The Dragon Queen & Rise of Corona II
Dec 27, 2016 22:09:49 GMT -8
Post by Mugritte on Dec 27, 2016 22:09:49 GMT -8
The Dragon Queen & Rise of Corona Volume II: Geography & Ecology continued, Early History till the First Golden Age
Conceptual Lore ad Non-Canon
Foreword
The aim of this book is to thoroughly examine the many esoteric aspects of Corona today. and provide a history compendium to the intense civil war that followed the High Forest Crisis, one of the early and principal watersheds that pockmarked the infancy of Coronadian history to its titular point in the Dragon Queen Crisis. The differing collections of Fantasia will also be discussed thoroughly in a pendular fashion. Varying accounts from beastmen historians, kingdom elders, and modern-day bardic songs are used in the making of this compendium for casual readers and intense lorekeepers alike.
Geography & Ecology ctnd.
Forgotten Garden is situated east of High Forest Lake, and has always been a territory to avoid by caravaners and travelers ever since it was cursed. Previously entity to the Kingdom, it was re-regarded as a Kingdom when it gained a new queen and started until recently a line of spectral descendants. These descendants rule entirely lowlands; barren wastes filled with ethereal objects. Forgotten Garden, as the name implies, used to be as lush as the dense biomes of north Corona. There are many accounts of its high volumes of shrubbery, coursing foliage, and few numbers of hardwood with canopies low and sprawling. Small scum-free ponds, crystal clear, run their trout brooks with fawns and varieties of duck and sparrows. There are few coniferous trees, and most are weeping willows. Lavender, poppy, and other mountain flowers dot the flatlands. The seasonal summers melt the snow and ice acclimated in the mountains, and this overflow is almost all the time rerouted to the Garden, and in these times of flood, many animals from afar flock to these shallows. The ground is completely submerged in water, and the trees and sky seem to reflect the ground. The fauna do not last long under these conditions, but neither does the flood, who withdraws quickly.
Doldrums enswamp the equatorial Sandy Seraglio, and the high Colosseum Mountain Range prohibits any Tropical Easterlies from providing the front needed for rainfall. As a product of this, much of equatorial Corona receives high amounts of rainfall that very well sustains much of the tropical jungles, while the Coronian Desert only receives seasonal rains--which hardly ever graces the dunes, and rather falls in the coursing rocky terrain, where cacti sleep. The continuous draft from the Northerlies jut through the central valley, and the coastal Boreas collide with these jungle fronts, creating bimonthly torrential Euros. A continuous cell provides Virga for the deserts of Corona. The Euros quell near the east of central Corona, and provide a warm climate all around the year. The tallest mountain range is in North Corona, whose downdrafts create dry air for most of inland Corona.
Because of the multitude of rivers, most of central Corona is pockmarked with expansive lakes. But on some odd occasions, the lakes never do empty out to deltas, and the mountain-provided rivers quickly accelerate to rapids that quickly drum at a subterranean level. The oldest of these churning rapids and their erosive power has created mass systems of caves that seem to continue for miles and miles.
But the ones that do make it to the coastal lowlands, get to calm into deltas, and shallow lowlands. Marshes are few and in-between, and as a consequence much of coastal rockfaces are carved by these lowlands. Many of these deltas are very damp, and supplies the constancy of moss and a wide variety of insects. One particular lowland has been afflicted with a differing curse, and it is here that Voluminous Maw takes its stand.
Most of the land around High Forest is deep, and rich in minerals—but the terrain of Endless Fields—rolling plains—prohibit forests from taking afoot due to the mountains. Endless Fields is arable due to an ancient river that has continuously made the fields its resting grounds. Now surrendered, Endless Fields experiences a high amount of agriculture, and it is where these great plains that the sky truly feels as though it envelops the earth.
The equatorial jungles are no match to the tropical seas when it comes to species diversity.
The trade winds that embroider the doldrums have been a continuous source for why the jungles have manifested. As a result, these cool, moist air fronts must be in supply for the hankering of the jungles. But unlike the erratic, Mercurial dependency on these cold fronts, the tropical coral reefs that line south Corona do not need such dependency. Formed under shallows that were probably drenched some 2.5 billions years ago after Creation, the aqua green waters supply large amounts of coral, polyps, shellfish, and schools of tropical fish. Algae and invertebrates coat the surface. Farther off the surf, the ocean floor deepens and gives way to tall towers of algae. Though these towers only thrive in temperate regions such as the coastal redwoods of the central mountain ranges, they are plentiful in these tropical regions. Beyond the towers of algae is where Coral Metro lies—a sprawling, vertical kingdom unhindered by the agricultural necessity of the overworld Kingdoms, and are free to reign with their sustenance almost always plentiful. Merfolk are almost always described as having a bubbly personality, and are naturally gifted in bard and song.
