The Fourth World Prehistory Page
From RPGwiki
The prevailing opinion among the civilised population of the Fourth World is that the universe began around fifteen billion years ago with a big bang. The druidic faith has long claimed that the world was created by a universal force that they call the Godhead. They have by and large accepted the big bang theory and claim that the Godhead was the force that kicked it off. Scientists say there is no proof of this and it is merely an unsubstantiated article of faith.
Around 4 billion years ago the worlds began to form out of the disc of dust surrounding the sun. Again druids cite this creation to the actions of the Godhead which, though lacking in sentience, possessed a will to bring about life. According to some druids this act was so it could create a life form which could understand itself. The main faiths though say this was when the gods arrived and the positioning of the fourth planet out within the safe zone (not too cold, not too hot) is often cited as proof of their involvement. Again, scientists say there is no evidence for their involvement and there are perfectly natural explanations for the formation of the planets. Either way, the planet remained lifeless until three-and-a-half billion years ago when the first simple life forms emerged from the primordial ooze. Unsurprisingly this too is often attributed to the gods or the Godhead by the faithful.
The earliest life was single celled, but evolution or divine influence created the first multicellular life. Life began to fill the sea, before moving onto the land. The first group that dominated the land were the giant reptiles and the dominant force, in this age of reptiles, were the dragons. According to the faithful the gods have said the dragons were the first creatures to gain sentience and the first to learn how to manipulate magic. Unfortunately there has been no evidence to confirm or deny this, though many palaeontologists say that the dragons of that time had a larger brain capacity, even though they would be considered small by today’s standards. The faithful are fascinated by the dragons whom they refer to as the First, and their era as the First World (to scientists it is the Draconic Epoch).
Sadly the age of reptiles was brought to an end by a mass eruption over a volcanic region. As the planet entered a great cooling period many of the great reptiles were killed off. The dragons were able to migrate in large numbers to the warmer equatorial zones, but the massive numbers of dragons trying to live in a smaller area led to great fights for territory and the near extinction of the dragon species. The largest dragons were the ones that survived this conflict, and this is the origin of the larger dragons we know today. According to the priests the gods have described the end of the dragons and the First World as being caused by vast demonic intelligences known by various names (the Yngvi, the Ascending Dark, the Demon Gods, the Great Enemy, the Living Shadow and the Great Old Ones are some of the more common). According to myth the dragons were made to war upon each other even before the land turned to fire, with half siding with the gods and half with the Ascending Dark. As the fires drove them southwards the servants of the Ascending Dark brought down a curse on the draconic race that destroyed their intelligence and turned them into the raging beasts of today. According to myths (and some of the more discredited pseudo-scientific writers) some of the intelligent dragons survived and have been responsible for everything from the building of the ziggurats of Gorphium to the stock market crash of 2681. Of course no creature could have survived for the hundreds of millions of years since the Draconic Epoch so such theories can be easily dismissed.
The same volcanic activity that originally blotted out the sun and which caused the planet to cool also filled the atmosphere with greenhouse gases that eventually raised the temperature again. Although the disaster had wiped out nearly 70% of life on the planet enough life was left to begin the rise again. This period was marked by the first divergence from the reptilian form on land as some of the flying reptiles began to evolve feathers and became birds and the first mammals scurried about in the shadow of the surviving giant reptiles. The later periods of the Stratos Epoch (as this time is known) also saw two interesting developments. There are signs that some birds abandoned flight and became vicious ground-dwelling predators, roaming the plains and savannahs. Even more interestingly paleontologists exploring the Carpathis Mountains have discovered humanoid bird forms and even a few examples of primitive tool use. According to the gods the bird people were their second group of followers and the faithful call this the Second World. It too came to a destructive end, when an asteroid strike landed on the Carpathis range and destroyed the bird people. Again the faithful blame this on the Ascending Dark, claiming that the bird people had already fallen from grace and were openly worshipping the Dark Ones. The asteroid strike was divine vengeance on the fallen people.
Again, with a large percentage of life destroyed, evolution received a shot in the arm. The first to rise were the land-dwelling birds, which began their slow change into the dinosaurs we see today. The mammals were slower to rise up, but over the millions of years would become the more dominant life forms. Around four million years ago several mammalian species began to diverge into upright bipedal forms. A short powerful burrowing mammal became the Dodari line of races, a tree-dwelling apelike creature became the Hominid species, while the horse-like Centauri races were slower to become bipedal but adopted a quadrupedal form with a separate arm structure. The first two of these to achieve sentience were Homo Sylvanus, more commonly known as Elves, and Dodari Khazad, better known as Dwarves. The Sylvanus-Khazad Empire first rose fifteen thousand years ago and was a coastal society, spread all around the world, though never more than about a hundred miles inland. The Elves were the ruling class, with the Dwarves as a happily subservient (but well treated) working class. Beyond that little is known of their society as very few examples of their writing have survived. Only the great epic ‘The Trials of King Randor’ has survived virtually intact, though the end is missing. It describes the efforts of the last King of the city-state of Hereklion to save his people from the rising sea (from the melting ice caps at the end of the last ice age). This was the Third World according to the faithful, who blame the rising seas on the Great Old Ones.
