History of Kelara

Aeon One: The Emergence

In chaos and primordial nothingness, everything and nothing existed at once. Every moment, never occurring and always occurring, until from the chaos and emptiness rose a being of pure light: Rauna. Rauna shed her light into the darkness and created the heavens, her love and partner in creation, Emos. Together, the couple bore Kelara into existence, a simple plane of order amongst the chaos, a place of creation and beauty, structure and intimacy in which the two could bear their love for one another.

From the union of Rauna and Emos grew first the heavenly bodies: Saarus, the Silver Moon; Darmir, the Blood Moon; Ila, the Shadow Moon, and Jidal, the Gold Moon.

Then on the surface of Kelara itself, the birth first of Mala, the Essence of Creation, She who rules over what mortals now refer to as magic. Then, the youngest children of Rauna and Emos, the twins, Aemis and Utana, opposite sides of the same coin, the Essences of Life and Death respectively.

From within these beings came everything that is now seen in the heavens and on the surface of Kelara. Life came, rising up first with the Paragons, beings of power created from within the elements of the natural world that was coming into existence. In these times, the gods themselves strode with the Paragons throughout creation, guiding and directing the fledgling world into its natural order.

Life grew and spread, the mortal races coming into creation to serve and entertain the gods and the paragons, and for a season, all was at peace and in harmony with one another.

Then Phadrius, a Paragon, burned with passion toward Jidal, the youngest and most beautiful of the heavenly children. His approaches toward her, though, were rebuffed many times, until his passion turned to anger, and he attacked Jidal, destroying her body and stretching the pieces across the night sky. Even in her broken state, though, Jidal maintained her beauty and continued to share her light across the night sky as millions of tiny sparkles, each a single point of celestial energy scattered throughout the darkness.

Aeon Two: The Paragon Wars

Grieving at the betrayal by the purest of their creations, the gods went to war with the paragons, and whilst the Celestials fought with their parents, the remainder of the Paragons fought against them. Battles raged throughout the heavens and across the surface of Kelara, bringing death and destruction to all of creation. The War of the Gods raged for sixty years until the gods and their Celestial supporters were defeated on the Island of Aeshirha, and were banished from their creation, leaving Kelara in the hands of the Paragons. No longer were the gods able to make contact with the world.

The Paragons who remained did not share the same care and adoration for creation that their parents had held, and enslaved the mortal races. A thousand years passed with Kelara enslaved by the Paragons, until the rise of the Great Dragons.

Under the leadership of Ayzzis, the Powerful, the Great Dragons provided a herald under which the mortal races could unify, and fight back against the tyranny and terror of the Paragons. These wars were fought back and forth for generations, as one side or the other would gain a level of ascendency. In time, though, the mortal races, led by the Great Dragons, were able to defeat the Paragons, either by sealing them away, or banishing them to the various planes outside that of the Material. The Great Dragons themselves, too, departed Kelara, leaving the mortal races to fend for themselves.

Even though this brought to end the Aeon of the Paragon Wars, the shadow of these wars continues to darken aspects of Kelara even today, borne in conflicts between dragonkind, the descendents of the Great Dragons, and the Giantkin, descendents of the Paragons.

Aeon Three: The Silence

With the Gods and the Paragons gone, the mortal races suddenly found themselves rulers of their own destinies, and writers of their own fates. Elves, Humans, Dwarves, and others all began to forge their own civilisations and societies.

Great cities were built, and life for the mortal races thrived. Even though wars raged, and empires rose and fell, people lived and died in the hands of their own kind, and not at the behest of beings who controlled them. In the absence of the immortals of the Paragons and the Gods, magic also became a lost form to the world, and for a time, the existence of anything outside of the material plane was forgotten, lost to legend and kept only in tomes of the most ancient of histories, hidden away in the deepest corners of libraries.

For five thousand years Kelara lived in Silence from the planes beyond.

Aeon Four: The Incursion

As Kelara entered its sixth millennium of Silence, it seemed that the world may continue for its entire existence with no further involvement from the gods or the planes beyond – a destiny known to many material realms.

That was until, purely by accident, a demon by the name of Xegath created a rift from the Abyssal Plane into Kelara. With access to the plane torn open, demonic forces poured into the world and laid waste to the civilisations of mortals. Many, many lives were lost as cities were razed, civilisations were shattered, and once again, many of the mortals of Kelara were enslaved to masters of a nature beyond their ability to fight.

