A really, REALLY informal history of Krynn

[Andre]

... " Krynn" being the name of the campaign world you find yourself in. Pages 196-204 (though I'd stop after reading "the hammer of kharas" at 204 to avoid spoiling any surprises later on in the campaign) of the Dragonlance Campaign Setting are a fun read and go into this stuff in more detail. Bards, wizards and others "in the know" would be familiar with the stuff mentioned in the above pages.

"PC " = Pre-Cataclsym, " AC " = After Cataclysm.

1775 PC (roughly 2000 to 2100 years prior to the start of the campaign).. Knights of Solamnia founded, Knights who fight for the forces of Good... they ally themselves with the Good gods Paladine, Kiri-Jolith and Habbakuk (see chapter four of the Dragonlance Campaign Setting pdf for more info on those deities).. up until the Cataclysm the Knights develop a reputation as heroes and defenders of the land.

1060 - 1018 PC (1369 years before the campaign starts)... Good and Evil dragons make war upon each other... Huma (who later becomes a "hero of myth" to the knights of Solalmnia - live up to his ideal but don't really believe he ever existed in "real life") , a human warrior, and a silver dragon, Heart, fight Takhisis, Queen of the Evil Gods and ruler of the evil dragons, driving her from the face of Krynn... truce called between evil and good dragons who go into a slumber... given that this occurred over 1300 years ago people of today regard dragons as children's stories and myths.

460 AC (811 years before the campaign starts).. Istar becomes the dominant country of power ("Empire"), ruling all of known Krynn

280 AC (631 years before the campaign starts) ... Istar declares itself the "moral center" of Ansalon (the continent of Krynn the PC's live in) and becomes increasingly authoritarian in it's rule. What begins as the rule of Lawful Good clerics devolves into a tyranny. A king-priest is appointed as ruler of Ansalon.. the Kingpriest becomes antagonistic towards all wizards, leading to a distrust of magic-wielders in general that still persists up through today. The Kingpriest's kingdom becomes increasingly concerned with worldly power and less with being good and virtuous... warning signs sent by the gods of good are ignored. The kingpriest issues "thought control edicts" using renegade mages, stating that anyone even thinking evil thoughts can be tried for heresy. The kingpriest calls for the outright extermination of all "evil" races.

Year zero (0) AC, the Cataclysm.... The final straw for the gods is when the kingpriest demands that Paladine (leader of the gods of good) appear at his side to help the Kingpriest eradicate "evil" from the world. The gods punish Ansalon with something known today as "The Cataclysm".. earthquakes, floods, and other natural pheonomena that alter large portions of the face of Ansalon. Death and disease spread in it's wake and , when the gods vanish from the face of Krynn (with the exception of Chislev, see below) ,magical healing is no longer available (except with a few rare exceptions, see below). The people cry to the Knights of Solamnia for help but it is beyond even the ability of the Knights of Solamnia to "save the world"... the Knights become unjustly persecuted and reviled as a result ("mob mentality" resulting in many knights being hunted down and killed though the order of knights still exists today, at a fraction of it's original strength).

The people turn their backs on the gods in anger. Since the kingpriest was human the elves blame humankind in general for this disaster and turn their backs on the world, withdrawing into their forests. The mountain dwarves also withdraw from the world , hiding inside their mountains. Hill dwarves however continue to interact with other races in Krynn.

Humans raid elven villages for food and assault elven women resulting in a number of half-elves... elves respond by killing anyone who comes too near their forest borders if their "warning shots" (arrows) are ignored.

Chislev, Neutral goddess of nature, flat out refuses to abandon her loyal followers, the Witches of Chislev (basically druids who can cast some arcane spells.. largely based on the Wiccan faith here in "real life" Earth). Chislev's witches try to assist the stricken people of Ansalon after the cataclysm but their numbers are not great enough to be able to deal with the untold number of injured and diseased... the crowds turn on them in a sort of "mob mentality" , and start burning them at the stake... the witches withdraw into their forests hiding away from the world, going to extreme measures (magically erasing the memories of any non-witches who come into contact with them ) to protect themselves. Today witches are by and large regarded as evil demon worshippers.

