August 2023
***OUTDATED***
Continued from part 1.
—
Expanded Notes (cont'd)
Era 4 is an era of change, adaptation, and reformation. The backwards ways that lingered from the Dark Ages finally were banished, and magic was revitalized and taught en masse. The Svarenics already had a leg up in the magic department due to having a few decades of extra research and exposure, and their top scholars were key in not only spreading magic practices across the surface of [ x ], but also in the formation of the Guilds of the Gods. Two important Guilds that were created in this Era are the Hekatan Mage Guild and the Death Mage Order, led by Hekata and Morsanna respectively. Essentially, these two gods were granted the right to live every grad student's dream and put together their own individual (research and experimentation) teams in order to pursue their own issues. Notably, the leader of the Hekatan Mage Guild was Nathan Shasear, who had been Hekata's student since several years before the Revival began.
Sadly, only one of those two Guilds makes it to the end of the Era. After multiple small rebellions led by Death Mages who wanted to usurp Morsanna, claiming she was too clean-cut in her rules about Death, the Order is torn apart by two factions: loyalists who sided with Morsanna and extremists who wanted each Death Mage to be Reaper—someone who is allowed to reap whatever souls they please whenever the deign. Morsanna was forced to cull the pro-genocide rebels and disband her Guild, stripping nearly all of her Death Mages of the titles and abilities and taking up the solo title of Death once again.
The end of Era 4 culminates in the Great Rebellion, which was a movement-turned-urban warfare led by mages from every Guild in the name of taking control of [ x ] away from the gods. While not every participant was as extreme as some others, the Great Rebellion claimed the lives of tens of thousands, Svarenic and human. In the end, the loyalist groups defeated the rebelling Guild mages and created a special prison dimension to house them: Artificial Planar Void TR-5, more commonly known as Tartarus.
The seven heads of the rebellion, dubbed "the Seven Heathen Mages" by die-hard loyalists, had mastered something known as Creation Magic, which the gods had tried to keep out of mortal hands. When they worked together, the Seven could create entirely new lifeforms, which is what they did as soon as they realized they were stuck in TR-5. They created their own sentient, humanoid lifeforms to subjugate and manipulate, recreating exactly what they thought the gods had done to them.
They eventually died and the lifeforms they created became the modern Tartarun races. Some members of some of those races followed after their creators, others didn't, but by Era 6 they relinquish all ties to them.
Universal age at the end of the era: approx. 7163 years
Era 5 is one of instability, loss of faith, and eventual chaos. In addition to being the longest era to date at 2205 years, Era 5 also sees some of the darkest moments in multiversial history take place.
It starts when the gods start to take interest in the newly-forming dimensional pocket they call Aetheria—currently just a cluster of solid debris and cosmic dust being swirled around by semi-conscious TED. Their attention is diverted outward, pulling it away from [ x ] and Adreoni (which they know still exists, even if [ x ] doesn't). They are also pulled back towards all the other worlds they left half-developed, and Solorana starts trying to split her time and essence between the creation of all of them.
But the end of the first millennium, the gods are distant but the Guilds are managing well enough on their own. [ x ] is relatively stable and sufficiently united so that there is relatively little international strife. Adreoni is healing, growing in population, and its inhabitants are starting to branch out into more fields of magical and technological study with the help of Eiro and Hekata, who spend much of their time there. Tartarus is embroiled in civil war, infighting, and many other self-inflicted issues generated by the Seven or their immediate successors, and most of the gods are... pretending Artificial Planar Void TR-5 doesn't exist.
Over the next 1200 years, many of the gods slowly begin to pull away from mortality, content with their work and frequently of the mind that mortality doesn't need them right now. And, slowly, the Guilds start to doubt their leadership again, this time more quietly. So do the mortals in [ x ] and most civilians in Adreoni, despite the gods' involvement in that dimension's healing and repair. Eventually, their faith wavers so much that gods actually begin to feel it. Very few take that rejection well, subtle or unintended as it may be. Some leave out of anger. Others quit because they've practically been forgotten. But the same thing happens to all the gods who retreat to the gods' own reality plane: they all fall into a deep, seemingly endless sleep.
