The Thousand-Year History

The Age of Ruins. Long before the Reckoning, someone built the step-pyramids of the Verdant Deep, the sunken roads under Lake Surmave, and the black-stone footings beneath half the great cities of Aethorra. Their name is lost. The Tzalan call them the First Sun. The Kaishoni archives call them the Builders and say no more.

The Century of Fire (roughly –110 to 0 R.). A hundred years of war among more than a dozen kingdoms, most of them gone now. It ended when the six great powers still standing, and the Tharaxi with them, met on an island in Lake Surmave and signed the Accord of Surmave, which fixed the borders and began the count of years. Those who signed were the Kingdom of Vareth † (northern Heartlands), the Kingdom of Wessary † (southern Heartlands), the Marrowmere League † (the lake city-states), the Twin Crowns of Castavar and Lasdara †, the Sarvani Khaasarate (from which came Zarvand), the Three Thrones of the East † (from which came Kaishon), and Tharax. Hrodvald sent no envoy and signed nothing.

0–146 R. The Accord holds, for the most part. Vareth and Wessary spend the first hundred years marrying into each other's royal houses. The Sarvani Khaasareem dig the first great salestoot. The Three Thrones make war on each other every generation. Tharax, which lost half its citizens in the Century of Fire, spends these years building the Anvil back up and speaks to no one.

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• 151 — The Union of the Heartlands. King Hethbael of Vareth weds Queen Sildith of Wessary. Their son, Hethmed Tulvard, is crowned first king of one Aldmere in 178. The Tulvards have held Aldmere ever since.
• 160s — The Gray Cough, a plague of the lungs, comes north out of the Sunmaw, through the Heartlands and into the Frostmarch. One in five of the Heartlands dies. Hethlend stands empty for three years.
• 183 — The Sarvani Khaasar Salestaad the Builder finishes the first great fire-temple at Mazbaaran, around the Eternal Flame. He names his realm anew: Zarvand, "land of gold," for the color of the Talodin at sundown. The chroniclers date the Khaasarate of Zarvand from this year.
• 199 — The First Bound Rising in Tharax. The Bound rise at harvest. The Phymun put them down in eleven days. The Skekar found the Tyrthas, the secret watch that has kept the Bound under its eye ever since.
• 206–212 — The War of the Gap. King Clislo II of Castavar-Lasdara marches 40,000 men through the Tharaxi Gap to take the Heartlands' western grain lands. Tharax will not let him pass.
• 212 — The Battle of the Gap. Four thousand Tharaxi Phymun under King Tothakhor Deneskid hold the pass three days against ten times their number. On the third day a thrown spear kills Clislo II. Castavar goes home. The battle made Tharax's name, and no army has forced the Gap since.
• 220 — The Marrowmere League cities of Solvaine, Claupiose and Ienvaune put their gold in one house, the Lake Treasury, to pay for their galleys. From this seed grew the money-power of Caelvenne.
• 231 — The Hethlend Collapse. The old timber bridge over the Wenvorm gives way in the spring flood and drowns three hundred, Aldmere's Lord Chancellor among them. The stone bridge of seven arches is finished in 244.

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• 248 — In the East, Emperor Dezau Kokdau of the northern throne conquers the other two Thrones and founds the Jade Dominion of Kaishon. In 260 he sets the first examinations for office.
• 255 — The Marrowmere Wars begin. For forty years the League cities fight each other over the lake tolls, hiring Hrodvald raiders, Tharaxi spears and Castavari knights as each can afford.
• 271 — The Burning of Ienvaune. Claupiose's galleys set Ienvaune's harbor alight with pitch. Two thousand die. The noble houses of the two cities have not forgiven it.
• 283 — Hrodvald clans under Hearthking Fevar Red-Axe raid down the Fur Trail as far as Chomtholk. Aldmere raises the first fortress at the Vargate.
• 294 — The Peace of the Nine. Nine noble houses of the League end the Marrowmere Wars by sharing out the lake trade among themselves and choosing a Prince to keep the peace: Prince Fezaud diol Valcroix. The state takes the name Caelvenne. The Conclave of Nine Houses dates from this treaty.
• 301 — The Kingdom of Lasdara, the lesser of the Twin Crowns, runs out of sons. Castavar swallows it. The name Lasdara lives on only in the church's southern diocese.
• 312 — The Founding of the Berrode. A hermit-preacher, Fojo of the Llovo, proclaims the Solitary God at Grarañe. Within a generation the kings of Castavar take up the faith and outlaw Castavar's older gods. Fojo is canonized in time; Erbavo Fojo bears his name.
• 330–338 — The Long Drought of the Talodin. Eight years without snow in the Spine. In summer the Talodin runs dry in stretches. Lake Shorooq shrinks to a salt pan. Half of Kebidaan starves or flees. In 336 Khaasar Hussaad II is cast down by his own Jaarzebeem for "losing the favor of the Flame."
• 341 — After steppe raiders sack Sorogei, Kaishon begins the Long Rampart under Emperor Tokrai Meksi.

