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High-level overview of the history of Gost
In the dawn of halfling habitation on Gost, the continent was a wild place full of ferocious beasts and native goblinoid tribes. Legends state that halflings first came to the subcontinent from over the ocean to the west and first made landfall along the inhospitable beaches along the coast of modern-day Heights. Seemingly barred from returning the way they'd come, these first halfling families first traveled south and then struck out inland before eventually settling in the fertile fields near the land's center. From there they spread back west the way they'd come, systematically taming the land and over time raising up the village of Coast to the south and Peak in the mountains along the west coast. The second race to come to Gost was the fearsome Kellid in the year 783 of the Old Calander. According to Kellid scholars, they are the only people to pass through the Last Look Mountains to the northeast. They initially settled along the continent's resource-rich eastern coast and established many cities, the greatest of which they named Last Bastion. Kellids are thought to have brought the first organized religion to Gost, a veneration of twin deities that symbolize the sun and moon. Prodigious explorers, the Kellid discovered the halfling enclaves initially by mistake. Thinking the smaller peoples easy targets, the Kellid nation opened hostilities that, over the course of the next three hundred years, they learned to deeply regret. The halflings of Gost proved to be cunning, vicious, and implacable, as any of the former goblin tribes would have attested. The war between the Kellids and the halflings of Gost -who staged their forces mostly at their newly rebuilt capital city of Hearthome- ended abruptly in 1156, when the forces of the Kellid nation turned and marched directly back to Last Bastion, ceasing further hostilities. The truth about this period in Kellid history is strictly controlled by the Kellid oligarchy. The only freely available information indicates that the Kellid people suffered some form of cultural collapse related to their twin deities. Afterward, a curse was born amongst the people; ever after, no Kellid can long survive away from Last Bastion and its surroundings. While Kellid society underwent a painful reconstruction, the halfling enclaves prepared for the inevitable day they would once again have to defend their borders from greedy neighbors. They did not have long to wait. While the halflings formed and organized their first national military, and revolutionized how goods and supplies moved throughout their enclaves through the use of roads, another apocalypse was occurring far beyond halfling lands. In the year 1309, the last year of the Old Calander, a deadly mist rose over the barren deadlands to the far north of Hearth. These lands were long thought uninhabitable by even the doughtiest of halfling explorers. They were, therefore, wholly surprised when the strange new phenomenon drove a vast selection of disparate peoples before it. Thus came the other races to Gost - the short-lived but valiant humans, the undying but broken elves, the pitiful gnomes and their crafty neighbors the dwarves, and finally, the failing white orcs shepherding the very last children of their ancient race. With difficulty, the halflings finally established communication with the heads of the refugees. History records these leaders as King Pavri of the gnomish kingdom, whose people had been near wholly consumed when fire swept their lands, and Llewellynd of the elves, whose people were already dying of sadness from their displacement. The human contingent, the largest surviving, were a wash of various cultures and faiths, lead by a former queen-turned-hero named Hel. Aethelstan represented the dwarves, a race of great engineers whose marvelous cities crowned the mountains surrounding the gnomish homeland - they escaped the fire only for their people to suffocate to death in their airy abodes. All of them, however, deferred to Last Starsight, the white orc prophet who had led them all south on the strength of a message written in the stars. King Pavri's gnomes are credited with solving the communication issues with their alchemies and Last Starsight spoke at length with the Head Families of the halfling enclave. The advent of the end came on suddenly, he said, and it had been absolute. The peoples he guided were the last living members of their species in all the known world. They had fought through rain and ruin and fire, choking ash and killing smoke, to escape their once prosperous lands and flee to an unknown land far to the south. They traveled for days within that frozen deadland, dying of hunger and exposure, before the mist rose one morning and never receded. They lost fully half of the remaining peoples to the horrors that stirred within. The Advent of Mist and Diaspora It became immediately clear to the Head Families that the tales told by the refugees were not exaggerated. The mist spawned madness and monsters. Taking the newcomers with them, the halflings left a sizeable portion of their military behind and established a new enclave, Border, to guard against the threat. They also knew that, if they were to marshall to combat this threat, they couldn't do it with the uncertainty of strangers in their midst. Most of the newcomers were given supplies and encouraged, firmly, to find their own territories. The gnomes' strange new magic, however, fascinated the halflings of Hearth, and a deal was struck to allow them to remain as a part of halfling society. Great lovers of order and highly pragmatic, the halfling enclaves devised a new calendar and declared the Age of Dawning at an end. Fifty summers later, in the fiftieth year of the Age of Mist, a great diaspora began. The followers of Hel were a mixed lot, including even a few gnomes and elves. Many hailed from cultures where races mixed freely, though humans predominated the lot. A few adventurous halflings even chose to leave their families or migrate in small units with the newcomers. First, they went east and encountered the leavings of the fractured Kellid nation. Finding the land abandoned, they settled there first and founded the kingdom of Ansador. Wary of invading the fiercely guarded lands surrounding Last Bastion, the new settlers then continued south and founded the four great cities Xeres, Goodhope, and the twin cities Agadon and Magadon. The halflings of the West watched with growing alarm as the new Ansadoran Empire grew, and eventually reached out to their only allies, the dwarves. The dwarves had left Hearth sheltering the last of the white orcs, heading north and east. The mountains there they named the Last Look, in the hope that once summited, they would offer a view of the world left behind. Upon finally scaling their flanks, the dwarves discovered a blanket of mist that stretched beyond the horizon. This wasn't their only discovery, however. Tucked away in the highest summits, accessible only by a secret road, the dwarves found a wonder inexplicable to any that have ever walked its halls. They named this miraculous city of climate-controlled domes and subterranean galleries Higarde and have yet to have cause to expand beyond its borders. Last Starsight, nearing the end of his long life, led his people on a final journey further east, skirting the foot of the Last Look mountains. He was not looking for a place for his people to survive and multiply, for that was denied to them. Instead, he sought a place he'd seen in dream, a place that would help prepare the remaining children for their final role in the history of the world. With the last of his strength, he discovered the Tower of Zelas and used his fading life force to fashion the magic that would crack the tower's doors open and grant his people refuge. Inside, his people found a vast repository of knowledge written in a language fully as alien as the city of Higarde. They became convinced that this knowledge would guide the future of the world and made it their purpose to decode it before the end days. For many generations following their expulsion from the halfling enclaves, the elves wandered aimlessly in the vast wilderness of eastern Gost. Facing unsubstantiated but prevalent blame for the cataclysm to the north they became a secular and closed-off race of caravaners. Theirs had been a society at its pinnacle before the desolation and while the loss of life hadn't been as great as that of others, all of their culture and the vast majority of their learning had been left behind in their desperate flight. They struggled to survive on their own, and self-reliance became a key value. Eventually, their leader the revered Llewellynd would forge The Path and begin a cultural revolution that would create the fearsome explorers who now challenge the mist with their throats bared. That, however, did not occur until early in the thirteenth century after their arrival on Gost.
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Last edited by Icereach; Jan 6th, 2021 at 11:57 PM. |
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