History of the Old World
History in Brief - yeah, right
Historians argue the dates and the where, but all agree that it was the elves who first colonised the Ancient World. Finding sanctuary in the forests, they build numerous settlements that lived with the forest itself and became its guardians. If the forest were to die, then so would the elves. But others left the comfort of the trees and founded the first towns that grew into the cities of the High Elves.
At around the same time (give or take a few hundred or thousand years or so) the first Dwarf Halls were founded beneath the ground as the dwarves searched for precious metals and strong stone with which to secure their homes.
The two races expanded across the Ancient World, the dwarves keeping to the hills and mountains, the elves to the forests and coastlines, with a few cities founded on points of interest, strong magic or to secure an important resource. Conflict occurred, but these were mostly skirmishes and battles rather than full-scale wars. For the most part, the elves and dwarves were peaceful trading partners.
Nobody knows when the gnomes appeared. Some suggest they were always there, hiding in the shadows using their inherent powers of illusion. Some say that they were born of elf and dwarf - though elf, dwarf and especially gnome would argue against this suggestion. It was true that they held closer ties to the dwarves than to the elves, but their natural knack with magic and curious natures allowed them to engage with both dwarf and elf peacefully.
To the east lay the grasslands and plains of the darkbloods and greenskins, savage creatures that would come to eventually be called goblins, orcs and even ogres and trolls. Existing in small tribes, they spent most of their time in conflict with one another, fighting over the resources that other tribes owned and harvested.
It was the arrival of the nomadic tribes of humans that changed everything. At first it was a few family groups, searching for new hunting grounds. They seemed to arrive from the hot south and southeast simultaneously. And conflict came with them. And it was their short lifespans that gave them an advantage over the elves and dwarves, for they reproduced quickly wherever they settled and soon farming communities had grown into villages, then to towns and finally to cities. They traded and they fought. But their expansion brought with them the notice of the darkbloods - the goblinoid races finally found the passes through the mountains to the lush, fertile lands of the Ancient World.
But distrust of the humans turned to an alliance of opportunity, and the numerous warriors of man were able to help turn the tide against the goblinoids, pushing them back to the steppes and away from the civilised lands. But at great cost - cities had been razed and destroyed, and the elves especially found that they were too few in number and had to abandon a good number of their cities, those that could not be repaired or lacked sufficient numbers of inhabitants to be sustainable; the elves relocating to coastal cities that had been spared the destruction.
The same was true of the dwarves - they had lost a good number of dwarfholds over the centuries, and lacked the numbers to reclaim every hold back from the goblinoids. Instead, they focused on fortifying the holds that remained and preventing further incursion.
The humans, however, were able to quickly replenish the numbers that they had lost and quickly expanded across the continent. And so the Ancient World became the Old World.
Since then there have been a number of empires that have risen in glory, expanded through conquest and influence and faded.
The first was the Southron Empire. The human-led soldiers swarmed from the southern continent into the hot lands of Iberia and round the great sea, and enveloped the Known Lands from the east. This two-fold attack was successful and great swathes of land were conquered. But it was when the Southrons tried to install their Blood-God as the primary deity in the conquered regions that uprisings occured, forcing the God-Emperor to commit more and more forces to keep the peace. Ultimately, the Southrons over-extended and were forced to withdraw from the lands they had occupied, but they had achieved their goal and there were new followers for the Blood-God and his pantheon.
The second with the maritime power of the Grecians. This could be defined as multiple micro-empires controlling the great sea and the vital trade routes that were the life blood of many coastal cities. Most of these micro-empires were overthrown by rival naval powers, or collapsed due to internal pressures. The Grecians were not one united force, instead they were a collection of city-states, but with the naval conflicts affecting their own trade routes, they forcefully expanded and conquered the very islands and cities that had been the thrones of the pocket and micro-empires. But the rise of the Grecians was viewed with suspicion amongst the Southron tribes, and they allied together and invaded the Grecian city-states with the intent of smashing their naval power and claiming it as their own. Despite the individual natures of the Grecian City States, and their constant in-fighting, against an external threat the city-states allied and countered. Soon some of the Southron territories were occupied by Grecian forces who insisted on bringing their enlightened culture to the primitive, heathen tribes. Naturally, the pressures of occupying hostile territories proved too costly for the Grecians to maintain, and one by one they had to relinquish control of the territories back to the Southrons.
The rise of the third empire, commonly referred to as the Empire of Man for their xenophobic hostility to anyone not of pure, human blood. The Legions of Red were not large in number, but they were militaristic and effective and swept aside the Grecian armies, conquering and taking control of the Grecian Empire before turning its attentions elsewhere. Many of the northernmost territories were reclaimed by the Empire of Man, and occupied with deadly force. Where the Grecians had failed the Empire succeeded, turning citizens of their conquered territories into legionnaires and sending them to battle their enemies across the Old World. Within a few hundred years, the Empire had expanded across the Known World, as far as the Isles of Mist to the west, north to the icy wastes of the Norsk tribes, and north east to the mountains and steppes. Their attitude of purging lands of non-human threats and seeing demi-humans as secondary citizens in their empires. This strained the relationship between human, elf and dwarf. The Empire attacked and destroyed a number of elven cities and dwarven holds, but the cost was high and another strategy prevailed - one of surrounding and blocking the cities from aiding one another. Were it not for the savage resistance of the goblinoid tribes to the east, the elves and dwarves might have become slaves. But the Empire found the goblinoid tribes and the order was given to purge the land of their taint. The tactic of conquering a land then recruiting its own people into the legions to fight elsewhere was not as effective in the Steppes, instead the Empire systematically committed genocide - and those goblinodis that they didn't murder, they made into slaves. This of course required further manpower to enforce security and keep the slaves from rising up. This drained the effectiveness of the legions to expand, and the Purity Wars (also called the Goblin Purge) ground to a halt.
While the Empire's legions were focused on purging the steppes of goblinoids, a new threat arose closer to home. Tribesmen from the Gaelic tribes of man rose against their Empire oppressors, and overthrew the Imperial Territorial Governors. The legions were quick to try to intercept and put down the rebellion, but more rose up against the cruel Imperials. The order was given to abandon the outlying territories which were still resisting, and pull those legions back to the core territories. But it was too little, too late. A slave revolt in the Imperial heartland saw the massacre of the legions protecting the Great Imperial City-State, and the Empire collapsed.
However, unlike the Southron and Grecian empires before, the Empire of Man fractured. Legions, cut off from support from the Imperials Heartland, fortified themselves in their new homes and created pocket empires that they could control. The goblin tribes finally threw off the shackles of the Empire, and the Goblin Slave Revolt forced what few legionnaires that remained in the Steppes to return to the Old World.
It is now nearly six hundred years after the collapse of the Empire of Man, and the fracturing of the Imperials. The Empire have left their mark on all their former territories, with forts and cities of stone now standing tall and proud, and ruined cities formerly belonging to demi-humans and goblinoids scattering the landscape.
Many small kingdoms have risen up, each fighting with their neighbours one year, then allying and fighting another the next. Norskan raiders ply the seas to the north, seeking riches and plunder then escaping in their long boats back to their icy lands. The goblinoids expand across the Steppes, and raiding parties across the mountains are now frequent. There are mutterings that the Southrons are amassing an army, but to where and when??
