The Age of Abundance was the last great age of the old world, when vast seas covered much of Tarisia, rivers crossed fertile lands, and kingdoms flourished where only ruins and wastes remain today. It is remembered as an age of great cities, distant voyages, prosperous trade, and cultures whose surviving remnants offer only a glimpse of what was lost.
The Old Kingdoms
The sages say the Age of Abundance lasted many lifetimes. Long enough, at least, for kingdoms to rise, conquer their neighbors, erect monuments to celebrate their eternal glory, and disappear so completely that no one remembers why the monuments exist.
The tribes of Taris, Human, Peri, Saurian, Asuras, and Fenn had magnificent cultures and built cities across the old world. They knelt before unique gods, idolized cultural heroes, codified laws, exchanged cultures and ideas, and ruthlessly slaughtered each other over long forgotten grievances. They owned the world of Tarisia for it was woven from their existence. But they weren’t alone.
Ruins scattered across Tarisia bear the image of kingdoms for whom no living descendants are known. The enormous vessels of the Field of Urns appear to have been made for the burial of beings far larger than any tribe living today. Elsewhere buried cities are littered with strangely proportioned streets, statues of unfamiliar figures, and tombs whose occupants resemble no people known to walk beneath the Twin Suns.
Their ruins suggest civilizations of tremendous wealth and sophistication. Broken roads disappear beneath the dunes. The remains of ancient harbors rest strewn about dry outcroppings. Palaces and temples lie buried beneath settlements built from their stones. Across the Defiled Lakes, ancient docks and quays still mark the shores of waters that no longer exist.
The stories that remain speak of merchant fleets crossing vanished seas, rival dynasties, great temples, gardens, festivals, wars, alliances, and cities whose names have survived long after anyone remembers where they stood.
Much else has been lost.
One notable exception is Casshern, whose name remains familiar throughout Tarisia. Once a great center of worship dedicated to Taris, Casshern appears repeatedly in stories of the Old Kingdoms, though considerably more is remembered of its role in The Great Withering than of the kingdom itself. What its people called themselves, how far their influence reached, and much of what distinguished their culture have been swallowed by the centuries along with nearly everything else.
The people of the Old Kingdoms left descendants, but few modern cultures can claim an unbroken connection to those who came before. Languages changed. Kingdoms disappeared. Peoples scattered and mingled as their homelands became uninhabitable. Stories became legends, legends contradicted one another, and much of what survived the centuries was later suppressed or destroyed by the Thrones.
The Wonders of the Old Kingdoms
The Old Kingdoms were already powerful and prosperous when they began exploring the remnants of the Eld civilization that had preceded them.
Eld ruins could be found across Tarisia even then. Strange objects were recovered from forgotten places, while the enigmatic Discordant Paths offered passage across distances that otherwise required months of travel. Generations studied these remnants, learning enough to make use of some without necessarily understanding what they had inherited.
Then came Erra, the Corruptor.
The usual telling claims that the Old Kingdoms opened a sealed Path and found the Exile waiting on the other side. Whatever occurred there, Erra’s arrival is remembered alongside the return of Sorcery to Tarisia.
Sorcery transformed an already flourishing world.
With abundant water to draw upon, its possibilities must have seemed nearly limitless. Sorcerers healed injuries once thought fatal, raised monuments, defended cities, and accomplished works that still defy easy explanation. Temples filled with channels and flowing basins. Aqueducts carried water into the hearts of cities. Rivers were redirected through structures whose purposes have long since been forgotten.
The Old Kingdoms did not merely survive beneath the Twin Suns. For a time, they seemed capable of mastering the world around them.
The Wanderer
A wondrous blessing, and vile curse for those unable to stay their own hand.
The End of Abundance
Exactly when the Age of Abundance ended is difficult to say. Ages are considerably neater in histories than they ever are while people are living through them.
What the oldest stories remember as wonders become increasingly difficult to distinguish from weapons. Kingdoms that had once competed for trade and territory began vying for control of rivers, reservoirs, and fertile lands. Sorcery demanded water, and the greater its practitioners’ ambitions became, the greater their appetite for it grew.
Yet there was no single moment when the people of the Old Kingdoms could have looked upon their world and declared it doomed.
Their cities still stood. Their kingdoms still prospered. Sorcery still performed wonders. Every new crisis offered another reason to use the power that had solved the last.
By the time abundance became scarcity, the Old Kingdoms had grown very good at finding reasons why one more sacrifice was necessary.
What followed is remembered as The Great Withering.