World History

This document didn't exist until now, even though half the setting cites it — Religion, Magic Systems, World Overview, Silbriesti, and Rephaim all say "see World History" for context they assume is written down somewhere. It wasn't. This is that somewhere: everything already scattered across those documents about the Long War and its aftermath, pulled into one place, with the genuine gaps flagged rather than papered over.

Scope and Timeline

The Long War started in 2114, lasted exactly 257 years, and ended with the signing of the Treaty of Tallas on the 257th anniversary of the war's own first day. The current campaign era sits 54 years after the treaty. That's long enough that the war itself is history for almost everyone, but short enough that its ending is still a living memory for a meaningful slice of the population, not just a date in a book. See "Living Memory Today," below, for exactly what that means generation by generation.

What "survived" the war means varies enormously by institution, and that unevenness is itself part of the setting's texture: some traditions came through relatively intact, some were gutted, and a few were untouched entirely because the war never reached them. See "Who Remembers, Who Was Untouched," further down.

The Treaty of Tallas

Signed at Tallas, a major Myrean Confederacy city on the island of Eurystus, by the era's sovereign powers: Dar Ilm al-Zakir, all five Dwarven Kingdoms, Silbriesti, Ssyrathis, the Caldrian Empire, and the Myrean Confederacy itself, along with two of the four Rephaim kingdoms, Chorakim and Ashtakim. Zephakim and Zumakim did not sign.

Silbriesti's signature is notable on its own terms. An isolationist nation that otherwise keeps to itself putting its name on a shared treaty says something about how seriously even the Elves took this specific catastrophe ending, whatever else their own guilt over the war looks like (see Silbriesti document). Ssyrathis's signature matters too — a "monstrous" nation standing as a full, equal signatory alongside every human and Dwarven power on the page is exactly the kind of real diplomatic weight Ssyrathis's own document insists on: a court and an army the era's other powers had to actually negotiate with, not dismiss.

The two holdout Rephaim kingdoms, Zephakim and Zumakim, aren't outside the treaty's reach, just outside its authorship. They're bound to its terms in practice by the collective weight of the powers who did sign, whether or not they ever agreed to them personally — a real, ongoing source of friction rather than a settled matter, and a natural seed for a kingdom that resents terms it never had a hand in.

Every people without a sovereign nation to send was simply never in the room — the Goblins, the Lizardfolk, the Northern Reaches, the Wayfolk, the Changelings, and the (then-unknown) Kuwaffri were never treaty-eligible parties to begin with, which is a different category entirely from the Rephaim holdouts choosing not to sign. The Catfolk are the sharpest version of this gap. Their civilization was one of the war's defining casualties — the sea-draining that produced the Catfolk Diaspora happened within this same war — and yet they had no seat at the table that ended it, because by then they had no sovereign nation left to send. Worth playing as a real, still-felt grievance rather than a historical footnote.

Living Memory Today

Fifty-four years puts the treaty itself inside living memory for a meaningful slice of the human population, even though the war as a whole isn't. Someone in their 80s or older today was already an adult during the war's final years and carries real memory of the fighting itself, not just its ending. Someone in their 50s or 60s was a child or a very young adult when the treaty was signed — too young to have fought, but old enough that "where I was when the treaty was signed" is a genuine, vivid, shared cultural touchstone the way a defining event from childhood is for anyone. Below that, it's schoolbook history, the same way it is for everyone else in the setting.

Dwarves carry far more of this than anyone short-lived does, and it isn't a rounding error — it's a real difference in kind. With a natural lifespan of around 250 years, a great many living Dwarves were genuine adults for large stretches of the war's later decades, not just its final moment. A Dwarf elder isn't a rare exception who happens to remember the war the way a 90-year-old human might; a substantial part of Dwarven elder society lived long, ordinary adult lives during it. At the very outer edge of what's biologically plausible — a Dwarf near 300, as rare as a human reaching 120 — there may be one or two alive today who were born in the war's second decade — a living thread back to the war's early years, not just its end, and by far the rarest kind of witness left in the world.