Crisis 5 is two-fold: first, the remaining gods fly into a panic at their fallen (sleeping) comrades' condition. Second, Adreoni and [ x ] achieve interdimensional travel almost simultaneously and instantly start the first interdimensional war.
Universal age at the end of the era: ~9,368 years
Era 6 lasts a mere 300 years and Crisis 6 officially ends the Three Hundred-Year War. This era, the shortest yet, is characterized by the earliest forms of interdimensional warfare and rampant godly panic. At the end of this era, Nathan Shasear (who was left in charge of basically all of mortal reality while the gods freaked out) disbands the Guilds for everyone's safety, and because of rapidly dwindling numbers as members ran home to deal with the war, questioned their entire moral system, and/or chased after the gods whenever and however they could.
During this era, Tartarus also breaks free of the Seven Heathen Mages' control (or more accurately: the control of their descendants) and splits into individual factions based on the old borders defined by the Seven, racial and cultural divides, and belief systems. The Ialuan Empire quickly takes over much of the east coast, jockeying for power against the Tritaran Empire to the north and west of them. The Dev-Rayan Congolmerate forms, and the name "magoni" is revived when the neutral, scholarship-based province of Zitraa'lazii is formed (later Zitraala). The Heartland province also forms: a multicultural "neutral zone" that eventually becomes the center of the United Tartarun Federation.
Meanwhile, Aetheria now has its first inhabitants: a new race created by the gods called, with astonishing originality, Aetherians. They are the first ever telepathic race.
Universal age at the end of the era: ~9668 years
A great many things happen in Era 7, starting with Tartarus achieving interdimensional travel in record time, and the gods finally acknowledging its existence. The panic the gods face at the end of Era 5 has now cooled down, but many of them are still staying away from mortality for fear of rejection or because they are so busy trying to find a way to help their sleeping brethren that they neglect their other duties (despite constant calls, warnings, and begging for help from former Guild heads like Nathan Shasear).
Some gods (namely Ialu, who quietly started a Tartarun Empire in her own name, and Cerise, Lio, Meyaa, and Maikoa) have made their way to Tartarus and settled in, unintentionally initiating the Tartarun's deep-set and culturally-significant respect for women, even introducing several matriarchal clans, subgroups, and religions.
With Tartarus now on the playing field, [ x ] and Adreoni, who both have residual legends and historical records of the Seven Heathen Mages, are understandably wary. However, the Tartarun's deep curiosity and sense of adventerous wonder endears them to the Adreonians immediately, despite the fact that Artificial Planar Void TR-5 was created from a reality plane called Boltar, a world of hellfire that is the exact opposite of the cool nightworld of Adreoni. An alliance forms.
Meanwhile, the Aetherians are growing in number and in strength, and the gods have realized that lingering around such an intelligent, powerfully telepathic race... may have no been in their best interests. The Aetherians now possess knowledge they should never have been given access to. They create not only the first entirely stable interdimensional warp technology, but they reformat it from simply translating people from one world to another so that it can instead transport whole ships of people from one world to another almost instantaneously! And their first inclination upon encountering the satellite worlds around Aetheria, and later the large dimensions of Tartarus, Adreoni, and [ x ]?
Start a blood war, of course!
Tartarus and Adreoni form a proper alliance shortly after the initial Aetherian attack, when it is made clear that these Aetherians are out for blood and weren't given enough of a conscience to rival and beat their intelligence and egos into submission. Together they analyze the Aetherian warships and reverse engineer their own models, quickly boosting their own interdimensional power and credibility, and start pushing the Aetherians back into their own territory. They successfully catch the unorganized Aetherian warships off-guard, and they retreat back to their homeworld. But war was still declared, and it was never exactly called off...