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• 352 — The Tulvard Succession. King Hethgrul II of Aldmere dies without an heir, and two cousins claim the crown. Rather than fight, the great lords gather at Hethlend in the first Moot and choose between them. The Moot has met every year since, and little by little it took the power to make law.
• 367 — The Lake Comet. A comet hangs over Lake Surmave for forty nights. The sun-priests of Caelvenne call it a sign of the Radiant Iévaine's favor. The Berrode of Castavar calls it a warning. Both build cathedrals.
• 380 — The Dunmorrow Underking Tunand Deepdelver unites the mountain clans and proclaims the Kingdom Under the Spine †. For nearly two hundred years Dunmorrow is a true power. It sells steel to every side and puts armored foot in the field that even Tharax respects.
• 398 — The Poisoning at Mazbaaran. Khaasar Kasaadeer III dies at a feast, and with him his vizier, three of his sons and forty guests. The son left alive, Avisteer I, lays the blame on the Jaarzeb of Feshfaan and burns his city. Zarvand's custom of merciless succession begins here.
• 410–415 — The Salt Wars. Castavar's ocean fleet destroys the island kingdom of Vexara † in the Shattered Isles, whose kings had preyed on Castavari ships for two hundred years. Castavar never settles the islands. The survivors become the Salt Brotherhood.
• 421 — Caelvenne strikes the first leusore. Within fifty years every realm weighs its coin against it.
• 432 — The Frostmarch Famine. Two summers fail. Hearthking Anoga Wolf-Mother, the first woman the clans ever chose as Hearthking, leads them south to buy grain from Aldmere instead of raiding for it. The clans keep to her way for a generation.

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• 455 — The Grass Sea Kingdom. A steppe chieftain, Shaghis the Gray, unites the horse tribes and founds the Charnazin of Tontanor †, with a walled seat at the Tontanor fords, a few days' ride down the Tsanha from Lake Surmave. No one living remembers a steppe kingdom before it, and both its neighbors fear it.
• 461–470 — The Rampart War. For nine years Tontanor throws itself at Kaishon's unfinished wall. Kaishon loses a hundred thousand conscripts and holds. From that war Kaishon learns to build the repeating crossbow.
• 488 — The Long Rampart is completed, 1,100 miles from the Frostmarch to the edge of the Verdant Deep. Emperor Tokrai Tegoi walks its whole length and dies six days after.
• 502 — The Fall of Tontanor. Shaghis's grandson is murdered by his own tribes, who hate the taxes of a settled kingdom. The Charnazin falls apart in one summer. The Grass Sea goes back to feuding tribes, and the seat at the Tontanor fords is left to the wind. Its ruins stand there still.
• 511 — Aldmere and Caelvenne sign the Grain Compact: Aldmere feeds Caelvenne, and Caelvenne lends to Aldmere. The Aldmere crown's debt to Caelvenne starts here, and it has never been paid off.
• 520 — The Second Bound Rising. The greatest revolt Tharax has known. The Bound of the Lowfields kill three hundred Phymun in a night. A Bound servant kills King Drimor Sastorid in his tent. The Tyrthas takes its vengeance for a year, and when it is done the Bound are a third fewer.
• 539 — The Great Surmave Flood. A wet spring and the snowmelt off the Spine raise Lake Surmave twelve feet. Solvaine's lower city drowns. When the water falls back it uncovers a stone arch from the Age of Ruins, and the arch is called the Drowned Gate from then on.