Overview of Chapters Before The Overture of Man—The Infancy of Empires: War of the Skulls
The diversity of biomes plays in tandem with the deep sectional tensions that the inhabitants of Corona harboured altogether. From early datable Coronadian history, kingdomship has only complicated and further perpetuated these ancient grudges.
Before the Overture of Man
The mammalian Kobolds, Orcs, Goblins, stout Dwarves, and other bipedal beastfolk's ancestors are the undisputable natives of Corona. There is little evidence suggesting that these intelligent species ferried from the distant islands told of in folklore. The same can be said for insectoids and arachnoids. At this time, there was virtually no peasantry, and no kingdoms. All races were yet still sectional, but were very disorganised and lived in communal fashion until the migration of human species. Some races were tribal, some were nomadic, but almost always were people of the same species coalesced, and thereunto no clear melting pot-esque capital emerged from these ancient times. The Kobolds' native land was always the Canopy Caverns, and the Dwarves' always in the lush meadows of central Corona. Yet, Orcs and Goblins were always presented as nomadic war tribes.
Since ancient times, Orcs were naturally barbaric, and were the first ones to conceive reason for warfare. There was a simple translation of landgrabbing and conquering of other species that was very appealing to Orcish peoples from the get-go, and thus today are renowned for their blacksmithing skills. In the days before man, this brilliance manifested itself in crude spears and leather shields. There were lots of friction between the Orcs and the rest of the races, as the war-faring species attempted to amass an empire. This is often debated amongst High Forest scholars because—of the pastiche nature of accounts—the Orcs had never identified a single chain of command. This protuberance marks the Orcish only as war-faring tribal communes, and not a nation-state just yet. Yet their warfare tactics were rudimentary at best, and home-field advantage almost always multiplied against the Orcs' clumsiness. This has always been pro forma and has extended before kingdom.
The proliferation and perhaps even invention of slavery occurred when during a stint of Orc invasion, the Goblin collectivistic tribes decided to harbour the Orcs for labour. It is debatable but justifiable to say that in the centuries before the arrival of man, the Goblins were—in terms of culture, customs, and technology—the most advanced. The slave system mandated an uptight ring of slavers who often went on ventures to capture beastmen and to trespass the fringes of communes, strict facilitation of slaves and therefore mould a file-and-rank system, and therefore set in motion a Goblin Empire that the Orcs could rarely outmatch. Though Orcs had the upper hand in many aspects, Goblins always had the advantage of infrastructure via population. It is no secret that Goblins are polyamorous and have always dictated a lifestyle of sexual intercourse for the sake of pleasure. The most prolific display of Goblin prowess occurred as an immediate effects of human migration.
Humans—perhaps—may be the only known creatures outside of Corona. This is very attestable since 1. Documentation of Harpy-like creatures are mentioned in Goblin literature, and 2. All cultures through song and bardic tales that survive today recognize the subterranean species' ancestors as a common enemy, and before humanity ushered peace were forced to stay in underground communes and were demonised by the beastfolk cultures. Unlike contemporary Goblin historians, Human historians had a datable calendar that revolved around a strict calculation of a revolution around the material body of Nougats, the Toweric architect of the mortal plane. Little survives from the accounts that scrupulous Goblin historians created, but ancient documents are frequently endowed tribute to today's concepts of peace, constitution, and restoration. The First Golden Age of Peace—known at the time as the Age of Peace, and after the Second Golden Age of Peace after the High Forest Crises Era, renamed hitherto as the first—was ushered in after a long and intense civil conquest that would soon be reflected in the next era. The First Golden Age of Peace was dated around 620-625M (The abbreviation for Moons, the lesser frequented measure by old human historians) , about 100 Solar Years before High Forest's 1E 1, about 2 Solar Years before Goblin's 1E 1.
