DUNIA Lore - History

Genesis

Like any insane ass crazy fucked up fantasy world, each of the races have their own mythology concerning how the world was created, mostly explaining the rise of their own races from the common stock of animals or soulless planar spirits. Despite this, by observing the commonalities in all of their mythologies, a reliable timeline can be plotted.

The world of Dunia was preceded by an infinite state of silence as a boundless sky of pure and golden light touched an endlessly deep abyss of inky black antimatter. The more time passed, the more the boundary separating these dichotomous powers began to ebb and flow, creating bubbles and sparks of conflict with the power of a trillion Big Bangs every second. Across time and space, some of these bubbles foamed and lingered for extended periods of time, not unlike sea foam of crashing waves against the shore. Many of the bubbles eventually coalesced into stable spheres into which an endless amount of universes were created. Into these universes quarks and atoms popped into existence and eventually galaxies formed and worlds inhabited by all manners of alien races rose and fell. Some say the rise of these worlds was overseen by the omnipresent phantom of sapience present throughout the upper sky inspiring them to greatness, and that evil and malice were inspired by the writhing tentacles of the abyss that could not reach into the bubbles of material attempting to influence its denizens psychically instead, but this is all debatable. To many others, all this chaos is just a result of beings with no purpose simply generating free will.

Primordial Dunia

Though many of these millions of bubbles disintegrated into nothingness, some of them saw the rise of powerful beings that transcended to godhood to become the rulers of these planes, reshaping them as they saw fit to reflect their personalities, and that is the story of the Gods. The greatest bubble by far, one big enough to contain all of the other divine spheres combined, was Dunia, housing a boiling magma world in which giant flying beings known as the Dragons dwelled. They made roost in enormous castles of brimstone and made war with each other every day for sport, skirmishing over ever-shifting political boundaries and, when not dueling in the sky using words of power, used their minions as pawns.

The great progenitor and undisputed overlord of the Dragon race was a being known as Odym, the Lord of War. He was a gigantic cosmic entity with four roaring heads on each side representing the different Dragon colors, as well as enormous wings that could shadow entire continents, a tail that could wrap around planets and six thousand arms carrying every weapon ever invented by sentient beings past or present. As the greatest God in the realms, he represented not only his own element but also the chaos inherent to material existence. The bubbles that all of the deities reside in were expressions of the rebellious desire of living things to persist despite the cosmic tendency for entropy and pure silence. He represents the stretch in a rubber band that keeps its energy stored, the consumption of fuel, the perpetual chase of free willed beings for change and ascension. In a sense, he eclipsed the other Gods and sought to achieve overgod status and become an impersonal and omnipresent spirit just like the Light and the Abyss.

And so the Lord of Dragons and his progeny began to conquer nearby spheres, assimilating them and turning their denizens into reflections of his own wrath and bloodlust as he carved his way up the cosmos intending to invade the Heavens. Dragon sorcerers ripped portals to myriad realms and his sons sought to impress him by competing among themselves in the scale of bloodshed.

The hubris of the Dragons overtook them, and Odym thought he and his sons could take on the Heavens and conquer the upper reaches of the spirit worlds for himself. It only took some collected efforts for the spirits of the upper planes to defeat him and his race, putting an end to the Draconic menace by sealing him in the boiling core of the planet he once ruled along with the strongest of the Dragons.

The Empyrean Age

With the world of Dunia now barren and unguarded, the spirits looked upon it with a mix of genuine pity and opportunism, and struck a pact to collectively seed it with life from their own separate realms. They rained the first oceans onto the world and inspired independent thought and free will into many of its creatures. The stalwart molten giants which automatically cleaned after the Dragons evolved into the hardy forefathers of the Dwarves, and pioneers among the angels of Heaven decided to renounce their immortality for the chance to experience bestial thrills such as love and lust, devolving into the far ancestor race of the first Elves. The age in which they lived is labeled "empyrean", but many consider naming it the "Age of Mist" for the haze caused by the scarcity of historical records.

Millions of years ago, the ancestor race of the Elves scattered around the world, erecting cities of great breadth, while the ancestor race of the Dwarves took to sheltering themselves in the inner rims of volcanoes to survive the cooling of the world. Of all the supernatural races that covered the world, none survived quite as well as the Elves and Dwarves, and many faded into rare creatures only spoken of in legend. This is the time when a schism happened among the proto-elves, with some wanting to return to the glory of the Sun, and others delving deeper and deeper into the uncharted jungles. Many wars ensued, which are only remembered in exaggerated religious mythology and symbolic parables. As there were no boundaries, Dwarves and Elves frequently warred, yet had no innate animosity for one another. In secret, the insectoid race sent by the Abyss festered in the desert, building empires to great the glow of their immortal bonfires could be seen from the sky. Dinosaurs still roamed the world and the Gods still descended upon Dunia in humanoid form to lead their own armies. Eventually, stalemate after stalemate convinced the Gods there was nothing to be gained languishing in Dunia, and they returned home. The Lunarian Empire is completely mysterious, but theories on its founding range from a bunch of Elves succeeding in a space program, to angels of the Light setting up camp there, or even a time traveling apocalypse angel genetically engineering rabbit girls from another universe to protect this one.

The Eon of Ancients

Elven and Dwarven cultures burst across the world as they began to record their own history. An explosive golden age of art, culture, music, poetry, crafts and magic began. Tales of brave explorers and fighters expanding cities that spanned entire continents were recorded. Hundreds of thousands of years after their practice of magic, the Elves become noticeably paler and smaller compared to their cousins the Fey, who in turn became larger and more feral.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the few remaining non-magical and non-woodland Elves decided to dedicate their continent to a culture-wide effort to summon the Dragons in order to kill them and obtain their power. Several wars were waged during the arms race that ensued as the other Elves and Dwarves tried to stop them. Eventually the Golden Elves won and tore open a rift to the Plane of Hate, and the Dragons immediately overwhelmed and enslaved them like cattle. A century of wars was waged to try to fight the Dragons back into the portals and seal it, made easier by the fact the Dragon God was in a weekend humanoid form while banished. The Elves sought out the Lunarians. After the portal was locked, the remaining Dragonkin on the material plane gained free will and sentience. Exhausted from the war, the Elves decided to travel the world, teaching mortal races like Trolls and primitive cavemen how to fight back threats to Dunia, then recoiled into their own kingdoms forever.

The last few thousand years of this age marked the rise of the Isyllian Combine Empire, a nation of united human clans that used astronomy, mathematics, metallurgy and geomancy. They quickly subjugated and assimilated other human tribes. Their rule lasted several thousand years through the bronze age.

The Rule of Man

The final of the races taught by the Elves were the humans of the north, who decided not only to adapt the Light of the Sun as an official national religion, but to use it in warfare against their own kind. This sacrilege earned them the ire of the Elves who never spoke to them again, and tensions with humans rose. "Hylonians" as they're known fought the Isyllians into extinction, determined to inherit their own Combine empire. Korak in the north, a nation of gothic mountain-dwelling barbarians, grew so much spite for the Hylonians they developed their own counter-Light kind of knighthood. A pirate confederation in the south built the nation of Southport. Humans far, far west make contact with woodland Elves and founded Miraldia. Other small human settlements rise into kingdom status.

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