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• 555 — The Kingdom Under the Spine falls. The Dunmorrow Underking Grarg the Proud will sell steel to Castavar and Aldmere only for gold. The two realms besiege the Delvers' holds together. The Dunmorrow are never conquered, but their kingdom is broken; the holds go back to being free clans, and they sell to everyone.
• 570 — The Wolf Winter in the Frostmarch. Wolves come into the longhouses. Hearthking Mulrik Halfhand is killed by his own stelestuk for failing to feed the clans.
• 588–596 — The Reasoned Purge. In Kaishon, Grand Chancellor Seiro Ketsan (forefather of the present Seiro Makok) talks the emperor into making the Doctrine of Ordered Reason the creed of the throne and outlawing the temples. Ten thousand monks are put to death or driven out. By law, Kaishon has had no gods since. The old faith lives on in the household spirits of the countryside.
• 603 — The Assassination at the Sun Cathedral. Prince Roltien diol Valcroix of Caelvenne is stabbed at dawn prayers by a priest in the pay of the House of Aijal. The Conclave hangs the Aijal patriarch and two of his sons from the cathedral bell-tower. The House of Aijal lives on only as spies; Roltien Aijal of the Quiet Office is its heir.
• 622 — The Cinder Teeth erupt. No mountain in all the chronicles has burst so. Ash falls as far as Hethlend. The sky is dim for a year.
• 623 — The Year Without Summer. Crops fail across Aethorra. The Frostmarch, the Heartlands and the Sunmaw all starve. Kaishon opens its granaries and comes through better than anyone. The Hizkari, who lived on the slopes, become a hard remnant people.
• 624–630 — The Hunger Wars. Hrodvald raids, Aldmere's border wars, and a Castavari march into Zarvand for grain that dies in the desert. In these years Zarvand first turns the naphtha of the Cinder Teeth seeps into a weapon: Talodin fire.
• 641 — Aldmere's Charter of Hearths, signed by King Hethwur IV, lets every man in the kingdom worship as he will. Those fleeing the Reasoned Purge and the Berrode's inquisition settle in the Heartlands.

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• 655 — The Berrode's first Rislo, Cravio of Grarañe, is raised up with power equal to the king's in matters of faith.
• 672 — The Marriage of the Lake. Prince Tilaud diol Valcroix weds Princess Glaidith Tulvard of Aldmere. From then on the Valcroix carry Aldmere's royal blood, and Caelvenne has never let Aldmere forget it.
• 681 — Zarvand's Khaasar Zhinraad the Learned founds the House of Learning at Mazbaaran. Its star-watchers make the star tables that every navigator on the continent still steers by.
• 690 — A Castavari fleet puts missionaries ashore at Baamarsh. The Zarvani burn their ship. The Rislo names Zarvand a realm of idolaters.
• 699–701 — The First Crusade. King Llelilo the Pious leads 30,000 Castavari across the Sunmaw toward Mazbaaran. The Zarvani will not give battle; they poison the wells and let the desert do the work. In 701 Llelilo dies of thirst forty miles short of the Talodin. Fewer than five thousand come home.
• 712 — The Salt Brotherhood is sworn into being by the pirate captains of the Shattered Isles, with a code and a Captain-King they choose themselves. Castavar's navy has fought them ever since.
• 725 — The ministers cast down Kaishon's Emperor Tokrai Koimu under the Mandate of Merit for "negligence," the first and only time it has been done. He is sent to the archive-city of Tsenkin and dies there copying manuscripts.
• 734 — The Venei's Throat Massacre. A Castavari logging company goes into the Greenwarden through Venei's Throat with two hundred armed men for escort. None come back. The Waheli nail the escort's shields to the trees at the forest's edge. They hang there still.
• 741 — The Skekar seize Tharax's King Phospor Deneskid for taking Caelvennois gold, and he dies in prison. He is the first Tharaxi king the Skekar removed, and from him comes the Phymun saying: "Gold has a smell."