The Warmth of Other Suns
Humans are the only known creatures to bear bipedal species diversity in Corona. There is no clear documentation of arctic Kobold peoples, non-subterranean insectoids, or an environmental adaptation of Goblins. When humans first arrived to Corona, these peoples had spread out to areas that previously were contested by the beastfolk. Stretching from the warm sands of Sandy Seraglio to the deep woods of High Forest, humans are best known for their introduction of kingdom.
Human history before their arrival to Corona has always been an interesting subject. Before Towerism, human religion was monotheistic instead of polytheistic, and these remnant singular deities are in frequent reference to Old Human texts. Religion played a part in the day-to-day political and socioeconomic theocracy of what Old Humans call feudalism—a rudimentary, piecemeal-style form of Goblin collectivism, the base of productions include the peasantry, Old Humans who were not born into royalty, serfdom: people tied to the land that they worked on, much like slavery but serfs usually were not war prisoners and were born into serfdom, and the land-owning masters of these lowly inhabitants—kings, and their chain of vassals, or barons. About 10000 Solar Years before High Forest 1E 1, the kings of the off-island Fantasia declared war amongst one another after territorial disputes. This is one theory as to why Old Fantasia has had only one royal family when the Old Humans arrived to Corona. The royal family, sparsely named the Duke Dynasty. King Duke XVII, who reigned 3000 Solar Years before High Forest 1E 1, was to be the last line of a recent series of tyrannical kings who had sparked impressment gangs into the King’s Royal Army, taxed the land-owners exempting the highly vassals, and enthralled war with the Old Humans’ fair share of penguins. When the King was experiencing economic downturns, he tightened his grip on the vassals and now asked for tribute from the untapped source of monetary wealth. Dismayed by this new change, the vassals corroborated with the numerous barons, who in exchange demanded the King redact his taxation on vassals. The King refused, bringing with him the centuries-old declaration of the King’s absolutist monarchical power. The barons responded in kind, and produced one of the oldest written constitutions of datable Coronadian history—the Baron Concordat—which listed the grievances caused by Duke XVII and the past kings, and demanded for the constriction of the king’s powers or else he would be abdicated in uprising. The King of the Old Humans, angered, announced the dissolving of barons, and entreated his vassals to plunder the barons. Motivated by money or old ties, thousands of peasantry died every day from small skirmishes to the largest attacks of castles. About 2000 to 1000 years before the creation of the First High Forest Era, King Duke XVII was overthrown, but not without the heavy cost of the tumult of the War of Nullius—a good majority of the workforce was slain, and without proper endowment many contemporary barons were forced into the prototype for today’s function of wage labour. The Baron Concordat, all but abandoned by the dissolving of no-known heir, and the vassals of Old Fantasia extinguished, the barons decided to move feudalism to the warmth of other suns. Approximately 1000 years before High Forest 1E 1, the first humans arrived to the eastern Gulf of Corona, where some ditched their ships while others continued downstream to the Grand Lakes. Many more decided to abandon ship and traverse the Southwestern Mountain Range, and decided to stake their ground in the once-desolate deserts of Sandy Seraglio. About nine-to-ten generations after the first human had set foot on Corona, there was a clear distinction between the communities of Desert Humans, Forest Humans, and Arctic Humans. The barons kept continuous contact with each other in mainland Corona, and through the second resurgence of the Baron Concordat could the invention of kingdom be reached to all corners of Fantasia.
The Coming of Dominionship
The rise of kingdom and monarchy was due to no other than King Atlas Amadeus I, who had set up the High Forest Dynasty in the First Era. King Amadeus’s rise to power is nothing short of a spectacular feat.
King Atlas Amadeus I (1E 1—1E 84) was of no lineage to the family of the Old World, but instead insisted that he was a new ruler who was prophesied to unify the human collective provinces, and eventually the whole of Fantasia. Corona was seriously taken aback by the foreigner’s high plans—as they previously were content with the passive humans. As a result, the Orc peoples unified in the face of being treated as whelps, and the slaver-races of the Goblins in turn declared dominion. The Kobold, fearing the slavers, declared dominion as well despite a civil war. Facing both a discontented peasantry in the ancient Endless Fields and harassed by a hastily-made group of advisors, Amadeus I needed a solidifying piece of unification to allow the High Forest humans to bring peace forcibly but not so bloodily into what he envisioned as a Coronadian Empire. So too did the dysfunctional & nascent beastfolk.
