Before the ages were counted, before borders were drawn and names were carved into stone, the world existed in a quieter state.
This world would one day be called Orenthys.
In the earliest surviving fragments of history, Orenthys was whole.
Land, sea, and sky were bound together by forces later named the Elder Principles not gods, but laws older than worship. These principles governed balance: power answered restraint, creation answered decay, and memory answered ambition.
Civilizations of the First Age did not conquer the land. They aligned with it. Cities were raised along natural currents of magic and weather. Travel followed wind paths and ley-flows. Magic was present, but subtlewoven into craft, architecture, and ritual rather than weaponized.
Little is known of the peoples of this age. What records remain speak of harmony rather than dominance, and of cultures that valued continuity over expansion.
The First Age ended not with war, but with excess.
As memory dimmed, ambition grew.
Mortal civilizations began to test the limits of the Elder Principles. Magic, once restrained, was refined, measured, and eventually exploited. Towers rose where plains once lay. Experiments reshaped flesh, weather, and thought. Power became a language of control.
It was during this age that the first empires formed. Borders hardened. Armies marched not for survival, but for certainty. Faith emerged—not as reverence, but as explanation for forces no longer understood.
The balance strained.
Some chronicles claim the Sundering began here, slowly and invisibly, long before the world finally broke.
No single record survives that describes the moment itself.
Accounts contradict one another. Some speak of a final ritual meant to bind all power under mortal command. Others describe divine interference—forces stepping in where they were never meant to act. A few whisper that the Elder Principles themselves collapsed, unable to contain the weight placed upon them.
What is certain is the result.
The world fractured.
Continents tore apart. Seas ignited with arcane residue. Mountains rose where cities once stood, and cities sank where land had been. Entire civilizations vanished so completely that even their ruins were erased, leaving gaps in history that cannot be filled.
Magic survived but it changed. Where it had once flowed evenly, it now burned. Power demanded cost.
This event would define all ages that followed.
In the centuries after the Sundering, survival replaced progress.
Climate shifted violently. Fertile lands became desert. The north froze. Volcanic regions scarred the world’s surface, creating the Bronze Wastes and the ashlands of eastern Arimor. Migration defined this age, as peoples fled collapsing homelands in search of stability.
It was during this age that the foundations of the modern continents formed:
Arimor emerged as a fractured heartland of refugees, scholars, and warlords.
Mantidari solidified into its canyon-bound hive structures.
The Bronze Wastes became a proving ground for Orc clans hardened by catastrophe.
Aetherfrost isolated itself beneath eternal cold.
Aelith’s Crest rose above the world, severed from the ground below.
History in this age is unreliable, written by survivors rather than witnesses.
Stability returned but at a price.
Kingdoms formed around remaining fertile lands, trade routes, and defensible terrain. Crowns claimed authority, but true power shifted toward factions: guilds, orders, cults, mercenary banners, and hidden syndicates.
Magic was institutionalized, restricted, and taxed yet never fully controlled. Warfare became calculated. Diplomacy grew as dangerous as battle. Cities expanded upward and inward, building over older ruins whose origins were no longer understood.
It was during this age that lineage became destiny. Bloodlines carried expectation. Deviation bred suspicion.
The world learned to remember.
The current age has no agreed-upon name.
Some call it the Age of Decay. Others, the Age of Reckoning. Most simply call it now.
Orenthys is a world in motion. Borders shift. Alliances rot. Old powers stir beneath forgotten stone. Magic continues to scar those who wield it. The Other Side claims souls—and sometimes returns them changed.
No prophecy governs this age.
History is no longer written in advance.
Death has never been simple in Orenthys.
Since the Sundering, some souls awaken in the Other Side a realm beyond mortal geography and time. Return is possible, but never guaranteed, and never without consequence.
No soul is granted this passage more than once.
Those who return are remembered.
Those who do not are rarely forgotten.
Orenthys does not forget.
Ruins surface. Old wars echo in new banners. Blood remembers where history lies.
The world endures not because it is just, but because it adapts.
This is not a world awaiting salvation.
It is a world surviving its own past.