OF THE THIRD AGE
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Foolish mortals. They had no idea that the war of all wars that was about to befall them. As you know, politics abhors a vacuum, and in the absence of The She, the Middle Plane was an irresistible prize and even as the children of She slaughtered each other, the forces of Ehrimon and Az were collecting and planning the Great War, one which would consume and burn Midaerd for generations. Some accounts of this war are poetic, and some are antiseptic historical tracts. The truth was much more profound. Midaerd became, for more than a century, a blackened expanse of death and misery. Elf killed dwarf, shedim killed demon, elohim killed shayatin. And men (of course) slew other men, for having lost their goddess She, mankind cast about for other gods and fought on either side of the great conflict for any wandering warlord. It was a time of rapidly shifting diplomatic landscapes – a time of great opportunity for the politically astute, but for the rest there was naught but confusion and despair.
As dismal a time as the Third Age was, it marks the beginning of human history. The elves had been tracking the progression of time throughout much of the Second Age but it was the introduction of the unified dwarven calendar, for which the Sundering became year zero, which signaled the ascendancy of men on Midaerd, the development of a new sense that mortals were the inheritors of the Middle Plane rather than the gods who had been fighting and dying on the earth for so long, waging wars like greedy children for passions and vices no more elevated than those of common men.
Contributing to this, the gods soon finished expending their fury on each other and withdrew at the close of their war to recover their strength and pursue concerns which they had long ignored. There were conflicts enough in the Hells to consume their attentions and other diplomatic and intellectual issues for both elohim and shayatin who found now that they, like the humans, had been cast upon an ocean without a rudder. In the Heavens, as in the Hells, a new era was unfolding. The fictional depictions of the disappearance of Az and Ehrimon, while satisfying to the senses, are of dubious origin, based on aesthetics more than anything else. Only an artist would have the audacity to claim to understand why Az and Ehrimon receded from the milieu and only a mortal would be gullible enough to take that artist seriously. Regardless, the simple fact remained that the order of the Heavens was in the hands of a bureaucracy instead of Az, and the order of the Hells would be established in the absence of Ehrimon by a lethal game of risk and consequence.
Profound changes followed in both Heaven and Hell of which much can be said, but this is not my purpose here. The effects on Midaerd are of interest to you, and on Midaerd, across every shard of that limitless plane, there was to be a sorting out. The Kaz were coming into their own, those whom you call dwarves. With networks of tunnels and chambers stretched like veins beneath the stony skin of every continent, they had learned to eschew the company of the other races and attend to their own matters. This lesson, hard-earned, served them well. While the orcneas spread across the lands and alliances between men and elves were broken and repaired in their never-ending surface conflicts, the Kaz remained neutral, steadfastly refusing to become involved in external matters.
The elves understood the folly of becoming entangled in interaction with the other races but their position was more difficult, dwelling as they did beneath the same stars as the other more prolific races. They found themselves incessantly entangled in conflicts not of their own choosing. But the elves were the strongest of mortal races. As children of the shedim, the descendants of Az and She, their facility with aeon was strong and their power on Midaerd reflected their singleness of purpose. While men engaged in every pursuit and indulged every whim, the elves remained true to She, nurturing her gifts, mindful of her intent, and they learned to use their mastery of nature-magicks to recede from the conflicts which embroiled human, orc, and giant. They retreated to forests deep and thick, woven strong with enchantments of song and light and disappeared from the wider world, surrounded by faeries and animals and sylvan creatures, worshipping directly the embodiments of She on the middle plane – spirits of nature, the Plaedyr, and the Jann – many of whom joined the courts of elven nobles deep within secluded haunts protected by powerful spells.
This was fine for elf and dwarf. They and a few other advanced races, such as the Thyrsmaega, the Gnomge, and the Sothans, found that the general chaos of the Third Age created an environment that could be exploited through organization. Deep in dwarven halls the Kaz forged crafty works and weapons of strength and developed the thaumaturgy of rune magicks with the power of Arcana to protect their gates and conceal their passages. They called upon Enaa and the other Elder Elemental Gods who had formed them from the middle plane and were granted the power to move and shape earth, harness fire, channel water, and purify air in their kingdoms far beneath the surface.
In the glades of the elves they crafted songs and wove strands of mithril into armor of unequalled strength and beauty. Far less is known of their affairs than those of the dwarves, for the history of the Kaz was recorded in their stonework and inscribed in armor and shield, but elven histories were kept by the bards in story and in song and passed down through generations in woodland revels and by quite fires unheard by the rough ears of strangers. In the forests and dells and under the waves, the elves built spiraling cities, havens filled with mirth and warmth–and not even I can blame them for that.
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