The Hollow Years
Date: 3-7 Years After the Burning of Haugaeldr (3-7 AH)
Also Known As: The Hollow Years, The Starving Time
The Burning of Haugaeldr did more than destroy a library; it severed the world from its own wisdom. Within its archives were the Geothermal Almanacs, detailing which crops could be forced in heated soil, the Runic Preservation Glyphs that could keep meat from spoiling for months, and the Mycelial Maps showing where to find the massive, nutritious fungi of the deep caves. Overnight, this knowledge turned to ash. The first year was lean. The second was desperate. By the third, the famine had its teeth in the throat of the world.
The Famine unfolded in a series of brutal stages:
The Year of Meager Harvests (3 AH): The loss of specialized knowledge led to crop failures. Frost-blight and soil-sickness, once manageable, now ran rampant. The great frost-melon vines withered, and the hardy tundra-grain grew hollow and brittle.
The Year of the Gnawing Cold (4 AH): With preservation magic lost, food stores rotted or were consumed too quickly. Giants, with their colossal metabolisms, suffered first and most visibly. The sight of a gaunt giant, their ribs showing like the hull of a broken ship, became a common and terrifying sight.
The Year of Broken Bonds (5-6 AH): Society began to unravel. The philosophy of "The Strong Take" became not a creed, but a grim reality. Small folk settlements were raided for their meager supplies. The first recorded instances of "Hearth-Betrayal" occurred, where clans exiled their own weak and elderly to conserve resources. The tundra was littered with the frozen, abandoned.
The Turning Point (7 AH): The population was halved. It was in this darkest hour that the proto-Stone-Shield Commonwealth emerged as a beacon of brutal, pragmatic order. Under the leadership of Jarl Bor Stone-Hand, they enacted the Doctrine of the Common Pot. All food was seized, rationed, and distributed by a central authority. Those who hoarded were exiled. Those who challenged the system were exiled. It was harsh, it was unforgiving, and it worked.
The Great Famine left wounds that never truly healed, shaping the core philosophies of the giant nations:
The Stone-Shield Commonwealth: The Famine was their foundational trauma. It proved, in their eyes, that freedom was a luxury that led to death, and that only absolute, centralized control could ensure collective survival. Their rigid guilds and food rationing systems are a direct legacy of the Hollow Years.
The Frost-Fang Clans: The Famine validated their core belief in strength. They saw those who perished as weak, and those who survived as worthy. Their relentless focus on hunting and martial prowess is a direct result of relying on the blade, not the farm, to eat.
The Free-Soul Collective: The survivors who would form the Collective saw the Famine as a failure of community, not a failure of freedom. They vowed to create a society where no one was left behind, where the group moved at the pace of its slowest member, ensuring such a catastrophe could never happen again.
The Sun-Splinter Throne: The Famine birthed their obsession with "Worth." To them, feeding the weak during the famine was a sentimental waste of resources that endangered the strong. Their policy of exiling the "unworthy" is a cold, logical extension of lessons learned in starvation.
The Great Famine taught the giants of Niflheimar one terrible, unifying lesson: the world is always one failed harvest away from collapse. This singular fear is the engine of their politics, the justification for their tyranny, and the shadow that falls across every alliance. They are all, in their own way, still trying to ensure they never have to live through the Hollow Years again.