The technological advances of The Silence were gradually destroyed, ineffective against beings of a supernatural existence. Over the next eight hundred years, the destinies that mortals had written for themselves were torn down and cast into the darkness that now reigned supreme in the hands of the demonic rulers.

Aeon Five: The Exemplifications

It was during the time when demons ruled the lands of Kelara that a small group of mortals began to rise up, waging a guerrilla war against the demons. Calling themselves the Guardians in the Darkness, it was an Elven woman, Anthaea Ulariel, who discovered the ancient tome that spoke of Kelara’s history and origins.

The Guardians began to call out to the gods, crying for their return and to intervene in the world once more.

Saarus, the God of the Silver Moon, was the first of the gods to respond to the mortals’ cries. In response, he sent his essence to the ranger, Xandarai Irediel. Xandarai became the Exemplification of Saarus in Kelara, allowing the god to bring his presence to Kelara without stepping back into the material plane directly. Through Xandarai, Saarus created the first Lycans, and an army began to grow that could, perhaps, fight the demonic rulers of Kelara.

Soon after, the remaining gods also Exemplified themselves within mortals in Kelara. Magic began to return to the world, first the divine, and then, with Mala’s Exemplification, arcane magic also.

The Exemplifications, imbued with the Divine Spark, found themselves able to share this resource with others around them, and over the coming generations, a number of new deities began to rise up as various mortals came to Exemplify particular traits or aspects of the world around them. Yet their influence continued to cause trouble for the mortals on the material plane. In an effort to allow the mortal races control over their own destinies, the Great Dragons, those both of the Material Planes and those beyond, came together and through their own combined power, and for some, sacrifice, the dragons created The Veil – a mystical barrier between the Material Planes and the Spiritual Planes beyond, creating a distinct separation between mortals and immortals.

With the power of the gods and the essence of creation returning to the material plane, the mortal races were again able to free themselves from the rule of the demons, celestials, and even the gods. Deities still held enough power to maintain their worshipers, other creatures were able to hold a level of psychic influence over those who created deep connections, but for the majority of the inhabitants of Kelara, their destiny was their own.

Aeon Six: The Great Peace

This era became known as The Great Peace, a period of mortal self-recognition and control.The surviving Great Dragons stepped away, retreating to their own homes and caverns, resting, allowing the inhabitants of Kelara to take control of the world they lived in. For generations, life remained peaceful, at least in comparison to the turmoil that had previously overshadowed these beings and their lives.

Over nearly 2000 years, the mortal races rebuilt their civilisations. Wars were fought, lands were won and lost, legends were made, and great stories were told. The stories told now, though, were of men and elves and dwarves who fought other men and elves and dwarves, or any number of other creatures that existed here. No longer were legends told about those individuals fighting off demons or elementals or other supernatural beings. Those beings, still alive in myth and memory, became the tales of fantasy, rather than reality.

Unbeknownst to the residents of the Material Planes, though, and unforeseen by even the Great Dragons as they created The Veil, another problem was growing.

For while The Veil prevented the Elementals, the Demons, the Celestials, even the Gods from trespassing back from their realms to the Material Planes, it also prevented the souls of those who died from passing through to the spiritual life beyond. In a corner of the Dusk Plane, one of the three Material Planes known as The Interweave, the passage between life and death, between mortality and immortality, was also sealed. As mortals died, their souls, drawn to the Chasm that provided passage to the planes beyond, became trapped, unable to pass on, unable to remain in life.

As the souls continued to gather, the mystical city Umbralith grew ever more populous as souls gathered, until an opportunity arose. A unique alignment of the three moons of Kelara, and the great start, the Heart of Jidal, combined with a planetary solstice brought a harmonisation of arcane and spiritual power that could potentially provide an opportunity to bring The Veil down. An assembly of great powers was brought together, and successfully managed to reopen the door between the planes, freeing the souls of those who had passed – but once again opening the threat of invasion from those creatures who lived beyond.

Aeon Seven

Most philosophers and historians acknowledge that the world has entered another, new Aeon, one which is yet to be given a name. There are those who have already started calling it The Age of Arcanotech, but others believe that the 78 years that have passed since The Veil was destroyed is too soon to provide any definition to this new Aeon. The rapid rise of the nation of Etheria, and its command over Arcanotech is certainly a defining feature of this century, but many scholars lean toward waiting to see what impact it may have globally, if any, before suggesting that this is the only defining factor of the latest chapter in Kelara’s history.

That is yet to be seen…