Pre-war memory itself is still locked to Elves, full stop — the oldest Elves were already adults before the war began, 257 years before the treaty and 311 years before today, which no Dwarf, however long-lived, can match. Possibly a handful of the oldest dragons as well. Nobody else in the world has any personal connection to what things looked like before all of this started; everyone else, Dwarves included, only ever knew a world already at war. See "Who Remembers, Who Was Untouched," below, for the full breakdown.

The Central Catastrophe — Gods Died

This is documented history, no longer heresy to say aloud (see Religion document). During the Long War, gods died — not metaphorically, not "fell out of favor," but died, in a way the surviving faiths all had to build a theology around afterward.

Confirmed deaths: the god of Healing and Medicine and the god of Teachers and Sages — both Hypotheoi, lesser gods of the Kindred (see The Kindred document), and the only two deaths anyone treats as settled fact rather than theological interpretation. Their absence is load-bearing for huge parts of the current world:

• The god of Healing and Medicine's death is why healing magic is scarce and political rather than tactical. Healing and medicine didn't vanish — they fell back to Fertility, the Child that god served, who doesn't know them well. Healing is less common than it was, and medicine as an art has stagnated, possibly slipped backward. Meanwhile the Azure Flame's healing arm holds more of the world's healing capacity than any single institution should, and everyone knows it (see Religion document).
• The god of Teachers and Sages' death cut the line along which the complete theoretical and theological framework for high-level magic and the Sigils was passed down. Knowledge itself endures — its Child survives — but teaching now rests with a god who governs what is known rather than how it's handed on. Teachers work from old, outdated methods, and divination answers slowly. Both the Sigil Houses' incomplete understanding of their own bloodlines and the arcane schools' 5th-level ceiling trace back to this one loss (see Magic Systems and The Sigil Houses documents).

Unconfirmed but implied: other Hypotheoi died too — the Kindred's decentralized structure meant no unified response, so each dead god's domain was quietly absorbed by the Child it served, who now holds a portfolio they weren't built for (see Religion document). Exactly which gods, and how many, is still open — see below.

What it means is the live question, not the fact itself. Every surviving faith has had the 54 years since the treaty (and the war's own last decades besides) to build an answer, and none of them agree: the Kindred mourns quietly and absorbed what it could. The Azure Flame reads the deaths as proof of the ancient threat it's always preached against, not evidence against faith. The Chain Cult treats it as the final nail in the case that divinity was never external to begin with. See Religion document for each faith's full theological wound.

The Planar Scars

Damage to the connection between Tir Hathar and the planes beyond it — the specific mechanism behind why divine magic is capped lower than arcane magic (3rd level for clergy in ordinary circumstances versus 5th for arcane schools), why the two Walking Gods are powerful but not omnipotent, and very possibly why some fantastic creatures (Phase Spiders' planar-flickering is one flagged guess — see The Northern Reaches document) work the way they do.

What's actually known: the scars exist, they're real and measurable in their effects, and they haven't healed in the 54 years since the treaty, on top of whatever damage was already done before the fighting stopped. What's not known: their exact nature, whether they're repairable at all, and how many of the world's odder phenomena actually trace back to them versus being unrelated fantastic quirks that just happen to invite the comparison. This is one of the setting's genuine open mysteries rather than a solved problem being kept off the page — see Open, below.

The Spell Ceiling — the War Cost Magic

Arcane: schools teach up to 5th level today because that's what survived their catalogues. 6th level exists only in fragments — partial texts, corrupted records, effects without mechanics — a rediscovery, not a curriculum item. Nothing above 6th exists anywhere in the setting; there is no 7th level spell in Tir Hathar.

The moon-schools were military institutions during the war, which made them targets. This is more specific than "magic declined generally" — it's an active, war-era ransacking with different schools taking different damage:

• The Crimson school lost more than it publicly admits.
• The Mirage school's pre-war catalogue is believed to have been twice its current size.