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• 752 — Silver is found in the mountains above Puesdro. Within thirty years Castavar strikes more silver than every other realm together.
• 763 — The Barerk Raid on Shanyo. Hrodvald longships row down the northeast coast and sack Kaishon's northern city. Kaishon runs the Rampart's northern forts out to the sea.
• 779 — The Cherüsh first enter the chronicles, one of the raiding tribes of the Grass Sea.
• 788 — The Mirror Towers. Caelvenne's engineer Sierine Tésvol builds the first heliograph line across Lake Surmave. Within twenty years Solvaine can send word to Larvir faster than a rider can saddle.
• 801 — The Black Autumn. A blight takes the Heartlands wheat. Aldmere borrows a fortune from Caelvenne to buy Kaishoni rice, and the Grain Compact debt doubles.
• 815 — The Tzalan city of Sutzam is founded around the largest step-pyramid in the Verdant Deep, the first jungle town large enough to call a city since the Age of Ruins.
• 822–829 — The Lords' War. The great lords of Aldmere's Westmarch, led by Duke Yornbael Durift, rise against King Hethminth III over the Moot's right to tax them. The king wins, barely, with Tharaxi hirelings paid in Caelvennois gold. The Durifts keep their duchy, and the Moot keeps its taxes. The Westmarch has not trusted Hethlend since.
• 840 — Zarvand's Khaasar Talodeer the Magnificent marches north, takes the Talodin headwaters below the Tharaxi Gap, and plants the fortress of Faashab-Talodin on Tharaxi ground. Tharax, still weak from the Lords' War, lets it stand. The fort has rankled for three hundred years.

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• 851 — The Iron Matron's Bargain. The Hizkari clans of the Cinder Teeth, paid in salt for their naphtha until now, demand gold. Khaasar Talodeer pays. The price has gone up every generation since.
• 866–868 — The Second Crusade. Rislo Pueco and King Mairo II lead 45,000 Castavari by sea this time and land on the coast near Baamarsh. They take Baamarsh and Vonteen-Shorooq and hold them two years. In 868 they are broken at the Battle of the Salt Pans, when Zarvani cataphracts charge across the crust of Lake Shorooq at dawn. Mairo II is taken and ransomed for his weight in silver.
• 877 — The Frostmarch Concord. For the first time, every Hrodvald clan agrees to one law at the Vuvud. Blood feuds must now be settled by drolak before the clans, not by raids in the night. The law is kept about one time in two.
• 890 — The Tsenkin Earthquake. The shore of Lake Tsenkin falls in, and the archive-city loses a third of its manuscripts. Kaishon spends forty years copying out what is left.
• 903 — The House of Farisel is founded in Solvaine by a glass-merchant's widow, Vailine Farisel, who lends to Aldmere's crown when the older houses will not. Within a hundred years Farisel holds the debts of half the continent.
• 911–914 — The War of the Tsanha Fords. Aldmere and Caelvenne fight a short war over the crossing where the Tsanha leaves Lake Surmave. Caelvenne wins on the water and loses on land. The border is drawn where it stands today, with Larvir on the Caelvennois side.
• 927 — The Great Fire of Kokrin. A third of the capital burns. The city is built again on the grid it keeps today.
• 938 — Tharax's Third Bound Rising is betrayed to the Tyrthas before it starts. Two thousand Bound are put to death in the Lowfields. The Phymun call it "the quiet year."

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• 949 — Caelvenne's Conclave makes it law to hire Tharaxi spears to garrison the lake shore. Tharax agrees, so long as no Phymon ever sleeps inside Solvaine's walls.
• 960 — The Comet Returns. The same comet last seen in 367. Zarvand's star-watchers had foretold it to the month. The Berrode bans the House of Learning's star tables in Castavar; Castavari navigators go on using them.
• 971–975 — The Cherüsh Ascendancy. The Cherüsh conquer their neighbors on the Grass Sea and become the greatest of the steppe tribes. Kaishon pays the Cherüsh olriqtun tribute to keep them off the Rampart, and pays it still. Kaishon's ministers call it "gifts."
• 983 — The Rislo's Coup. Rislo Gronrovo shuts King Janedo IV of Castavar away for heresy and rules through the king's twelve-year-old son for eleven years. The present Rislo's power stands on that precedent.
• 996 — Aldmere's King Hethlarn I is stabbed on the floor of the Moot by a Westmarch baron in a quarrel over taxes. The king lives; the baron does not. No weapon has been allowed in the Moot hall since.
• 1004 — The Drowning of Vexport. A great storm sinks half the Salt Brotherhood's fleet and drowns its pirate town. The Brotherhood builds again at Wreckers Cove. Captain-Queen Sormerva Vex claims descent from the last Captain-King, who died in the storm.
• 1019 — The Reasoned Rebellion. The peasants of Kaishon's Southern Reach, led by a temple-keeper named Tsehei Yotoke, rise to bring back the old gods. Kaishon crushes them with the Sorogei garrison. Tsehei Yotoke's head is shown in Kokrin for a year. After that, household shrines are quietly let be.
• 1030s — The Tzalan Awakening. The Sun-Speakers of Sutzam begin to gather the jungle villages under the pyramid cult. Zarvand's spice caravans start losing men on the Nhal.
• 1041 — Hearthking Farrun Icebrand, the last woman chosen before Selra Stormbrand, dies in a longship on Lake Farvig. The clans go back to their feuds.

