Hex Crawl 23 General Lore 1: The Yugas of Mittellus

As requested, we take a short time to outline the lore of this world and the cultural area of Urighem in which the Hex Crawl takes place. The Grand Plan of the world has turned through almost four yugas of time, in which "the years are growing shorter."

YUGA OF FORMATION (SOIL)

This Yuga is shrouded in the aeons but it was then that the Elements of the cube-shaped world Mittellus were laid down and "wet, dry, cold and hot" each claimed their side, leaving "two earths" at opposite ends of the cube in which they contend. Urighem is in the general quadrant of "hot and dry" although more to the center than other, extreme desert areas. At the end of this aeon the Elements combined to initiate inspirited life.

YUGA OF GROWTH (FLESH)

The Age of Teeth that began this Yuga is sacred to the Khilan beliefs regardless of their attitude toward water. The Hungry Jaws are the manifestation of the will to devour which powers all life. Under this spirit, forms of life that started as blind gobbling worms developed in successive ages Eyes, Legs, Hands, and Tongues. The Khilan hold as the apex of this Age the terrible giant King Lizard, whose manifestation is lodged in racial memory. But the end of the Yuga also birthed the Ur-Saurians, ancestors of all reptilian folk, first intelligent life on Mittellus.

YUGA OF SHAPING (WOOD)

In this Yuga the Trees arose from the rudimentary plant life of the previous era, with their own consciousness that resolved into a myriad of Fey life, flitting in and out of a world of their own. Eventually the stabilized Elvenkind came to be, and other Sylvans (including the gnomes) joined them in earthly manifestation. The Dwarves were Gnomes who separated from the energy of Trees and sought a deeper energy of Earth, from which came tragedy when they sought reunion with the Elves, the child of Dwarf and Elf sacrificed to a fateful end.  The last Age, Ore, saw humans, orcs, and goblinoids emerge, to live in tree-barren places that Elves eschewed and the declining Saurian races could not hold. Under the tutelage of the Dwarves the humans, cleverest of the new kindreds, created terrible things, wars of ash and blood, and at the end a looming shadow the size of a mountain strode the earth.

YUGA OF ANNEALING (METAL)

A demigod from another world laid down the pattern for this yuga, creating and entombing under an inaccessible isle four races of humanity with superior understanding and vitality. Each would awake at their time to rule the earth until they could no longer do so, and a fifth Iron Race (about which many confusing prophecies and hypotheses circulated) would emerge from base humanity to rule in the final Age.

Age of Gold (10,000? years ago)

These golden-skinned people known as the Hyperzephyrians understood the building blocks of magic and with their lore unrivalled in any age defeated the upstart Men of Ore and threw down their colossal idol. Their flexibility was their downfall as they fought amongst themselves and visited destruction and ruin on all the earth.

Age of Silver (6000? years ago)

Dark as argyric oxide, the awakened Silver rulers took it on themselves to codify, complicate, and conceal the power of wizardry behind the strictures of a Langue Arcane which would take decades of study for a normal human to learn properly.  Using this language they unsealed the potential of a Tenth Color of magic, the silver of summoning and traveling, and beat roads through the Fey Realms and Aether, gates into the Astral Sea of infinite possibilities wherebeyond the Gods have their thrones. Their downfall was not violent; they simply left and forgot, dissipating into the myriad worlds, leaving the mundane peoples of Mittellus to stew and squabble for a while.

Age of Copper (3000? years ago)

On awakening, these people, the Moial, mastered the secrets of life itself, understanding both the makeup of beasts and the lore of their thriving on the land. They hybridized, transported, and tamed all manner of beasts to serve them, and swept across the lands of Mittellus as conquerors. The annals of Urighem record the Men of Copper as attacking the realm in the Third Epoch, to be  thrown back after long and arduous warfare in which the boundaries of the empire contracted. Where Moials ruled, the end of their understanding was to use and dominate. It is only known that they were dethroned and forced into remote corners of the world in a protracted series of embittered revolts.

Age of Bronze (1700 years ago - 700 years ago)

Last and wisest of the four prepared meta-human kinds, these bronze-complected rulers studied the mistakes of their predecessors and took on a governing ethos that avoided the extremes of power, tyranny, and sorcery. They swore to depart the earth after a thousand years, from which their world-spanning empire was known as the Millennium, their demonym being the Eskata. True to form, their final generation forswore childbearing, adopted human scions to rule in their stead, and peacefully died in bed. Alas, their philosophy required a few too many brain wrinkles for basic humans to follow faithfully. Within two generations their successor empire had fragmented into kingdoms fighting over gold, pride, and religion. The Urig histories make no distinction between them and any other "savages" living to the north of the Salt Sea.

Age of Iron (coming soon!) 

This coming age does not feature in the cultural knowledge of Urighem, which has overlaid its scheme of epochs on history since the founding of the empire in the Age of Silver. People in other parts of the world have various understandings of the ambiguous rhyming prophecy said to usher in this age. Some think it will involve the reactivation of the striding colossus built by the Ore People over 10,000 years ago; others are trying to selectively breed a new Iron Race from base-human and other stocks; still others seek Iron supremacy through devices and engines that can be used by anyone. Although there are rumours that the colossus prophecy has been averted through heroic intrigue, it is possible that a fourth, unknown reading of the prophecy exists, to emerge from nowhere and make a mockery of the self-styled sages..

YUGA OF DESTRUCTION (MAGMA)

By the ancient plan of the five terrestrial substances (not to be confused with the four cosmic elements) all-consuming Magma will rule the final Yuga after the coming Age of Iron, and by implication, end the world -- or perhaps, merely transcend it.