Ridge Mountains began to overwhelm their Goblin slave-masters and seize control of the tunnels that they had been forced to dig. As the Dwarven resistance spread from mine to mine, the Dwarves united under the leadership of Torbjorn Kostevic, and began to recapturing parts of central Golanicja. Very quickly, Orcish access to weapons and armour was cut off, and several Chieftains and their armies were drawn into doomed attempts to root the Dwarves out of their tunnels.

In Year 383, Torbjorn Kostevic recaptured the city of Kovstepovi, and was unanimously declared King Torbjorn I, of Golanicja by his newly formed army. Over the next several years, King Torbjorn I liberated villages and towns throughout the Iron Ridge Mountains, retaking mines, and strengthening his armies with Dwarven miners who had been shipped here from all around the world to work as slaves.

By Year 388, the fragmented Orcish Armies that ringed the Continent were in disarray, and King Torbjorn set out to retake what he was now calling the 'Dwarven Homeland’. His appeal to nationalism and a kind of species-centric entitlement to a historic homeland was utterly without grounding in historical fact, but it worked. As King Torbjorn moved west and captured Brinjevi and then split his armies to move north and south to retake both Smoljeno and Miga, he was celebrated as a hero (which he was), and recognized as the rightful Dwarven King by the re-seated Councils of the Charter Cities as he liberated them one by one.

Similar uprisings were beginning in other lands. In Inik, in the Year 391 where the hot jungle climate had always stymied the Orcs, several bands of Lizari resistance fighters united under the leadership of Dugasa Zul to retake both Addisc and Tzeb. Having never managed to capture Verdant or Blue Harbour, the Orcs were left without a significant port. Under-supplied and isolated in the treacherous and inhospitable swamplands of central Inik, the Orc forces were wiped out as much by infection and disease as by the hit-and-run guerrilla tactics of Dugasa Zul’s irregular forces. After recapturing Grove in 392, Inik was fully liberated and the continent was declared the seat of the Lizari Empire. Dugasa Zul was named to serve as absolute ruler, and Zul became the hereditary title of all future rulers of the Empire.

In southern Kashdush, in 396, Spriggan-led armies, supported by the first soldiers of the legendary Stol Rosoi from Obersch recaptured Hashuin, and declared Kashdush to be the Spriggan homeland, supposedly ruled a eoten monarch. In reciprocation for their military support, the Spriggan helped the people of Obersch begin recapturing occupied cities in Obersch, including Weymedac and Port Cedar in 400 and 402 respectively. In Year 404, the Ursan Matriarch Irmgard Eisfaust signed the Treaty of Gojod with King Torbjorn I, which recognized Obersch as an Ursan nation, distinct from the Dwarven Kingdom of Golanicja.

By 410, Human, Canis, Halfling, Porcine and Tauran forces united under the banner of the human Princess Desdiima, who claimed to be descended from the Briuni dynasty. The diversity of their forces afforded them a mixed strategy on the battlefield that proved very effective. Heavily armoured Human and Porcine infantry were an even match for Orcs, and fast and strong Taurans, and light agile Canis forces were able to continually harass Orcish flanks or break their formations. After repelling the Orcish armies at Bulostioi, the Tuloszian armies refined and improved their tactics, and began a push south the west, recapturing Zgesi and Longdawn, and opening up access to strategically important ports on the Widow’s Sea.

Meanwhile, Elves and Avians - supported by Merfolk who had largely ignored the Orcish Conquests up to this point - began to retake the Senecian Archipelago. Starting from Coral, and moving one island at a time, the Elves, Avians and Merfolk fought their way north. In 415, they laid siege to Poglia. Tuloszian naval forces supported the siege and were able to consistently defeat undisciplined Orcish naval forces attempting to resupply or reinforce the city by sea. Blockaded and starving, but unwilling to surrender, the Orcs begin the ‘Bleeding of Poglia’ - the organized executions of important individuals and captured officers in hopes of forcing their attackers to stand down

In 416, in response to this brutality, an underground resistance formed. Many prominent individuals with important political connections were smuggled out of the city. Organized assassinations of Orcish commanders began. There were reprisals after reprisals, and within weeks Poglia was embroiled in a reign of terror. Every day the Orcish armies were forced to fight to repel the siege, and every night more of their leadership would end up assassinated.