Humans and hill dwarves band together to attack the mountain dwarves to take the treasure and food the mountain dwarves have.... the war comes to a disasterous end when a powerful wizard ... a Black Robe, evil mage, by the name of Fistaldanius's .. magical efforts go astray, resulting in an enormous explosion that kills pretty much all the humans and dwarven soldiers on the battlefield. (Humans and dwarves still exist as a race, their numbers have just been greatly reduced )

351 AC .... the current year ... the campaign starts in what we could consider the first day of "November", Autumn Dark (see table 6-9 "months of the year" page 197 dragonlance campaign setting .. the elvish names of the month have come into popular use despite the human dislike of elves, oddly enough)

[Andre]

This is a more detailed account of the history of Krynn well worth reading.. it will give you a better handle on the past and how it shaped today's current events and provides insight into what Pax Tharkas.. the monument taken over by the dragonarmies.. once stood for. Rin and Serinda definitely know it "in character" and thanks to another RP thread he's told Eolaer and Za'era about it too (and if it's ok with darkalloy I will assume he'll fill any new PC's who join the group in on said events as well )

This is pulled from the "races of ansalon" sourcebook pages 54 -

The elves awoke in the Age of Dreams. Not yet an
organized nation, they watched from their forests as the
ogres enslaved the humans, only to lose control in a civil
war that brought ruin to both races. As the ogres and
humans slaughtered one another mercilessly, the elves
kept their distance, staying out of the conflict.

Silvanos Goldeneye, a young and charismatic warrior
among the elves, declared their race could rise above
such savagery. As the ogre civilization descended into
barbarism, Silvanos inspired the elves to take their place.
The elves scavenged the ruins of ogre cities and built their
own civilization, beginning in the forest known in the
present day as Silvanesti, where they believe life began.
Silvanos ruled as the first Speaker of the Stars and took a
woman named Quinari as his wife. Those who would not
join with Silvanos were led by a Wilder elf by the name
of Kagonos; Silvanos offered to allow them to become the
servant caste in Silvanesti. Kagonos refused and led his
people, the Kagonesti, back to Ansalon’s forests.

However, as they soon discovered, this forest was
already occupied; ancient chromatic dragons attacked
the elves, beginning the First Dragon War. Thousands
of elves died in the fighting, and it appeared the dragons
might wipe the elves from the face of Ansalon. Just when
the situation turned hopeless, the elves were granted by
the gods of Magic the knowledge and means to create
dragonstones, rune-bearing crystals that could trap a
dragon’s soul. Using these new weapons, the elves defeated
the dragons and cast their trapped souls into the abyss of
Nemith-Otham.

Years later, dwarves delving in Thoradin discovered
the dragonstones hidden since the end the First Dragon
War and awakened the dragons within. The dragons drew
armies of bakali and ogres to themselves, and the Second
Dragon War began as these hordes were unleashed on
Silvanesti. The elves fought valiantly, but soon the dragons
and their armies of evil laid siege to Silvanost. A trio of
sorcerers called forth the magic of the land and sky and
ordered Krynn itself to swallow the dragons once and for
all.

Once it was unleashed, the magic couldn’t be stopped.
Arcane storms of wild magic raged across Krynn,
slaughtering thousands and laying waste to vast areas. The
sorcerers cried out to the gods for help, and the gods of
magic came to their aid. They swept the three sorcerers
away, together with the tower they occupied. Gradually
the wild magic abated, but the three weren’t seen for one
hundred years. Finally, the sorcerers returned, having
been taught the art of focused arcane magic by the gods of
magic; these elves were the founding mages of the Orders
of High Sorcery.

