The Age of Bones
Civilizations grew from the divine wreckage. An era of discovery, nation-building, and the first consequences of exploiting the remains of gods.
The Dominion Rises (~400-500 AS)
Valdren and his successors expanded aggressively, absorbing settlements and subjugating rivals. The Dominion’s caste system was formalized during this period, a rigid hierarchy with the Hierarch at its apex, the priestly and military castes below, and the miners and labourers at the bottom. Ashite mining was industrialized, with massive excavation operations along the Spine of Order.
Around 450 AS, the Order of the Ashen Flame was established as the Dominion’s military-religious arm, part army, part inquisition, charged with defending the faith and enforcing the Hierarch’s will.
The March Clans (~500 AS)
The Verdant Marches resisted centralization. The scattered tribes and settler-communities instead formalized the Marchwarden system: each clan claimed territory, and a Marchwardens’ Council served as a loose governing body. Decisions required consensus, which meant decisions were rare. The Marches remained fractious, independent, and stubbornly ungovernable.
The Ember Guild (~550 AS)
Craftsmen across the continent who worked with divine materials, Ashite smiths, bone-carvers, marrow-alchemists, formed the Ember Guild, a neutral professional organization that swore no political allegiance. The Guild’s neutrality made it one of the few institutions trusted across all borders. Its members could travel freely, and its workshops were considered inviolable.
GM Only
The Ember Guild’s neutrality is genuine but not absolute. The Guild’s inner council has quietly shaped the divine-material economy for centuries, controlling supply to prevent any single nation from gaining too great an advantage. They know more about the properties of divine remains than they share publicly.
Tidewall Founded (~600 AS)
The largest island in the southern archipelago, positioned between the continent’s major coastlines, became the site of a permanent trading port. Tidewall grew rapidly, and within a century it was the commercial heart of the known world: a city of docks and warehouses, counting-houses and taverns, where every nation’s coin was welcome and every nation’s law was optional.
The Bone Rush (~600-700 AS)
As demand for divine materials exploded, a century of aggressive mining and harvesting followed. Expeditions stripped sites of every fragment of bone, every vein of crystallized blood. The consequences were not immediately apparent.
Then the Hollow Zones appeared.
Areas stripped completely of divine material became wrong. Magic ceased to function within them. Reality felt thin, sounds carried strangely, shadows fell at incorrect angles, and those who lingered too long reported a creeping sense of absence, as though the world itself had forgotten the space existed. The Hollow Zones were the first warning that divine remains were not merely resources but structural components of Aethermourne’s reality.
The warning was noted. It was not sufficiently heeded.
The Star-Readers (~700 AS)
Followers of Aelindra, the one surviving god whose light was still visible, organized across national borders into a scholarly network called the Star-Readers. Dedicated to preserving knowledge and watching the heavens for signs of their goddess’s will, the Star-Readers became the closest thing Aethermourne had to an international academic institution. Their observatories dotted the highest peaks, and their libraries were among the finest in the world.
The First Marrow Plague (~750 AS)
The Marrow Bogs, fetid swamps saturated with Thyrea’s divine marrow, had always been dangerous. But around 750 AS, their mutagenic waters caused a wave of horrifying transformations in nearby settlements. Livestock birthed monstrosities. Children were born with bark for skin or roots for fingers. Adults exposed to concentrated marrow underwent agonizing metamorphoses.
The plague was eventually contained through quarantine and the Greensingers’ intervention, but it established the Bogs as both an invaluable resource and an existential threat. What remained of Thyrea’s essence was not benevolent. It was alive, and it did not distinguish between growth and corruption.
The Concord of Tides (~800 AS)
The trading cities of The Hollowed Reach, the archipelago and coastal territories centred on Tidewall, formalized their alliance into a merchant-republic. The Tidekeepers were established as elected merchant-princes, governing through commerce rather than conquest. Wealth was power, and power was for sale.
The Remnant Accords (~850 AS)
In The Pale Wastes, the living and the dead reached an uneasy understanding.
Not all undead were feral. Some, the Remnants, retained their intelligence, their memories, their capacity for reason. They were dead, but they were people. Around 850 AS, the first formal peace agreement between the living Holds and the organized Remnant communities was signed.
The Remnant Accords were controversial from the first day and remain so. The Dominion considers them heresy. The Ashen Vigil enforces them pragmatically. The Remnants themselves view them as an insult, better than extermination, but not by much.
The First Border War (~900-950 AS)
Emboldened by a century of expansion, the Ashen Dominion turned its armies westward into the Verdant Marches. The Marches’ clans, outmatched in numbers and equipment, fell back on guerrilla tactics, and the land itself rose to their defence.
The Scarwall began to grow along the border: a massive, living wall of thorns, some as thick as tree trunks, that seemed to spring from the earth of its own volition. Whether it was Thyrea’s lingering will, the Greensingers’ magic, or some emergent property of the Marches’ ecosystem, no one could say. The Dominion’s armies bled themselves against it and eventually withdrew.
The Scarwall remains. It grows still.
The Star-Reading of Aelindra’s Tear (~1000 AS)
At the turn of the millennium, Star-Readers across the continent observed a celestial event: a star, one associated with Aelindra herself, fell and dimmed. The scholars debated its meaning for decades, but the prophecies recorded in its wake all converged on a single, chilling theme:
“A second silence shall fall when the stars forget their names.”
The prophecy was filed, catalogued, and largely forgotten by everyone except the Star-Readers themselves. They did not forget.
Previous: The Age of Ash | Next: The Age of Crowns