Divine sits lower than arcane, and for a different reason. Arcane's ceiling is a knowledge problem — a library that burned. Divine's is a connection problem — the planar scars limiting what a living god can transmit to clergy who aren't standing in front of it. That's why clergy cap at 3rd in ordinary circumstances, reach 4th only in a religious place, and reach arcane's 5th only within about 60 feet of a god's avatar or in contact with an appropriate religious relic. See Religion document for the full breakdown.

Primal magic — the Elves' tradition — is the one major exception, drawing on something that predates the school system entirely and was untouched by the planar scars in ways arcane and divine magic weren't (see World Overview document). This is part of why Elven magic reads as older and stranger than anyone else's: it wasn't damaged by the same war that gutted everything else.

What Actually Happened — Known Events

The full 257-year military and political history isn't written yet (see Open, below) — what exists is a handful of specific, well-documented events, mostly clustered very early in the war:

The sea-draining and the Catfolk Diaspora. Very early in the Long War, the Giants (the Rephaim) dried the sea at the heart of Catfolk civilization, with the Caldrian Imperium's help. The mechanism was internal to the geography — Azlotl's own rivers, redirected to empty into the open ocean on the landmass's far side instead of the enclosed sea between it and the dinosaur continent. This wasn't infrastructure, it was a deliberate act of war: it broke Catfolk civilization outright and took them out of the Long War entirely rather than defeating them in the field, scattering them into what's remembered as the Catfolk Diaspora. No Dwarven involvement. It's no longer a tightly held secret, though exactly how openly any given nation's leadership discusses its own ancestors' role in it varies. See Geography, Catfolk, Rephaim, and The Caldrian Empire documents.

The Giants took Hungary around the same early-war window. Settled and uncontested now — the Imperium keeps a symbolic schoolbook grievance about it, not a live dispute. See Geography and Giant Kingdoms documents.

The Dwarves armed every side of the war without shame — the richest power on the map, and the only one whose war-era conduct reads as pure, unapologetic commerce rather than a side taken. See Nations document.

Dar Ilm al-Zakir (the Scholar Nation) entered the war last, and for its first seven or eight decades in it, nearly won. It came in after the other great powers had committed, fought like a force to be reckoned with, and was moving toward victory, or at least toward the winning side, when its Emperor and his heir were assassinated to stop it. The throne never recovered, and the people took over. Dar Ilm lost its momentum and took a back seat for twenty or thirty years of rebuilding and restructuring. It then pulled itself together into the Majlis system and worked its way into a position to press for an end to the war. It negotiated peace first, not from cowardice but from genuine diplomatic superiority, and emerged with trade concessions that left it richer than when the war started. The Imperium has not forgiven this. See Dar Ilm al-Zakir document.

The Wayfolk trace to war-era neutral caravaners — itinerant animal-handlers and supply-runners who served every side by picking none, since a caravan that stayed unaligned could cross any front line. The neutrality was proven across 257 years of war, long before the treaty ever existed to keep the peace afterward, which is why the habit never needed to end just because the fighting did. See Wayfolk document.

Late in the war, the Confederacy took back Archaia. The Confederacy's original homeland, which Myreans call Mētris, the Motherland, had been lost to the Empire. Ares, the Tekna of War, invoked against the Rephaim, also directed the Confederacy's marines as they won back lost lands around the Mediterranean, Archaia among them. See The Myrean Confederacy and Religion documents.

The Azure Flame's militant arm built up roughly a century's worth of unchecked practice and license over the course of the war that the 54 years of peace since haven't fully revoked — the internal rot Religion document flags (zealotry sliding into atrocity) traces directly to this. See Religion document.

The Two Walking Gods

Two deities descended during the Long War and have not returned to the heavens. They walk the world as individuals of immense but limited power, constrained by the same planar scars that cap everyone else's divine magic, and they are at odds with each other — maintaining distance because a direct confrontation between two divine beings on the mortal plane could be catastrophic to one or both. Their names, domains, what they did during the war, and why they descended and never left are all campaign-level reveals, not front matter. See Religion document.

