The Races of Andurun: Humans

Humans, while not as storied as some of the Elder races of Andurun, have a long history that many of their own kind don’t even recall. A short lived race, one of the most short lived of all the races of the realm, they are equally short minded and sometimes very rash, tending to disregard history and past learning for the unattainable “future”. Being the most plentiful race of the realm means that Humans run the gamut of good to evil. They can be the best or the worst that the mortal mind and spirit can fabricate, and are as many times champions as they are villainous; while a good many refrain from such engagements and prefer a quieter life of solitude or peace. Humans favor no proclivity and are as often found worshipping the One God as they are waxing philosophic in the Temples of Unitar, or reaching for no higher goals whatever.

Human History: Humans began thousands of years ago far across the Pearl Ocean, in a distant land named Aeros. Surrounded entirely by mountains Humans carved out hunting grounds and plains settlements through the thousands of open miles between the mountains and the cold waters of the Ocean of Tempas, surrounding Aeros’s shores. They had limited knowledge of the waters or sailing, so for hundreds of years they remained in the land locked in the grip of the mountains, fearful of the heights of the mountains that caged them. Then they came to Illiador, abandoned city of the Dorim Hayn. They believed that the gods of old, of wind and rain and earth made this city and for reasons unknown, fled it. Superstitious, the Human tribes did not enter the dead metropolis, but instead began to flourish around it, in the lush and fertile plains and forests that framed the once mighty city of the Forgers of the Realm. They founded the kingdom of Eltresse, and a Knighthood to accompany the safeguarding of the kingdom. In time they mastered forging, and bequethed the knights in service to their king swords crafted of a rare and precious metal known as Elder Steel, or Eldain. The Swords of Eltresse became as much a legend in Illiador and Aeros as the knights who carried them, and in time the Deva (a reclusive mountain race) came to the Human lands to entreaty trade rights and alliances for mutual safety. Eltresse came to dominate hundreds of miles around the Dead City, and became a beacon of Human achievement, but their success was founded upon the same lie that brought the Dorim Hayn into ruin, and their success was not to last forever.

After nearly a thousand years of rule, Rada, current king of Eltresse, began to dream that his kingdom worshipped pagan, false gods, and that the One God, the true Creator of Andurun, was growing filled with wrath. Rada, as well as his son Humas, did all they could to right the wrong, but the seeds of trust in the old gods were deeply rooted, and many did not share Rada’s views concerning a radical change in faith. It came to a horrible end when Humas’s son, Ragnarok, took the throne. He assembled the Crimson Reich, his personally trained assassins/soldiers, and forged Damocles from the funeral fires that burned his father’s body after battle claimed his life. His war upon his own people, dividing all of Eltresse, became legend, and the Knights of Eltresse forsook their oaths of service and fled into hiding, unwilling to serve their tyrant king. On the eve of a great battle Ragnarok led his army onto the field, and men cowed before him, for there had not been a man in life before him that was so born to the ways of fighting and bloodshed as Ragnarok, and his Crimson Reich, it was said, were as bloodthirsty as he was. But the battle was not meant to be. The Cataclysm struck, and ended the battle, Eltresse, and many other things all the realm over.

For two hundred years Humans drifted in chaotic confusion, leaderless and without purpose. Then came the Order of the Valar, led by a man named Valorius. They continued peacefully what Rada had began almost three hundred years prior, and not long after the Elves of Kallendaros came to the land. Seeking perhaps answers for the plague of the Cataclysm, the Elves treated with the Human tribes and taught them sailing and other artisan crafts, in exchange for a measure of knowledge from the Order of the Valar; curiously, who were only ever allowed to be chosen from Human bloodlines.

At last it came time for Humans to abandon their ancient home. Taking what the Elves had taught them, they set sail from Aeros and traveled to Kallendaros in massive fleets, whose making took years of toil for the ailing Human tribes. They settled in the southlands of the new land and slowly went west and north, at last founding their next kingdom, named Telaine. Trade with the Dwarves went well, as did entreaties with the Elves, what few of them they had, until the rising of the Dragons.