Third Age
The Third Age is the first era of Teneris history whose exact length is known. It lasted 2230 years in all and ended with Victory Day. Some of its events, especially those near its end, are well known to scholars.1
Reckoning
During the Third Age The Empire had not yet adopted the Clora Fastis calendar. Another calendar was in use, counted from the end of the Second Age and the founding of the Chain Warden fortresses. Histories of the age give its dates in the contemporary calendar, counted before Victory Day, to avoid confusion.1
The immortal mages and the Sanction
In 1768 BVD a cabal of arcane scholars discovered a ritual of immortality. The immortal wizards became rulers over their lands, until some of them saw the price they had paid and sought to undo it, and a bloody war among the mages followed. The fear of magic it left behind led Emperor Valigard IV to declare The Sanction in 1203 BVD, a decree that still binds every mage today.1
The Heralds and Victory Day
By the end of the age the Dark One's last intervention lay so far in the past that even the wisest had forgotten their old enemy, and when the Order of Chain warned that something was stirring in the void it took a long time to convince anyone. Voidborn began to appear across the realm, and the Chain Wardens learned that powerful beings calling themselves the Heralds were leading them.2
The Chain Wardens crossed the lands of Caligran to raise the Grand Alliance, the largest union in the history of Teneris. Its forces met the armies gathered by the Heralds outside the Marble City, and with the world of the living on the brink of extinction the Chain Wardens, supported by Archon and the High Church, defeated the darkness through a ritual. That victory, Victory Day, closed the Third Age; the Fourth Age is the present.3
Notes
Sources
This article draws on:
- SSGLands of Exile: Starter Setting Guide(Bad Badger Games, 2024), pp. 12-13
Related articles
ConceptClora FastisThe formal calendar of the Empire, used by nearly everyone in Caligran, with ten months in a year of 304 days and years counted before and after Victory Day.EventVictory DayThe battle outside Marble City where the Grand Alliance and the Order of Chain defeated the Heralds of the Dark One. It ended the Third Age, and the calendar records every date before or after it.
RegionThe EmpireThe human realm at the heart of the Lands of Exile, an absolute monarchy heavily shaped by faith, ruled from Marble City by the unbroken line of the Red Eagle and divided into five provinces under their Sovereigns.EventSecond AgeThe long age that began when the gods withdrew after the Desolation and left the Priest-Kings to rule, and that ended with the rise of the Empire, a second threat from the Dark One averted, and the disappearance of Xeratos.EventAges of TenerisThe four great eras into which scholars divide the history of Teneris, from the mysterious First Age before the Desolation to the present Fourth Age that began after Victory Day.EventFirst AgeThe earliest and most mysterious age of Teneris, when the gods taught magic to mortals and high civilisations filled all of Caligran, until the Desolation brought it to a sudden end.EventFourth AgeThe present age of Teneris, which began after Victory Day, when the Grand Alliance's costly win broke the old balance of power, weakened the Emperor and set the noble houses against one another.ConceptPlan to repeat the DesolationIn the Yeni Dünya campaign, the design that the wounded mage Manfred attributed to the war-mage Deimos and his radicals, as he claimed to have pieced it together from a dead operative's memories, together with what he said of the abducted scholar Orson.OrganisationGrand AllianceThe union of armies rallied across Caligran by the Chain Wardens against the Heralds at the end of the Third Age, the largest in the history of Teneris. It won the battle of Victory Day outside the Marble City, but its unity soon broke apart.ConceptGuardians of the HeirOscar Aphis's history of the Gladius Heredite, the all-nobleborn cavalry unit that the crown princes traditionally command.