The Aetherian military reformed itself, taking inspiration from the growing and changing regiments of Tartarus and the various political factions of Era 7 [ x ] (note: this is also the era in which the former continents of Merias form the Averonian Coalition, which eventually become the Averonian State, then the Free Averonian States, then the Averonian State Trade Confederation of Era 10). For most of the rest of the era (some 800 years, which is chump change in a half-formed, time-bending world like Old Aetheria), they lie in wait in the background, gathering data and information. Tartarus cools down and reinforces its alliance with Adreoni, [ x ] stops playing the cold shoulder and gets involved with interdimensional trade and politics again, and they all start sending out more probes and research teams to chart voidspace and new dimensional pockets.
At the end of the Era, Aetheria—now the (First) Empire of Aetheria—lashes out again and starts claiming new satellite dimensions, breaching Tartarun and Adreonian regions, and gunning for [ x ]. (The gods are still nowhere to be found, mind you.) The renewed war spans more than five years before a joint force led predominately by Tartarus and Adreoni successfully breaches the expanding Aetherian rim and starts attacking their outposts and homeworld. But in a shocking move that caught everyone by surprise, the Aetherian military immediately shut down—and activates some new device that utilizes the blockade and entirely blocks entry to anything on the inside of it.
This is Crisis 7.
Effectively, they create the modern reaches of Aetheria (from centra to its nearest satellites, include some that were absorbed to create the outer edges of centra) by using technology and magic to generate something close to the modern borders. They also claim every enemy ship on the inside of their new blockade wall and cut their external communications completely. No one knows what exactly happened to those ships or their crews after.
Universal age at the end of the era: ~9,668 years
Era 8 is a time of perilous recovery. No one quite knows if or when Aetherian will open up its borders again, or if doing so will result in another onslaught of invasion and dimensional colonization attempts. The fear of that happening lingers in the backs of people's minds for generations to the point that fake prophecies and exaggerated histories and myths surrounding Crisis 7 are released and fabricated. But centuries pass with little to no activity from Aetheria, imperial or otherwise.
Tartarus and Adreoni spend a good chunk of early Era 8 rebuilding their militaries after losing substantial numbers to Crisis 7. The rest of the multiverse* is just trying to figure out what happened, what kind of technology Aetheria has created and been exposed to, and whether or not the gods know what happened or knew in advance.
*at this point made up of [ x ] and all its satellites (including the Iron Archs), Feldspar (fusion/offshoot of Tartarus and Adreoni), the Khoshi system, Adreoni, Tartarus, Aetheria, and clusters of worlds outside of Aetheria) are just
Things calm down after a while. Tartarus experiences a cultural, artistic, and technological renaissance and the gods who stuck around to support them are openly involved and celebrated. In the first millennium, the Tech Twins, Angelo and Seraph ValKerie, ascend to godhood as first demigods and later minor gods under Eiro's tutelage and are celebrated as the first gods from Tartarus. Later, in the final millennium, the Aracane Brothers are created by remaining gods and certain unnamed immortals to supplement Trefas, god of music, who promptly disappears.**
**Note: he doesn't die or "fade" like the other gods. He just leaves. And no one has seen him since, although it is highly suspected he disappeared into Waulfend's Nature Preserve.
Other minor reprieves take place in this era, including multiple interdimensional alliances and established trading systems that stand the test of time. Some of the gods who stayed set up sanctuaries and failsafes for if they leave or begin to "fade." Waulfend, for example, sets up a nature preserve in [ x ] that takes up most of modern Averon and protects all kinds of local and non-local flora and fauna (legend says, the deeper you go into the forests, the more exotic and mystical the inhabitants). Heathera, a nature goddess christened by Virri and Waulfend, also sets up an interdimensional research center for all things biology—with a heavy focus on plant life, her preference and purview.
Boltar, the dimension of Hellfire (aka the power source of Tartarus's Core), and Solari, the dimension of light, are also discovered in this era. Both are inaccessible and unsurvivable by mortals, but they are able to be perceived and act as homes/wells of power for Viabolt and Soloranna respectively.
The end of Era 8 is when things change, and when they do, it's the dramatic kind of change that you can't come back from.
