Adventures in Arcadayn
Early History of Arcadayn
By Tim Emrick

The First Age: Creation
The Second Age: The Chaos Wars & The Deluge
The Third Age: Landfall to the Cataclysm
The Fourth Age: The Modern Era

The world was created and the gods were born. After an unknown length of time, the first mortals were created. Among these were humans, who quickly multiplied and spread across the paradisiacal continent of Yand.

Large groups of men turned to evil gods and began to war on their fellows. As the wars continued, perverted varieties of nonhuman races began to appear: goblins, evil giants and dragons, and even more dire monsters. These wars are believed to have been reflections of the growing strife between the demon gods and their divine kin, and eventually it seemed that all of Creation, mortal and immortal, was embroiled in war.

After a long journey (possibly of many years?) to the east, human Pilgrims found a new continent. They named this land Lusion, the "land of light," after the dawn towards which they navigated.

At least three fleets of Pilgrims are thought to have reached Lusion. One fleet continued north after the other two disembarked near mountains which they named the Landrings, after "landfall." The Tordul, a dark-skinned race, settled the sunny coasts and spread southwards, while the fair-skinned Anidel explored the central plateau, which they named "Arcadayn."

The Anidel fleet was led by the navigator Celberic, a Celestian priest of Phaor. he is still revered as the patron saint of long journeys.

The Anidel made contact with the native races of Arcadayn: dwarves, gnomes and Lusion giants. Friction over territory led to many wars between men, dwarves and giants. These wars angered the Earth-Mother, Kemira, who sank the interior of the Arcadayn plateau after providing her nonhuman worshipers with the means to survive the catastrophe. The Cataclysm ended the wars, and sundered the Anidel men into three groups, to the north, east and south of the newly-formed Great Sea. Kemira left the Cauldron and the Landrings as volcanic regions as a lasting warning to mortals of the dangers of incurring her anger.

After the Cataclysm, the races of Arcadayn spent many centuries rebuilding. The dwarves had been split into two kingdoms by the disaster: the Iron Dwarves in the northern mountains, who even today distrust humans, and the Bronze Dwarves, who have been forced to adjust to dwelling next to a powerful human realm.

Humans, thrown back to primitive ways by the chaos of the Cataclysm, founded numerous petty kingdoms in Arcadayn. The North and East Anidel men remained tribal barbarians, struggling simply to survive in the harsh wilderness of the northern lands.

Some of the North Anidel men re-learned "civilized" ways from visitors from Faerie. (These sidhe visitors had been coming to Kemil for longer than humans can recall, but they rapidly gained influence when the northwestern humans lost much important lore in the Cataclysm.) These men, some of whom interbred with the sidhe, would eventually become the loose alliance of clans and kingdoms called Haldinibar.

The South Anidel men began to reclaim some of the lost culture of the Pilgrims and forged a number of powerful feudal fiefs. The largest and strongest of these, led by the hero Krith, became a mighty empire which slowly conquered its neighbors. See "History of the Krithian Empire" for more about this nation's history.

At some point after the Cataclysm but prior to the Krithian Empire's expansion into modern-day Westmarch, a group of Tordel men entered Arcadayn from the south and settled the newly-created Sandmarch. These became the Desert Men which have caused Krith many problems since the two peoples made contact.

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