Over the next few centuries, tension began to build
along the borders of Silvanesti lands and the Ergothian
Empire. The Kinslayer War broke out when Speaker of
the Stars Sithel was killed by a human. His successor
Sithas declared war and placed his brother Kith-Kanan
in command of the Silvanesti armies. General Giarna led
the Ergothians and their allies, which sometimes included
Kagonesti. The Kagonesti had continued to live much as
all elves did during the Age of Dreams, and the Silvanesti
elves had repeatedly attempted to civilize them—whether
the Kagonesti liked it or not. Much to the Silvanesti’s
surprise, they didn’t like it and took up arms against their
would-be slave masters.

The Kinslayer War was one of the most disastrous
wars ever fought on Ansalon. For fifty years, vast armies
of Silvanesti elves, Thorbardin Dearves and Ergothian
humans met on the fields of southern Ansalon and
slaughtered each other. The numbers of dead were beyond
count, and it eventually became clear that the only ones
benefiting from the war were the buzzards and crows
feasting on the slain. Their appetite for death lost, both
sides agreed to a truce. General Giarna lay dead, and Kith-
Kanan was scarred and tired of war. The Swordsheath
Scroll cemented the peace between elf, human, and
dwarf, who had been drawn into the fighting as well. The
Hammer of Honor, forged by the dwarves, was passed back
and forth among the three nations as a reminder of the
destruction of war and the strength of unity.

Perhaps the most significant casualty of the war was
the trust Speaker Sithas had in his brother Kith-Kanan,
as during the war Kith-Kanan married a human woman,
Suzine des Quivalin—the former consort of General
Giarna. Kith-Kanan settled with the thousands of elven
veterans who had made the borderlands their homes.
When he declared the nation of Qualinesti, thousands
more elves from the east flocked westward. Speaker Sithas
objected and tried to stop the migration; blood was shed,
and the schism between the nations was complete. The
hatred and mistrust between Silvanesti and Qualinesti
would not be bridged for thousands of years.

However, the unlikely friendship between the
Qualinesti and the dwarves of Thorbardin was sealed with
the construction of the fortress Pax Tharkas—literally
Peace Among Friends—a jointly built fortress used by both
elf and dwarf. The seeds of this friendship would truly
flower during the War of Souls thousands of years later.
The Ergothian Empire, seeking further assurances of peace
after the disastrous wars of the past century, joined in the
Peace Among Friends.

For one thousand years, history shifted its focus away
from the elves. The Third Dragon War was fought and
won by a ragged band of upstarts called the Knights of
Solamnia. An age of peace and prosperity followed. The
elves turned inward, building their own civilizations.
However, soon the power of a formerly minor city-state
called Istar began to grow. Solamnia, which by this time
had replaced Ergoth as the preeminent power in western
Ansalon, convinced the elves to recognize the addition of
Istar to the Swordsheath Scroll, hopefully ensuring peace
among the great powers of Ansalon.

Istar’s corruption soon became apparent. The
Kingpriests developed into tyrants, forcing their view
of morality on the entire continent. Wizardry was
suppressed. Nonhuman races were held in suspicion. The
elves of Qualinesti and Silvanesti defied the Kingpriests,
but that soon became irrelevant. The gods could tolerate
Istar no longer and destroyed it with the Cataclysm.

The Cataclysm and subsequent absence of the gods
were disasters for the elves. Qualinesti was torn asunder.
Both major elven nations became militantly isolationist.
Few outsiders visited elven lands and lived to speak of it.
Three hundred years later, the dragons returned in the
War of the Lance. Unseen since the Third Dragon War,
chromatic dragons swept across the land, with vast hosts
of draconians, ogres, goblins, and other servants of evil,
all inspired by the lurking Takhisis. The elves were caught
completely unprepared. For the first time in history, they
were unable to defend their forest homes. Both Qualinesti
and Silvanesti were abandoned.....

(Serinda would know this part and I believe she mentioned to the others that her homeland was in ruins thanks to the dragonarmies)... Speaker of the Stars Lorac Caladon (of the Silvanesti) evidently tried to use his magics to defend Silvanesti .. the magics have, quite possibly with the aid of a green dragon seen in Silvanesti, spiralled out of the Speaker's control, turning his kingdom into a mad nightmare, a horrid parody of it's former self ...