Towerism
Because of the classical teachings depicted in the Old World’s influence, a common route from lineage was the championing of princes and princesses, especially the latter, and already was their triumph much paraded in the streets of past kingdoms—wherefore the princesses—who would come to rear the children—would continue the dynasty. The construction of towers to further champion the princesses would be played both in the ensuing war to follow, and would come into play during the Dragon Queen Crisis.
In the rebirth of the championing of princesses, High Forest humans were less involved with religion than their Old Human counterparts. King Atlas Amadeus I, in a stint before the declaration of empire, studied early Old Human writing and reflected on the actions of King Duke I. Alongside King Amadeus I was the Mott Decidius the Advisor, who—hotly contested amongst scholars—arguably the most influential and thus the most significant of all the coming of Towerism. Decidius wanted to reform Dominion as much as King Amadeus and his Council Circle wanted to, but with the escalation of redefined editions of Old World politics as well as the preparation of new editions, Decidius stressed a strict minimalism on monarchy. He only seeked reform, and not total destruction of the institution, for he knew the dangers of popular politics—in fact disproving the heretic anti-absolutists of the time—and wrote Handbook of the Coronian Knight about 2 Solar Years before High Forest 1E 1, which reflected his perspective on dominion, dubbing the actions of the Emperor as the philosophy of the innocence of the Princess. Popular with the commons, many people shared Decidius’s concerns that monarchism was to sour as quickly as the Old World dynasty because of corruption. There was an increase in religious expression, and even inside the King’s Circle there were many calls for reform. Though Towerism was hard to comprehend between the thinkers and the aristocrats, and even harder to the commons, Decidius cleared this with a clear revision of Knighthood. No longer would the duration of kingdoms rely on lineage and royal marriage—knights under the benevolence of the King and the great triumphs that he leaps through in order to court the princess could thus marry her and continue the dominion. This sparked revolution amongst the kingdoms—kingdoms and all kingdoms over and under the land, in the sky and in the water—to gain the efficacy of both the commons and the knights to idolise the princesses due to this expansion. Considered irrevocable, with unalienable permission, after the Declaration of Towers Concordat at the beginning of the First Era, the High Forest now had successfully proclaimed kingdom, and this pattern continued all throughout Corona. What we now know today as Towergirls has been born.
The Infancy of Empires: War of the Skulls
The immediate impact of claiming dominion amongst the concrete kingdoms was social turmoil, that was quick to subside by the militarisation of these aforementioned kingdoms. By 1E 2, King Atlas Amadeus I had amassed an army that could withstand the Goblin and Orcish onslaughts, who were the realest threat to the High Forest Humans. In 1E 5, the Desert Human Kingdom’s Poc-de-Sol I (High Forest 1E 1—3E 45) seeked war with the High Forest Humans after allying with the Kobolds, and thus were excommunicated by Amadeus I. In the north, the Arctic Humans chose to permeate into a confederation, but this was quickly stamped out in the war to come. Jungle humans were driven out after Desert Humans fell as well. By the end of the nascent era of these empires and the permeation of the kingdoms we now know today, the humans had coalesced into the rich centre of the High Forest Kingdom.
An important factor of war at the dawn of the High Forest Kingdom and other kingdoms that mirrored it was the military foundations that these religious countries took. These in turn created even larger divisions that stimulated tension even inside an Empire. In High Forest 1E 3, the Orcish Estates elected Warlord Prac cho-He, who failed to bring Towerism into the Orcs and in the harvest season, substituting the recently-abdicated Grot-Fang I—who successfully installed the first of a long line of Orc princesses that would come to control the Orc conquerors via the crowning of the title of Princess in battle—a rough variation of Towerism, but fundamental nonetheless. The Orcish Estates effectively dissolved the orc princess lineage however, and this was received with great backlash from the High Forest Kingdom.
Atlas Miltas Amadeus (Born 17 Solar Years before 1E 1, reigned from 1E 84—2E 10), son of Atlas Amadeus I and Human Princess Bjork Fluffheart, was by 20 years old a military general in the High Forest Kingdom who had learned his tactics via human chieftain manuscripts. The declaration of war against the Orcs had brought serious repercussions—the Desert Humans had begun speculation of a treaty with Kobolds to distance themselves from the war, and the Goblin, Insect, and Drider princesses had begun affiliating themselves with the Orcs in favour of driving out the humans. Miltas Amadeus was a knowledgeable tactician, but the odds had seemed slim especially since his tactics were out of date, requiring field movements of pikesmen and shield-carriers, and the belligerents’ choice of alliances were stacked against the High Forest Kingdom. Because of his father’s worrisome protection, Miltas was prevented from providing any input to the war council, thus he was out of the picture for much of the war.
