[TBD — Before Record]
The First Age
Creation of God's Nest; the coming of the Six
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In the beginning, as mortals understand it, the world of God's Nest was shaped and left in the care of six dragon gods. These six — known as the Six or the Dragon Gods — were appointed to rule in the absence of whatever force created them, a truth they do not themselves know. Those emissaries occasionally glimpsed in the world are believed by most peoples to simply be divine messengers of the Six rather than anything beyond them.
Little is recorded with confidence from this period. What is known comes from religious tradition, mythic oral history, and the fragmentary remains of cosmological study that survived the Cataclysm.
- ✦Creation — God's Nest is shaped as an egg-world and placed under the dominion of the Six dragon gods.
- ✦The First Peoples — The earliest sapient species emerge; the nature of their origins varies by tradition.
- ✦The Archtrees — Vast archtrees grow across the Nest, serving as foundations for early civilisation.
[TBD — Pre-Cataclysm]
The Vivisected Period
The Inquiries of Severance; reality becomes an experimental surface
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Historians commonly refer to this era as the Inquiries of Severance in its official framing — a scholarly undertaking to determine whether one of the Six could be materially harmed. Later polemics, written after the Cataclysm, renamed it the Vivisected Period, reinterpreting the same body of research as metaphysical trespass.
What distinguishes the period is not merely its outcome but its methodological shift: natural philosophy, summoning praxis, and ontological mathematics collapsed into a single discipline whose premise was simple and catastrophic. If death governs the Nest, then death must have a structure — and anything with structure can be broken.
The project proceeded in phases under the umbrella designation Project Providence, escalating from theoretical inquiry to the construction of the Engine of Severance.
- ✦Phase Threshold — Initial experimental stage; Theophan Vassal's discovery and exploitation of the Melasani.
- ✦Phase Verity — Truth-seeking stage; first probing of divine structural vulnerabilities; first creation of Drakein.
- ✦Phase Rubedo — Final refinement; honing of Drakein, the Engine, and related emergent technologies.
- ✦Phase Empyrean — Assembly of the full Engine; attempted activation precipitating the Flinch.
- ✦The Sweet Wars — The alliance between Humanity and the Gamoran Imperium that made the project possible.
746 years before present
The Flinch
Divinity recoils; the Valravn are born
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Seven hundred and forty-six years ago, the event now called the Flinch marked the single most consequential moment in recorded history: the instant in which divinity recoiled, however briefly, from mortal intention.
It is not remembered as a battle, nor as a triumph, but as an interruption in the presumed continuity between the Six and the world they suffuse. At its center stood Emperor Malrik and the Engine of Severance — a device some scholars refuse to name, calling it only the Weapon or the Babel Spire.
The dragon Rotulvuxe did not choose to retaliate. Their heartbeat skipped, their sphere losing continuity for an instant. That skip propagated through the species most entangled with the threat — humanity — producing the Valravn. The transformation did not resemble a curse. It resembled catastrophic misrepair.
- ✦The Audience — Emperor Malrik secures a private audience with a Wakeful manifestation of Rotulvuxe. The Tower completes its articulation. The moon-egg shudders.
- ✦The Flinch — Rotulvuxe recoils. Divinity can be threatened. The psychological and metaphysical shock reverberates through the world.
- ✦The Becoming — The Valravn transformation begins across the human empire. Bodies lose the memory of their own blueprint. Death fails to come.
- ✦Civil War — The empire fractures. Battles no longer conclude in attrition. Armies become storms that cannot resolve.
[TBD — Following the Flinch]
The Cataclysm
The fall of the human empire; the Scar is born
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In the months following the Flinch, the empire did not fall — it failed to stabilize itself in the wake of change. For nearly two years the transformed populace struggled to reorganize around a reality that would not settle.
What began as civil war metastasized into perpetual conflict, as battles could no longer conclude in attrition. The Gamoran High Sorcerers eventually took matters into their own hands. Surviving witnesses report a blinding white light, a noise felt rather than heard, the smell of burning hair and something like rain — and then sudden stillness.
The land where Candorman's Hold stood was scorched into a vast desert of black sand and glass, its sky permanently torn by magical storms. The human empire ceased to exist. The Valravn who remained were scattered. Gamora declared the transformation a divine judgement — a framing that suited its political needs perfectly.
- ✦The High Sorcerers Act — Gamoran High Sorcerers cast a massive, coordinated spell. Its precise nature is not recorded in any surviving public document.
- ✦The Burning — Candorman's Hold is obliterated. Black sand, glass pillars, and permanent magical storms are all that remain.
- ✦The Fall — The human empire ceases to exist as a political entity. The Valravn scatter across the Nest.
- ✦The Official Narrative — Gamora publicly frames the Cataclysm as divine punishment for human hubris, obscuring its own role.
Present Day
The Living World
The age of the Order, the Singing Country, and the slow unraveling
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Centuries after the Cataclysm, the Nest has reorganized itself around new powers. The Order of the Scarf and Sword now occupies several territories and projects an image of heroism and stability across much of the known world. Gamora continues to expand its influence through the Order while the Fraternity of the Bellicose Dawn pursues its ritual work beneath the Citadel.
The Singing Country of Yanagita thrives in the north — or appears to. The sacred river Aur, lifeblood of Wepwawit, is slowly dying. Myrrhion has been placed under Order occupation. The Scar has never healed.
Those who look closely enough find threads connecting present instabilities to events centuries old. The egg-shaped world continues its slow, inexorable change. Whether this is growth or decay is a matter of considerable debate.
- ✦The Order Expands — The Order of the Scarf and Sword extends occupation into Myrrhion and other territories.
- ✦The River Runs Black — The sacred river Aur begins to show signs of Cataclysm-era magical pollution, threatening Wepwawit.
- ✦The Music Box Grows Louder — The mausoleum of Purnima's Hum-Beast emits increasingly powerful sound. The nomadic Dwa'w warn their city-dwelling kin. No one listens.
- ✦The King Plans a Raid — Word of Mor's Port's deteriorating order reaches the king; a raid is being prepared.
[Calendar Date or TBD]
[ERA NAME]
[One-line description of what defines this period]
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[Overview of this period — what mortals know and have recorded. Remember: if scholars in Gamora couldn't have written it, it belongs in the Codex instead.]
[Continue as needed.]
- ✦[Event Name] — [Brief description of this event and its significance.]
- ✦[Event Name] — [Brief description.]