Aetheria opens up its borders in the third and final millennium of Era 8 (more accurately: the 2900s) and seems to act as if nothing happened during Crisis 7. They have established themselves as a strong but fair empire and no one is brave enough to challenge their claims or the iron grip with which they hold the worlds under their power. Until what become the last two years of the Era. Obvious tension had been building for almost a century by then, and it came to a peak when interdimensional warlords like Vahn Tracer (Adreonian pirate king), Huron velTarre (Tartarun expatriate, outlaw, fleet warlord), and others (Phantasma affiliates, certain members of the Ziojic Guilds, families of those trapped and likely imprisoned by the Empire in Crisis 7) drummed up support for a confrontation and conquest of the First Empire of Aetheria.
When negotiations inevitably failed (a condition for many other members joining the warlords that the warlords didn't exactly put effort into) and either the Aetherians were goaded into attacking the warlords or the other way around (the story is unclear), battle lines were drawn and war was imminent. War on this scale, with representatives from every world and unknown technologies on both sides, would have been catastrophic. Someone who had seen it before, back when Adreoni and [ x ] were still the only large dimensions (Crisis 5), knew what kind of disaster it would bring—and who needed to be there to stop it.
Nathan Shasear had been living covertly in Aetheria for some time by the end of Era 8. He had gotten in past the blockade some years before it broke down and made a name for himself advising the leaders of Aetheria—mostly local, but occasionally those closer to the top. He had gone to Aetheria before to study it and its anomalies, and to learn what exactly the gods had left behind, and had thus seen it grow and change over the millennia. When he saw the negotiations turning sour and the first warships appeared on the borders of Aetheria centra, he tried one last time to convince the Imperialis to stand down and continue negotiations. When that failed, he hailed the warlords and even attempted to contact Phantasma, once his former student, and cause some other kind of interference. When those options failed too, he was left with two options: watch the worlds tear each other apart or use his last resort option to try and stop it. He chose the latter.
The event later known as Crisis 8 was, in specifics, a in-world cataclysm that was caused by the islands of Aetheria being aligned in a specific pattern that had been generated at its conception. The islands of centra had drifted over time, but they could easily be pulled back into their original positions using Nathan Shasear's pet project, control magic, and a few supercharged alignment beacons disguised as abandoned outposts. It is believed that Shasear activated the entire alignment system on his own, which caused all the islands to shift back to their original positions and thus put them in place to form the largest summoning matrix in existence. In short, he turned the dimension itself into a supercharged power cell-summoning matrix power source.
(Some speculate that Shasear had help at each outpost, either from his own local guild members/followers or from the remnants of the alleged Godhunter guild, a group dedicated to upholding the myth of the Godhunter, who may or may not have been allied with Shasear at the time.
(Additionally, Aetheria's ability to form this supercell power source is often stated as the reason the dimension does not have a set Core or Core island, like other dimensions.)
The cataclysm not only froze Aetheria's slow archiepelago drift, it froze time. The last piece of the puzzle was one that Shasear hadn't yet figured out: Aetheria was a power matrix, yes, but it was a power matrix designed by the first-generation gods—specifically Xellarian, Morsanna, and Solorana. It had many functions aside from being a giant summoning beacon.
Yet Shasear's plan worked: the remaining gods responded to the beacon call and froze time for a longer period than Shasear would have managed. It is suspected that he was returned to his own personal santcuary and reprimanded at a later time after the freeze period, which lasted an indeterminate period of time that some estimate to be three days, or three weeks, or three months. Either way, the aftermath led to the exhaustion and immediate fading of the god of time, Xellarian, and set off a chain reaction of time anomalies that still affect modern Era 10 millennia later—the Time Vortexes.
Universal age at the end of the era: ~12,705 years
Era 9 is characterized by time fluctuations, time portals and vortexes, and general interdimensional stability. In fact, the recording of time was so flawed and sporadic during this era that its length was actually miscalculated! The minimum recorded length was 5312 years, the maximum was 7132 years, and the official length recorded later by the Fate Council was 10,602 years. But when all is said and done, the length of this era does not matter nearly as much as the events that transpired during it.
