This era lasted for many thousands of years before the beginning of Iiosia.
It's name, Tae’lummisae, is also an atian word. Roughly translated, it means “The Age of Wonder”.
It was a time when the world was largely at peace and ruled by the racial empires of the dwarves, atia and tar'tchii. Vast swathes of the world were untamed, blanketed in dense and lush forests, stretching for as far as the eye could see. Dragons and other fantastical beasts soared in the skies and roamed the lands. The race of humans were as children, living in caves and eking out a living as hunter gathers in small, scattered tribes.
The world was full of magic, but The Black Arc itself was largely thought of as nothing more than a myth. There was little conflict - at least not on the scale seen upon Iiosia - the world was a largely peaceful and prosperous place, and those who lived within it were largely content.
Everything, however, comes to an end. For Tae’lummisae, it came in the form of a cataclysmic war that shook the very fabric of the world itself. This was called The Great War, and ended in an event called The Sundering, further details of which can be found below.
From the ashes of these events, Iiosia was born.
Author's Note
The Era of Wonder's primary purpose is to be a setting for the events of the Sundering. Therefore, it's unlikely that I'll be producing any content that deals with this Era specifically.
The Sundering shaped the very world of Tyania. Without it, the balance of the Age of Wonder would have continued unabated until the end of time. It spelled disaster for the entire world, and birthed Iiosia. It also changed the geography of the lands, as shown on these maps.
Age of Wonder
Post-Sundering
It all began with the atia, who were a curious and ambitious race. They held the tar’tchii - an angelic, race of powerful spellcasters - with as much awe as they did jealousy; for the tar’tchii were a skybound race of beautiful, potent wizards, and the atia were frail and earthbound. This jealousy led them to uncover arcane knowledge which was best left undiscovered.
While mastery of the sky was beyond them, they did have dominion of the waters, and their sleek sailing ships explored distant coastlines and wound into unknown rivers, and while most of what they found was forest, jungle, desert and marsh, one ship found something very different.
The Deserts of Khralos
Far to the south lay an ancient and dormant temple-city known as Khralos. Surpassing even the dwarfs in age, Khralos was from a time before history had begun to be recorded, and the atia discovered this place as they sailed up a strange river in an unknown land; a land which was scorched by the sun and ravaged by the wind.
Inside the sprawling city the atia found ancient artefacts dedicated to forgotten gods revered by an extinct alien people. And in that place the atia found a great and terrible thing – The Dark Conduit – a wheel some thirteen feet in diameter wrought of meteoric iron and imbued with powerful runes.
It was the Dark Conduit that they took back to their capital, Allyon, and from there began the experiments that would end the Age of Wonder, and begin the world of Iiosia.
The Conduit served as just that - a channel which funnelled Dark Magic to the atia. The Dark Arc opened doors to many tools which proved great assets to the atian community. They were able to take a human (primitive man at this stage, dressed in furs and with only basic communication skills), and strip him of his free will. This gave them access to an army of slaves, who could make up for the shortfall in the atian’s physicality. With these slaves – which are known as Husks – the atia could build higher, explore deeper, and venture further than they had done before.
An Atian Mage
Atian mages conducted ever increasingly dark rituals, for the more they charged the Dark Conduit, the greater spells they could cast. Within a few months, the Dark Conduit had been hoisted above their capitalm Allyon, and it was buzzing with magical energies. The swiftness of this change, combined with the distance between the races, meant that worried reports from dwarvern traders did not reach larger settlements until the rot had already truly set in.
The Conduit was not a benevolent entity; it was a tool of those ancient gods which were once worshipped in Khralos and beyond. These became known as The Six – powerful demons of dark magic which, long ago, had been banished from the world. With the Conduit in use, their spirits stirred, and they started to influence the atia and begin to permeate the thoughts of the prominent nobles and leaders – notably the atian queen Erensol and her council of high mages.
Then, it was by chance that a pair of tar’tchii flew nearby, and sensed the dark magic emanating from the city. They went in and approached the queen, and told her that what was happening was wrong and should be stopped. It was then that the atian council attacked – slaying one and wounding the other tar’tchii – for the demons which possessed them could not bare to be in the same place as ones so pure and of the Light.
That was the point of no return.
The Six required that the tar’tchii be destroyed and that their great city Ch’ti’lria be completely raised. The tar’tchii were beings of light and the sun, and their city a beacon of both, and so as long as it existed The Six could not manifest enough Dark Arc energies to take their true physical form.
The possessed atian queen told her people that the tar’tchii had been assassins; that the tar’tchii were afraid of the atia’s new power. War was declared on the tar’tchii, and preparations were made for a mighty battle to take place, and for the destruction of Ch’ti’lria to become reality.
The wounded tar’tchii returned to their city, and told of what was happening in Allyon. The tar’tchii’s prowess lay not in their abilities in battle, and feared what was to come. So they sent emissaries out to the dwarfs and to another race also.