As the city devolved into anarchy, a young Elven woman named Lucillia Vindis, who had some renown as a singer, dancer and actress in the Poglia Theatre Company, was revealed as the leader of the resistance. Her family were promptly captured and put to the sword, but rather than sneaking away into hiding, she made a dramatic show of her revenge. Each day she would publicly announce the next day’s assassinations - sometimes over a dozen names. Mostly these were Orc officers, champions or officials, but sometimes they were suspected sympathizers or profiteers. For weeks, without fail, everyone she named ended up dead the same day - often in spectacular and grisly fashion; one particularly feared Orc champion had his belly opened and his intestines thrown into the cages with his own war dogs who slowly dragged him in, screaming, as they devoured him.

As Orcish morale collapsed, Poglia was put to the torch in 417, and thousands were slaughtered in the final anarchic days of the battle. When Princess Desdiima's ships were finally able to come safely into port to begin resupplying the city, Lucillia Vindis was standing on the dock to welcome them. With Poglia secured, the Elven and Avian forces were able to link up with the Tuloszian forces and re-establish critical supply lines. Lucillia Vindis and her cadre of resistance fighters were tentatively welcomed into the Elvish forces, and their armies began heading clockwise back through the Senecian Archipelago.

The Last Battle of Poglia was considered to be one of the most important turning points of the Orcish Conquests. While Orcish forces had suffered many defeats around the globe in the preceding thirty years, Poglia represented the final turn of the tide. Orcish forces would prove to be extremely tenacious and difficult to root out, but would never again make any significant territorial gains.

The Late Orc Conquests

As of 420, the largest and strongest Orcish forces were still firmly ensconced in western Tulosz, and they’d had decades to fortify their positions. As Human led forces pushed their way westward through Tulosz and Elvish forces slowly reconquered island after island in the Senecian Archipelago, Orcish forces continued to fall back, condensing and fortifying as they went. First they held the ring of cities around the Sea of Pearls, but when Elvish naval forces returned the favours Princess Desdiima had given them at Poglia by blockading Port Treasure, Bolesti, and Iorica as the Princess attacked from the land, the Orcs were routed and forced to retreat to Derniu, Oxenford and Shalesbridge in 442.

In 451, after almost ten years of fighting to get across any river into western Tulosz, Princess Desdiima died of natural causes at the age of 66. Command of the Princess’ forces fell to her War Council - a collective of Human, Halfling, Porcine, Canis and Tauran Generals and Admirals who had been her closest advisors for many years. Unfortunately, the rivers that separated western Tulosz from the bulk of the continent seemed impassable, and the Orcish strongholds that protected the major crossings were indomitable. The Elves were years away from completing the circle and recapturing the Senecian Archipelago and the Dwarves in Golanicja were still digging out the last Orcish holdouts in their own ‘homeland'.

While the War Council was efficient and organized, morale began to deteriorate as the westward push stalled. Concerned that the loss of Princess Desdiima had robbed their armies of some abstract notion of hope, the War Council leaned into the same sorts of nationalistic appeals that had worked in Golanicja, Inik, Kashdush and Obersch. In 454, the War Council declared that Prince Szoliu, eldest son of Princess Desdiima, and a descendant of Queen Briuni IV, was the rightful heir to the ‘Throne of Tulosz’ (which was not, and had never been, a thing). Regardless of the speciousness of this claim, it achieved the desired affect. Human, Halfling, Canis, and Porcine forces were particularly pleased with the notion that they were now fighting to restore their ‘Kingdom’, and the Tauran forces, while not particularly enthusiastic, were at least not openly opposed.

So began a new and aggressive push into western Tulosz. In 456 a clever ruse allowed a large force to take the city of Szelain, and the Orcish line of defense was breeched. In that same year, Lucillia Vindis organized and led an invasion of the main island of Senecia with surprise landings at Admiral’s Landing and Veliola - trapping Calighenna in a pincer.

By 460, Shalesbridge and Oxenford both fell, and Prince Szoliu’s forces were moving north and south, crushing the Orcish forces in the southwestern subcontinent, and sweeping the northern coast all the way to Resounding, reestablishing reliable trade connections to the Ursans in Obersch and the Dwarves in Golanicja.