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• 1052 — The Bridge Treaty. Aldmere and Tharax agree that the Stair and Venei's Throat are Aldmere's to garrison, the Tharaxi Gap Tharax's. Duke Durift's Westmarch takes the western passes and grows rich on the tolls.
• 1061 — Khaasar Avisteer II dies of a fall from his horse. Within the month two of his sons kill each other over the throne. A third, Zhaasheer IV, takes it and reigns forty years. He is the father of the present Khaasar.
• 1068 — The Solvaine Bank Panic. The House of Tésvol fails after lending to a Castavari silver venture that comes to nothing. Farisel buys up its debts cheap. Tésvol stays one of the Nine only by marrying into Farisel.
• 1074 — Tzalan warriors sack a Zarvani spice-fort on the Nhal. Zarvand and Kaishon both start pushing garrisons into the Verdant Deep.
• 1082 — The Cherüsh Civil War. The Cherüsh olriq is murdered by his brother; the tribes break into four and fight for a generation. Kaishon stops paying tribute. Aldmere's eastern border is quiet for the first time in a hundred years.
• 1089 — The Great Winter. The worst winter in the chronicles. Lake Farvig freezes to the bottom in the shallows. A third of the Frostmarch dies. To live, the Hrodvald raid south for a generation, and Aldmere's northern shires are emptied by it.
• 1099 — Tokrai Shaiku takes the Jade Throne at 24 when his father dies.
• 1102 — Avisteer III becomes Khaasar of Zarvand at 23. He is a poet and a star-watcher before he is a king, and in his first ten years he doubles the House of Learning.
• 1108 — The Tharaxi Reforms. The Skekar, alarmed that the citizens grow fewer, let the sons of Outdweller craftsmen into the Anvil for the first time. The Thirty split over it. The feud between the Deneskid and Sastorid royal lines dates from here.
• 1117 — Tokrai Seitotai is born to Emperor Tokrai Shaiku's first consort. The emperor has no living sons.
• 1119 — Sarsak Tolmar is born in a felt tent on the Grass Sea, son of a small Cherüsh chief.
• 1121 — Hethlarn Tulvard III is crowned in Hethlend at 27 after his father dies of a fever. He inherits a treasury that owes Farisel two generations of debt.
• 1127 — The Hrodvald raid on Thalmirn. The last great raid in the wake of the Great Winter. Aldmere at last fortifies Lulstat and the Northmere.
• 1130 — Kenithor Deneskid and Lekakor Sastorid become the two kings of Tharax within a year of each other.
• 1131 — The Iron Contract. Caelvenne, which can no longer trust its hirelings after a Castavari company turned coat mid-siege in a lake-shore raid, signs a treaty with Tharax: gold every year, and a Tharaxi army in return. King Kenithor signs it. King Lekakor votes against it in the Thirty and loses by two votes.
• 1132 — Lourien diol Valcroix is chosen Prince of Caelvenne at 47.
• 1135 — The Gilded Pact. Prince Lourien's niece Rorelle weds Crown Prince Dobarmo of Castavar. In the same week Farisel takes over the whole of Castavar's silver debt on new terms.
• 1137 — A dry summer in the Spine. The Talodin runs low. Khaasar Avisteer III writes to Tharax asking that no dam ever be built on the headwaters. Tharax does not answer.
• 1138 — King Randuo V of Castavar dies. Dobarmo IV is crowned at 27. Rislo Litoto preaches the Third Crusade at the crowning.
• 1138 — Selra Stormbrand's longships raid Shanyo on Kaishon's north coast, the last great Hrodvald raid of any kind.
• 1139 — The Third Crusade. Dobarmo IV, urged on by Litoto and paid for by Farisel, marches 35,000 through the Tharaxi Gap under safe-conduct and down the Talodin. The Zarvani meet them at the Battle of Faashab-Talodin and break the ratorlon with Talodin fire at a river crossing. Eight thousand Castavari burn or drown. Dobarmo escapes. Castavar's debt to Caelvenne doubles.
• 1140 — The Hizkari raise the price of naphtha again, and for the first time they receive a Castavari envoy.
• 1141 — Sarsak Tolmar, 22, unites the four Cherüsh factions after he kills the last rival olriq in single combat at the ruins of Tontanor. He pitches his camp on the ruins of the old seat and names it Tolmar-Buyor. Kaishon takes up its tribute again at once.
• 1142 — Sun-Speaker Ixatl takes power in Sutzam and declares the jungle closed to outsiders.
• 1143 — Emperor Tokrai Shaiku falls sick and is no longer seen. Grand Chancellor Seiro Makok takes the seals of state.
• 1144 — Selra Stormbrand is chosen Hearthking at the Vuvud, the first woman in a hundred years. Stelest Kruman Ironjaw walks out of the Vuvud.
• 1145 — Khaasar Avisteer III's health fails. Prince Faasheer takes command of the Unfading. Prince Durkaad is sent to govern Feshfaan, out of the way.
• 1145 — King Lekakor Sastorid proposes in the Thirty that Tharax leave the Iron Contract when its present term ends in 1147. The vote is put off.
• 1146 — Now. Sarsak Tolmar's riders are seen at the Tsanha fords. Litoto preaches the Fourth Crusade in every cathedral in Castavar. Farisel has stopped lending to Castavar. Prince Hethbael of Aldmere has asked his father, before the whole Moot, why Aldmere still pays interest on a loan made in 511.