In Allyon, the city was rapidly changing. All decent atian folk had been driven out to find solace elsewhere. Those which stayed would, over time, undergo remarkable transformations as the Dark Conduit hummed with power. Their bodies hardened, their skin became shrunken and their features became skeletal – they became the first of what would become known as the ghreal.
Each day the Dark Conduit’s power increased, until the shimmering energies around it cracked the very fabric of the world. Though the tears between planes, strange and malformed creatures emerged – the same alien creatures which once inhabited Khralos. These demons varied considerably, but most were the ulthin; near mindless and bent on destruction they the perfect foot soldier to unleash against the tar’tchii.
After a few short weeks, the atian host, with their battle wizards, husks, and hordes of ulthin and other demons, marched on the tar’tchii capital, with the Dark Conduit held aloft as some kind of horrific and terrible banner.
The tar’tchii had not sat idle. They had set emissaries out to their allies, the dwarfs, and to another race which they hoped would heed the call. The dwarfs, at least, had answered, and from their nearby hold they had sent contingents of warriors and war machines, and had set up their earthen fortifications at the base of the city of Ci’Til’Re’A as the city itself was not built for war.
As the invaders arrived and sounded the attack, the battle which would determine the fate of the world began.
An Ulthin
The battle which raged initially favoured the defenders. As the sun beamed down, the tar’tchii were able to aid the dwarfs with powerful magical blessings which added to their prowess in combat and healed their wounds, and the tar'tcii harnessed powers of Light magic to banish many of the ulthin from whence they came.
Yet the atia cast their foul incantations and blackened the skies, and as darkness and rain came it was the demonic host which began to show dominance, and the terrible powers of the black arc came to the fore. Rays of death magic blasted from the atian mages, slaying all dwarfs who stood before them. Even worse still, those that had fallen in the battle rose as undead horrors, and the terrified defenders were forced to fight against their fallen brethren.
As the dwarvern courage buckled a mighty roar came from the skies, and those who the tar’chii had so desperately hoped would come to aid them did so.
Dragons dove in from the blackened clouds over the battlefield. They were led by their king and sole male of their kind, the mighty Tazeroth.
The dragons unleashed their fire on the battle below. Wanton destruction the like the world had not seen in millennia erupted as the assaulting hordes perished in the intense heat. The Six (for that was what they now were – all visage of the atia they had once possessed had been completely lost) had not planned for this, and they saw that the physical battle was lost.
As a last desperate attempt to achieve victory, The Six charged the Conduit and brought their powers to bare in an attempt to blast the city from existence.
In defence Tazeroth let forth his dragonfire, and the tar’tchii concentrated what energies they could. The culmination of the fire from the dragons, the earthen strongholds of the dwarfs, the rain and winds abound, along with the contrast of dark and light magics came together in a culmination of power which then ripped the lands asunder.
An explosion of magic burst forth from the Conduit and caused a shockwave of energy which warped the fabric of reality in the nearby area, and caused wanton destruction in the neighbouring lands. This explosion was called The Sundering, for that is what it did – sundered all that was, and left a fragmented and divided world behind.
Many things happened during The Sundering and in the period that followed.
The Six succeeded in their task – the city of Ci’Til’Re’A was destroyed and its spires brought tumbling to the ground. It no longer served as a beacon of light and goodness, and became a myth of a place thereafter
The Tar’tchii were annihilated in the blast, and most of them were killed from the intense energies their bodies and minds were subjected to. Those that weren’t killed outright were driven insane by what had happened, and their bodies were warped and twisted by the dark magic which permeated the lands. They became powerful monsters who hid from the light and only held bitterness and hatred in their hearts; a true antithesis of the creatures they once were.
The bodies of the atian queen and council The Six had possessed were incinerated, and the Conduit itself was cracked in twain under the forces it was put under. As such, the dark energies it contained spilled everywhere like water tipped from a bowl. Without the concentration of energies, The Six could not manifest in physical form, but did find a spiritual foothold in the world once again.
Tazeroth’s battered form could be seen falling from the skies above the battlefield, but his body was never found. His end spelt the doom for the race of dragons, for he was the only male and so their inevitable slow decline and extinction was now in motion.
The surviving dwarfs seemed to emerge relatively unscathed. But as they returned to their holds they were as shells of their former selves; blanked eyed and pale; and eventually died as they nether ate nor drank thereafter. When they died they arose again as Chill, and that led to separate chapter of woe and misery for the dwarfs.
The dwarfs did collect the two partd of the Conduit and brought it to their holds. Its halves were split up, and both were taken to separate holds and locked away in their deepest and darkest vaults. The locations of these vaults were guarded closely, and although records were made of which holds were used, each script recorded different holds so the secret would eventually be lost.
The decent atian people dispersed to their coastal cities during the period when the Dark Conduit hung above Allyon. Then, when the Sundering occurred, these cities were devastated by flooding from the sea, as mighty tidal waves crashed into them and caused almighty devastation. After this, the atia drifted into the lands to the north and the west, and some began to live with and teach the humans how to farm. This was the beginnings of the human's dominion over the world in the millenea that followed.