In 462, Lucillia Vindis led the Elvish and Avian armies that recaptured Calighenna, while their naval forces carried on to land at Cantosc where they would begin to retake the last remaining island in the Archipelago. Strangely, shortly after Calighenna was liberated, the Merfolk forces that had provided significant support to the Elven and Avian war effort for over fifty years seemed to virtually evaporate around this time, having seemingly lost any interest in continuing the war effort.

Starting in 463, as the Elves consolidated power and liberated the last remaining towns and villages in Senecia, the Elves were suddenly stricken by an unusual disease. The ‘bird fever’ as it was called, seemed to pass very easily between Avians, but left them with only very mild symptoms. When it was transmitted to Elves, however, the disease was very dangerous. It would seemingly lay dormant for several days, before striking the victim with an intense and horrific hemorrhagic fever. Between 463 and 465 about three-quarters of the Elven population are believed to have been infected, and about one in every five who caught it died. In total, about one out of every seven Elves was taken by the fever - a staggering loss of life that was piled on top of the deaths caused by almost a century and a half of war. A large portion of the senior leadership of the Elvish forces succumbed to the disease, which affected older individuals much more seriously. Lucillia Vindis was even reported to have fallen ill for several weeks, but being much younger, she made a full recovery.

In 467, Povescia was recaptured. As the last Orcish stronghold in Senecia, the entire Archipelago was declared free. Lucillia Vindis began consolidating political power in Calighenna and declared that while the war in Senecia was over, she would commit all her forces to supporting the push to liberate what she called ‘The Kingdom of Tulosz’. Hundreds of ships sailed into the Sea of Pearls and began reinforcing the armies of Prince Szoliu, and by the spring of 469 the last remaining Orcish forces in the world were encircled and blockaded in Briunida.

At the same time, the Dwarves in Golanicja managed to liberate the last of their own cities, and several legions of combat hardened Dwarves set sail from Kovstepovi and Citadel to join what would be the final battle of a war that had started long before any of those who would fight in it were even born.

The Battle of Briunida lasted two years, and the Orcs stood their ground to the very end. The city had been all but destroyed when it was first conquered by Golga in 338, and what remained by the end of 471, after two years of relentless siege was little more than pile of rubble and corpses.

The last Orc to fall; Tomug War-Bringer, is said to have slain 471 people in his final stand. His name is legend, and Orcs believe that he ascended to the Celestial Realms where he was taken by Golga as her Consort in eternal life. Every year since, 471 wreathes are released into the Bay of Briunida while an effigy of Tomug War-Bringer is put to the torch.

With Briunida all but wiped from the map, the Human led forces fell back to the city of Cogovahe, at the head the Bay of Briunida, on the estuary of the Shale River. There the War Council declared Prince Szoliu to be the first King of Tulosz, and in honor of his mother, who had begun the great campaign to retake the continent from the Orcs, Cogovahe was renamed Desdiima, and made the seat of power of the newly formed Kingdom.

At the same time, almost as if in an attempt to have the declaration go unnoticed amidst the triumphal celebrations, a minority contingent of Elven and Avian Admirals, Generals and City Councillors nominated Lucillia Vindis to accept the title Empress of Senecia. While there seemed at first to be some confusion about whether it was even legal to create an Empress, a few key dissenters disappeared and several others changed their minds. Before 471 drew to an end, Lucillia Vindis was crowed Empress of Senecia in Calighenna.

Thus did the end of the Orcish Conquests see the formation of six powerful new nation states; the Dwarven Kingdom of Golanicja (now passed to Torbjorn II following his father’s death), the Lizari Empire (which had already seen three Zuls since Dugasa Zul had passed), the Kashdushan Monarchy (allegedly ruled by a eoten monarch, who no one outside Kashdush had ever seen), the Ursan Matriarchy of Obersch (now passed to Irmgard Eisfaust III), the Kingdom of Tulosz, ruled by the aging King Szoliu, who claimed to be descended from the Briuni dynasty, and the Elven Empire of Lucillia Vindis, an actress turned resistance leader.

While some of the so-called Six Empires were founded on dubious claims, collectively they governed over three-quarters of the world’s population. As dust settled on the Third Epoch, how those Empires would govern, and how they would choose to deal with the ‘ungoverned’ world of autonomous City States would come to define the Fourth Epoch.