Era 9 is a sad parallel to the Revival Era (Era 3). Yes, the gods returned during Crisis 8 and put a stop to not only the infighting and interdimensional conflict, but also the reigns of tyranny in outlands, interdimensional neuatral zones, and regions like the Iron Archipelagos. Yes, Nathan Shasear was reprimanded for his failure to support mortal reality in the gods' absence and disappeared from public view, which most saw as the removal of a menace or a potential savior (depending on your point of view). Yes, interdimensional war between the largest powers of the time was avoided.
But not much else changed, initially. The First Empire of Aetheria was quarantined by the gods so they could figure out what exactly happened since they had left it to its own devices. The Empire was effectively dismantled, and many of its leaders were punished for war crimes and abuses of power by the justice goddess, Lio (sans Iya, her more compassionate brother). The rest of the groups involved, especially the warlords (who not only abused their own powers and peoples, but played into the drama and spun stories to drive people further and further against each other), were reprimanded or chose to continue watching in baffled silence as it all unfolded.
Then, new problems arose.
First of all, the gods knew that Nathan Shasear's breach of the flow of time had been unnatural and that he had come dangerously close to throwing everything out of balance. What they didn't know at first was how close he'd truly been. A few centuries into the reconstruction of Aetheria, the worlds it had affected, and the worlds of certain malicious warlords, the god of Time fell into the first of several long, sudden sleeps. Time itself seemed to slow and ripple for the two years he lay comatose, and when he woke up, nearly mad with visions of the future and the past, not even he knew what to make of it.
After that, it happened irregularly and unexpectedly. The fifth, the gods began to see how it affected the mortals. Time, it seemed, was actually quickening and slowing according to Xellarian's spells of comatose prophetic dreaming. Ialu, too, was greatly affected, and her ability to prophesy and see potential futures or pieces of them was all but gone. This went on for centuries, then millennia, and as Xellarian grew weaker and his periods of dead sleep grew longer, the Pantheon began to wonder what would happen if he too faded away. They began to disappear again, in search of a remedy or The Eternal Darkness or something that could fix their problems and stop them from fading away.
Meanwhile, a scorned demigod or twelve hid in the lower cities of Aetheria and wondered why the gods couldn't understand any of it.
Much of Era 9 is, as a result, jumbled. The gods' intermittent absences led to more strife and uncertainty in the mortal realms, and eventually some resigned themselves to their fate. Certain gods, like Ialu, Lio, and the Aracane brothers found homes in Tartarus. Others, like Waulfend and Virri began establishing refuges for themselves and others, thinking that maybe preserving more wild spaces would help (it did. Had they not tried, Jade Masiiri, the revolutionary goddess, would never have been raised to godhood. Heathera, mother of the greatest bio-tech, biology, and life magic research group in history, would never have found or saved Waulfend himself from fading. But sometimes, they still thought it was all in vain). Maikoa, for one, returned to their roots, or what was left of them: Adreoni, and the other scattered shadow worlds of Darekaeii.
One of the key events that stands out amongst the chaotic timeline of Era 9 is the tragic story of how Darekaeii fell. Or, more specifically, how Adira Eagriss destroyed it. Her story is one for another discussion, but the result is simple enough: her deadly, reckless, experimental attempt to bring the broken worlds of Darekaeii together to form on great, big community failed spectacularly. She cause what is recorded in history as the Great Darekaeiin Cataclysm, a Class 5 cataclysmic event that caused the explosion of Adreoni, the Darekaeiin center-world, and the subsequent obliteration of the rest of the quadrant.
The Great Darekaeiin Cataclysm is often regarded as Crisis 9 in and of itself when, in actuality, it was the cause of Crisis 9. In truth, Crisis 9 is recorded as being the direct aftermath of the Cataclysm: the fall of Darekaeii's last surviving regiments from the Adreonian Mercenary Corps, the Rise of the New Empire of Aetheria as the smoke cleared, and the cover-up that followed. (Very, very few people in-universe are aware that it was Adira who blew up Adreoni with a Core experiment in the first place.)
Read more about the Great Darekaeiin Cataclysm and the history of the dimension in the post "Dimensions: Darekaeii" (coming soon!).