The Orc Kingdom was very powerful, and since it was situated in the mountain ranges, very difficult to attack. The humans laid siege to the Orc Kingdoms—who a whole 2 hours after the first barrage of warriors announced the Edict of Estates, which called for the dissolution of Towerism and the demonising of monarchy. This fell on deaf ears by the Orcs’ allies, who quickly worked against the Orcs. In 1E 5, in tandem with the growing unpopularity of the endless casualties brought about by the siege, the Sandy Seraglio kingdom declared war on the High Forest Kingdom. Miltas Amadeus, who was little-known at the time, was now allowed back into the War Council. He assumed command of the High Forest Army, and laid siege to the Orc Kingdom, and succeeded. In one folktale, after taking over the populous city of Hock ra-Jun, Amadeus decided the plunder was too great not to be taken, and slaughtered all the male Orcs and made slaves of the women and children. This and other grand victories were due to Miltas Amadeus’s uncanny tactics—one including digging under the rock to get to the Orc stronghold sewage system. After 85 years of war, the Orc Estates capitulated after the Battle of Wandering Mountain, and Grot-Fang I was reinstalled to the throne and the princess returned. The Edict of Estates was redacted and the estates themselves dissolved into the Wandering Mountain Kingdom. Returning back to High Forest, Amadeus was celebrated widely for his victories. The other kingdoms were impressed, and so in 1E 85 joined the High Forest Kingdom in alliance. The War of the Skulls (1E 3—1E 85) had brought in the Golden Era of Peace.
Up next:
The First Golden Era of Peace
Dwarves
Prelude to the Great War
Conceptual Lore ad Non-Canon
Foreword
The aim of this book is to thoroughly examine the many esoteric aspects of Corona today. and provide a history compendium to the intense civil war that followed the High Forest Crisis, one of the early and principal watersheds that pockmarked the infancy of Coronadian history to its titular point in the Dragon Queen Crisis. The differing collections of Fantasia will also be discussed thoroughly in a pendular fashion. Varying accounts from beastmen historians, kingdom elders, and modern-day bardic songs are used in the making of this compendium for casual readers and intense lorekeepers alike.
Geography & Ecology ctnd.
Forgotten Garden is situated east of High Forest Lake, and has always been a territory to avoid by caravaners and travelers ever since it was cursed. Previously entity to the Kingdom, it was re-regarded as a Kingdom when it gained a new queen and started until recently a line of spectral descendants. These descendants rule entirely lowlands; barren wastes filled with ethereal objects. Forgotten Garden, as the name implies, used to be as lush as the dense biomes of north Corona. There are many accounts of its high volumes of shrubbery, coursing foliage, and few numbers of hardwood with canopies low and sprawling. Small scum-free ponds, crystal clear, run their trout brooks with fawns and varieties of duck and sparrows. There are few coniferous trees, and most are weeping willows. Lavender, poppy, and other mountain flowers dot the flatlands. The seasonal summers melt the snow and ice acclimated in the mountains, and this overflow is almost all the time rerouted to the Garden, and in these times of flood, many animals from afar flock to these shallows. The ground is completely submerged in water, and the trees and sky seem to reflect the ground. The fauna do not last long under these conditions, but neither does the flood, who withdraws quickly.
Doldrums enswamp the equatorial Sandy Seraglio, and the high Colosseum Mountain Range prohibits any Tropical Easterlies from providing the front needed for rainfall. As a product of this, much of equatorial Corona receives high amounts of rainfall that very well sustains much of the tropical jungles, while the Coronian Desert only receives seasonal rains--which hardly ever graces the dunes, and rather falls in the coursing rocky terrain, where cacti sleep. The continuous draft from the Northerlies jut through the central valley, and the coastal Boreas collide with these jungle fronts, creating bimonthly torrential Euros. A continuous cell provides Virga for the deserts of Corona. The Euros quell near the east of central Corona, and provide a warm climate all around the year. The tallest mountain range is in North Corona, whose downdrafts create dry air for most of inland Corona.
Because of the multitude of rivers, most of central Corona is pockmarked with expansive lakes. But on some odd occasions, the lakes never do empty out to deltas, and the mountain-provided rivers quickly accelerate to rapids that quickly drum at a subterranean level. The oldest of these churning rapids and their erosive power has created mass systems of caves that seem to continue for miles and miles.