This crisis though did not affect those races that lived far from the coast and they were the next to rise, creating the world we know today. Around seven thousand years ago the next wave of races left the stone age and swapped the hunter-gathering lifestyle for agriculture. Around four thousand years ago the hobgoblins of Gorphium began construction of the ziggurats and humans in the Hordak valley invented their first form of writing. It was the end of prehistory and the beginning of recorded history.
[edit] Fringe Theories
While the ideas presented above represent the majority view of the inhabitants of the Fourth World there are some other theories that have a few, but often very fanatical, followers. The first is the fundamentalist reading of the Gospels of Aurum. According to the fundamentalist view these are the very words of Aurum, dictated to his priests in the dawn of the world. While many theologians claim the writings are cryptic, metaphorical, vague or in some cases can be translated at least three ways, the fundamentalist reading is that there was a day of creation which they have calculated from the ages of the forefathers in the Gospels as being seven thousand, seven hundred and seventy two years ago. Anything that suggests there was any world before that is a fallicy, no matter how much evidence there is. What is particularly alarming is their belief that there will be a day of uncreation, and that since Aurum's sacred number is seven, that it will soon be that day of uncreation. Many groups have stepped up their persecution of groups they see as being 'unholy' (particularly cog golems) in an attempt to show their fervour before the end of the world.
Another less worrying group are those that believe in the Motherfield theory. A growing phenomenon is the appearance of people who can spontaneously mimic the abilities of the druids, despite their lack of belief in the Godhead. The Motherfield theory states that this is because rather than there being a lifeforce that created all life on the world and helps to maintain it, that life itself creates a lifeforce which empowers the druids. According to this theory the positive force (the anti-particle to the negative force used by necromancers and the undead) is present in every plant and animal on the world and connects to all nearby life to create a network of linked positive energy. As a result there is a field of positive energy all around the globe, which they call the Motherfield. However, as nobody has yet been able to detect the Motherfield, either by magic or science it remains just a theory. Its supporters tend to be those botanists, zoologists and environmentalists who have manifested druid powers, but who have no wish to join the faithful.
One of the strangest theories that has attracted its own following is the Myth of the Fugitive. It comes from Caifen, an acolyte of Onstwin, who during a fasting in a monastery in the Carpathis range had a vision of a strange series of events. In the halls of the Yngvir one of the Ascending Dark desired power over the others and stole one of their greatest treasures, known as the Panmappamundi. The theft was discovered almost immediately though, and the Fugitive was forced to flee before he had discovered the relic's powers. Shifting through worlds in search of a hiding place he found himself in a system with a newborn star and using the Panmappamundi's power turned himself into a planet. When the Ascending Dark followed they could feel the relic's power leaking through the system, but could not tell where it was. Their foes, the gods, soon followed them to this place and drove them back before choosing the fourth world out as the site for themselves to create their life. The Ascending Dark had returned three times to drive the gods away and find their Fugitive, but each time they have only been able to peel the planet like an onion, taking off one shell each time. But they keep coming back, tearing it apart, piece by piece until they can reclaim their own.
Considering the source was a priest of Onstwin; fasting, half starved, drinking only water contaminated with gases that cause delerium and dreaming, the tale never received credibility for a century and a half. Few outside theological circles knew of the story, and even fewer gave it much credence. The shift in opinion came when a working language and alphabet was devised for translating the few surviving works of the ancient Elves. In a story carved in a tomb, now lost beneath the sea, divers found a tale with eerie similarities to Caifen's myth. The tale of the theft is the same, though the object described is different. When he arrives in the star system the planet is already there and the Fugitive merely hides his essence within it. And when the Ascending Dark arrive they do not merely remove the skin from the world, but shatter it into many parts in order to find their prize. When they cannot find it they leave, only for the world to reform and begin anew. In their tale the Elves only mention two destructions, their own not having happened yet. But the most worrying part is that they say the Ascending Dark will one day be defeated, but only by the inhabitants of the Fifth World, after the world has been shattered one more time...