PERCEIVED universal age at the end of the era: ~18,017 - 19,837 years
ACTUAL universal age at the end of the era: ~23,307 years
Era 10 starts of slow and solemn. Much of the multiverse is still grieving and in shock of the Darekaeiin Cataclysm, and the first few years are characterized by mass humanitarian aid intervention, spearheaded by Tartarus and the newly-formed, allegedly morally reformed New Empire of Aetheria. The rest of the first century or two is spent figuring out how to operate without the worlds of Darekaeii.
Trade, justice, and war all change fundamentally. Darekaeii, and especially Adreoni, had stood as a bastion of clear judgement and honest business (mostly) for millennia. They had supervised interdimensional trade and forged and mapped new routes between worlds. They had provided security forces and mercenaries for wars across the ages. They had been a refuge and an artistic stronghold and a technological epicenter for at least three of the recent Eras. No one quite knew how to operate in their absence.
[ x ] tried to fill the holes and step up into its sister-world's vacant spot. They tried, and they ultimately failed. The lovely thing about humans is that they are fantastic creators and innovators. The terrible thing is that they all think they're better than one another. [ x ] being the primary homeworld of humanity was, yet again, its downfall. [ x ] devolved into infighting (again) around the year 300 E-10.
In the end, it took multiple worlds to replace Darekaeii's services. Tartarus, eventually, stepped up to become the military epicenter it always should have been. They experienced an industrial boom as the multiverse turned to them for weapons manufacturing, the advancement of technological warfare elements, and, surprisingly, new moral standards for the conduct of war. Tartarus had, of course, perfected the art of war millennia ago. As they shared their knowledge with others, the multiverse's collective view of them began to change. And, as a result, the dimension of Tartarus changed how it presented itself. States and tribal lands became united provinces, and the all agreed to unite themselves under the banner of Tartarus centra, whose provinces served each other, the Post-Revival Codex, and the select few gods who had chosen them. They still had infighting and civil issues and wars, but, at least, it was less about destroying each other and more about... semantics.
Feldspar stood up too. Darekaeii had been the technological epicenter of the multiverse. When it was wiped out, the technology they had developed went with them. The holonet as it had existed from Era 8 onward ceased to exist or operate. Nearly every server, every corner of the holonet crashed. Only a few backups remained on a few limited physical storage drives in out-of-world branches. Feldspar saw the rising panic at this unfortunate news, looked at their own perfectly fine, entirely operable in-world holonet service, and said "Hey, we can market this (and help a lot of people)!"
( Some people think that their monetary motivations were greedy. But those same people forget that Feldspar was and always has been somewhat or a giant commune run by sentient, telepathic Cats. Their idea of monetary greed involves gaining large sums of money, distributing two thirds of it to their people, and using the rest to fund insane research projects and the upkeep of their successful Core Energy Dispersal and Power Supply System (or, the CEDPSS, or "Sedeps." )
And, finally, someone had to step in and manage the most obvious void left behind by the Darekaeiin system of worlds: the role of interdimensional neutral arbitrator. The New Empire of Aetheria, as shiny and fresh-off-the-line it seemed, was practically curated for this role. While the gods had, by and large, been in and out of things during Era 9, they had managed to set Aetheria back on track. Even once they disappeared again, following the clues Xellarian's scattered mind had left for them to use to find the next God of Time, the NEA seemed to be doing alright. With the democratic, people-ruled Imperial Council backing the first Emperor - a paltry title that may have been better understood had it been changed to "President" or Ae'Docra (an Aetherian word meaning "chosen ruler" or "chosen doctrinal-leader") - it seemed best that they handled things.
If those scorned demigods mentioned earlier had suddenly gone oddly quiet, and the new Imperial Council seemed to have a few odd characters that hadn't quite reformed during the reformation era, well. No one had to know.
Era 10 is the current "modern" era of the Broken Dimensions Universe. The first story to take place during it (as of August 2023) is that of Fractal Alliances, which begins in 1906 E-10 and runs all the way until 2043 E-10. The untitled novel that follows the aftermath of Fractal Alliances and the start of a new era takes place in 2047 E-10. A prospective follow-up series called Afterdeath picks up in 2049/2050 E-10.
Universal age as of Afterdeath: ~26,389 years
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