Who Remembers, Who Was Untouched

Not everyone in Tir Hathar relates to the Long War the same way, and the variance is itself a setting feature:

The Elves remember it directly, and that memory is a wound, not a trophy. The oldest living Elves were adults before the war even began and watched all 257 years of it unfold, including the gods dying. Taniere's isolationism is guarded behind multiple competing theories, and the full truth — guilt, a failure to intervene or an intervention that came too late, something the oldest Elves cannot explain without admitting complicity — is a deliberate campaign-level revelation, not something this document resolves. See Silbriesti document.

The Kuwaffri are the opposite case entirely — not survivors of the war, but genuinely outside it. Alone among Tir Hathar's peoples, their homeland (a drowned rift roughly where the Red Sea sits) was never touched by the war, never scarred by the planar damage, never affected by the death of the god of Teachers and Sages or anything else that shaped everyone else's cosmology. Where the Elves are unique for remembering what was lost, the Kuwaffri are unique for having nothing to have lost in the first place. See Kuwaffri document.

Some dragons may be old enough to remember firsthand too — old-world remnants predating the Long War and possibly the death of the god of Teachers and Sages, meaning a handful of the oldest dragons could hold intact knowledge nobody else in the world still has. This is flagged as a "who still remembers the truth" thread alongside the oldest Elves and the two Walking Gods, not yet developed further. See Dragons document.

The Rephaim's own origin myth predates the war by generations — old enough that even the Elves only have it as inherited story, not memory. It sits in a separate, older mythic layer rather than being a Long War event itself, and whether it bears on the Sigils, the Walking Gods, or the war at all is deliberately undetermined. See Rephaim document.

The World Since

What 54 Years of Peace Looks Like

Politically, decree gave way to consensus, badly. Empires that once ruled by fiat now govern through messier processes than they used to, and nothing about the current order reads as fully settled just because the fighting stopped (see Index document) — Dar Ilm al-Zakir's Majlis-and-trade model and the Azure Flame's internal factionalism are both, in their own ways, downstream of this.

Relics of the war still circulate and still mean something when they surface. Warcaster Armor is the clearest example: a finite number of suits exist, no new ones are being made (doing so would read as preparation for the next war), and wearing one into a city is a political act on the order of driving a tank down a street. See World Overview document.

The map still carries physical scars. Dead zones, echo sites, and corrupted nodes are scattered across it wherever the war left its deepest marks — largely unplaced and undeveloped as specific locations, but explicitly intended as adventure-site material rather than just flavor text. The newly-flagged dead-magic zone at the dinosaur continent's southern Cape may or may not be one of these; the connection isn't confirmed. See World Overview and Geography documents.

The Chain Cult's theology went from fringe to hard-to-dismiss. It existed before the war as a marginal belief; after gods visibly died, after divine magic became capped, after the world acquired scars that 54 years of prayer hasn't healed, its central claim — that divinity was always latent in mortal blood rather than external — stopped being easy to laugh off. See Religion document.

Open: how Zephakim and Zumakim have behaved as non-signatories of the Treaty of Tallas, bound in practice but not in name; which specific Hypotheoi died beyond the gods of Healing and Medicine and of Teachers and Sages; the exact nature of the planar scars and whether they're repairable at all; what the world looked like before the war — how much more powerful the schools were, how much more complete the Sigils were; what role the Sigil houses played during the 257 years — who they sold to, what they lost, which houses existed before the war that don't anymore; where dead zones, echo sites, and corrupted nodes actually sit on the map and what each one is; what pre-war artifacts exist beyond Warcaster Armor, where they are, and who knows about them; the two Walking Gods' full story (see Religion document); the full truth behind Elven isolationism (see Silbriesti document); whether the Southern Cape dead-magic zone connects to the planar scars or is something older and unrelated (see Geography document).