Second Age
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The Second Age is the longest era of Teneris history after the First Age. Scholars understand it only uncertainly and inconclusively, and the fog over it lifts only towards its end, with the establishment of The Empire.1
Beginning
As the mortal survivors of The Desolation fled north, the surviving gods withdrew to the higher planes. In departing they left behind the mighty Priest-Kings as absolute rulers, and so began the rule of the Priest-Kings. The Church of Alarath teaches that gods living among mortals had left all of Teneris vulnerable to The Dark One, and that the best way to protect mortals was to watch over them from above.2
The age opened with the survivors of the Desolation mourning and struggling in a new world that was narrower and less advanced than the old, and that was now governed by humans.2
A changing land
In the early days of the era the landscapes and vegetation changed in strange and rapid ways. Natural borders such as high mountains, impassable forests and powerful rivers rose between the races that were in conflict with one another.1
Some scholars credit these changes to gods who wished to protect the living: the higher gods, Amarath among them, are said to have used their power over nature to lessen conflict and reduce the chance of destruction. More sceptical scholars see the changes as the work of the elves, like the making of the Calinor-dal River. Despite the lack of evidence, they suggest that the elves may have reshaped the geography and the way of life of the peoples of the Lands of Exile.1
Peoples and cultures
As different cultures came to live close to one another, the foundations of the cultural and political order that would shape the rest of Teneris history began to form. The exchange of culture, technology, magical arts and philosophy among these emerging cultures did much to set the course of the Lands of Exile.3
After the fall of their great cities, the elven tribes who had migrated north united in the Da’fat Federation under Lady Nemarin. The druids of the Circle of Elders raised the Living Wall against the hungry desert in the south, an effort that won the elves good relations with their new human neighbours, and with the permission of the Palanthor Knights they separated the elven lands from human territory by creating the Calinor’dal river.1
Rise of the Empire
According to the Empire's own account, the five Priest-Kings shared a dream one night in which they saw a red eagle. In the years that followed they surrendered their crowns to a warlord known as the "Red Eagle", who protected humanity against growing threats, and swore allegiance to him. That warlord, Rolus, was established as unquestioned emperor and his surname was erased from history. Elven sources, however, say that the power did not pass from the Priest-Kings peacefully, but by the might of Rolus's great legions.1
End of the age
Towards the end of the Second Age a human scholar named Xeratos appeared. He found a way to work magic through books and arcane knowledge as the elves did, and was one of the founders of the Archon Academy. Through prophecies he learned that the Dark One would strike the world again and that a second Desolation was close, but he could not overcome the people's fear and became a fugitive, followed by his students. Through their efforts and the mysterious emergence of the Order of Chain, the Dark One was stopped this time without great harm.1
The Second Age ended with the prevention of absolute destruction and the disappearance of Xeratos. The Empire granted the Chain Wardens two strong fortresses, vast resources and legal immunity, and the calendar used through the following Third Age was counted from the end of the Second Age and the founding of those fortresses.4
Records of the Second Age survived into later times: the wizard Castor Onerio drew on sources from the First and Second Ages for his belief that a vast continent lay to the west.5
Notlar
Kaynaklar
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- SSGLands of Exile: Starter Setting Guide(Bad Badger Games, 2024), pp. 10-12, 10-11, 11-12, 17
İlgili maddeler
TanrıAmarathThe god of home and compassion, twin of Alarath, known as the Protector of the Weak, Mender of Wounds and Lord of Mercy, the god of all people to whom healers, families and villagers turn.OlayFirst 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.KarakterXeratosA human scholar of the late Second Age who learned to work magic through books and arcane knowledge, helped found the Archon Academy and foresaw the Dark One's second attack before vanishing.
OlayThe DesolationThe cataclysm that ended the First Age, when the Dark One attacked Teneris. Gods and whole civilisations died, the two continents were parted and more than half of Caligran became desert.OlayAges 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.OlayFourth 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.OlayThird AgeThe historical age that followed the Second Age and lasted 2230 years, the first age whose length is precisely known; it saw the War of the Immortal Mages and the Sanction, and ended with Victory Day.KavramPlan 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.ÖrgütGrand 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.