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• Aldmere — House Tulvard, unbroken since Hethmed Tulvard, 178 R. (Hethlarn III is the 31st Tulvard to reign.)
• Tharax — The Deneskid and Sastorid royal lines, each claiming descent from the founders. Always two kings.
• Caelvenne — Princes are chosen by the Conclave; the Valcroix have held the seat most often (Fezaud 294, Roltien 603, Tilaud 672, Lourien 1132), but never by right.
• Castavar — House Grarañe since the Twin Crowns. Rislon since 655.
• Zarvand — The Khaasareem of the House of Salestaad since 183. The throne goes to whoever survives.
• Kaishon — The Tokrai dynasty since Tokrai Meksi, 341 R. The Seiro family has given the realm nine Grand Chancellors.
• Hrodvald — No dynasty. The clans choose their Hearthkings; women have held the title three times (Anoga Wolf-Mother 432, Farrun Icebrand 1041, Selra Stormbrand 1144).

The Gray Cough (160s) · the Long Drought of the Talodin (330–338) · the Lake Comet (367, returning 960) · the Frostmarch Famine (432) · the Great Surmave Flood (539) · the Wolf Winter (570) · the Cinder Teeth eruption and the Year Without Summer (622–623) · the Black Autumn blight (801) · the Tsenkin Earthquake (890) · the Drowning of Vexport (1004) · the Great Winter (1089) · the dry summer of 1137.

Khaasar Hussaad II deposed (336) · Khaasar Kasaadeer III poisoned (398) · King Drimor Sastorid assassinated (520) · Hearthking Mulrik Halfhand killed by his stelestuk (570) · Prince Roltien diol Valcroix stabbed (603) · Emperor Tokrai Koimu deposed (725) · King Phospor Deneskid dies in prison (741) · King Janedo IV imprisoned by the Rislo (983) · King Hethlarn I stabbed at the Moot (996, survived) · the Cherüsh olriq murdered by his brother (1082) · Sarsak Tolmar kills the last rival olriq (1141).