But the ones that do make it to the coastal lowlands, get to calm into deltas, and shallow lowlands. Marshes are few and in-between, and as a consequence much of coastal rockfaces are carved by these lowlands. Many of these deltas are very damp, and supplies the constancy of moss and a wide variety of insects. One particular lowland has been afflicted with a differing curse, and it is here that Voluminous Maw takes its stand.
Most of the land around High Forest is deep, and rich in minerals—but the terrain of Endless Fields—rolling plains—prohibit forests from taking afoot due to the mountains. Endless Fields is arable due to an ancient river that has continuously made the fields its resting grounds. Now surrendered, Endless Fields experiences a high amount of agriculture, and it is where these great plains that the sky truly feels as though it envelops the earth.
The equatorial jungles are no match to the tropical seas when it comes to species diversity.
The trade winds that embroider the doldrums have been a continuous source for why the jungles have manifested. As a result, these cool, moist air fronts must be in supply for the hankering of the jungles. But unlike the erratic, Mercurial dependency on these cold fronts, the tropical coral reefs that line south Corona do not need such dependency. Formed under shallows that were probably drenched some 2.5 billions years ago after Creation, the aqua green waters supply large amounts of coral, polyps, shellfish, and schools of tropical fish. Algae and invertebrates coat the surface. Farther off the surf, the ocean floor deepens and gives way to tall towers of algae. Though these towers only thrive in temperate regions such as the coastal redwoods of the central mountain ranges, they are plentiful in these tropical regions. Beyond the towers of algae is where Coral Metro lies—a sprawling, vertical kingdom unhindered by the agricultural necessity of the overworld Kingdoms, and are free to reign with their sustenance almost always plentiful. Merfolk are almost always described as having a bubbly personality, and are naturally gifted in bard and song.
Overview of Chapters Before The Overture of Man—The Infancy of Empires: War of the Skulls
The diversity of biomes plays in tandem with the deep sectional tensions that the inhabitants of Corona harboured altogether. From early datable Coronadian history, kingdomship has only complicated and further perpetuated these ancient grudges.
Before the Overture of Man
The mammalian Kobolds, Orcs, Goblins, stout Dwarves, and other bipedal beastfolk's ancestors are the undisputable natives of Corona. There is little evidence suggesting that these intelligent species ferried from the distant islands told of in folklore. The same can be said for insectoids and arachnoids. At this time, there was virtually no peasantry, and no kingdoms. All races were yet still sectional, but were very disorganised and lived in communal fashion until the migration of human species. Some races were tribal, some were nomadic, but almost always were people of the same species coalesced, and thereunto no clear melting pot-esque capital emerged from these ancient times. The Kobolds' native land was always the Canopy Caverns, and the Dwarves' always in the lush meadows of central Corona. Yet, Orcs and Goblins were always presented as nomadic war tribes.
Since ancient times, Orcs were naturally barbaric, and were the first ones to conceive reason for warfare. There was a simple translation of landgrabbing and conquering of other species that was very appealing to Orcish peoples from the get-go, and thus today are renowned for their blacksmithing skills. In the days before man, this brilliance manifested itself in crude spears and leather shields. There were lots of friction between the Orcs and the rest of the races, as the war-faring species attempted to amass an empire. This is often debated amongst High Forest scholars because—of the pastiche nature of accounts—the Orcs had never identified a single chain of command. This protuberance marks the Orcish only as war-faring tribal communes, and not a nation-state just yet. Yet their warfare tactics were rudimentary at best, and home-field advantage almost always multiplied against the Orcs' clumsiness. This has always been pro forma and has extended before kingdom.
The proliferation and perhaps even invention of slavery occurred when during a stint of Orc invasion, the Goblin collectivistic tribes decided to harbour the Orcs for labour. It is debatable but justifiable to say that in the centuries before the arrival of man, the Goblins were—in terms of culture, customs, and technology—the most advanced. The slave system mandated an uptight ring of slavers who often went on ventures to capture beastmen and to trespass the fringes of communes, strict facilitation of slaves and therefore mould a file-and-rank system, and therefore set in motion a Goblin Empire that the Orcs could rarely outmatch. Though Orcs had the upper hand in many aspects, Goblins always had the advantage of infrastructure via population. It is no secret that Goblins are polyamorous and have always dictated a lifestyle of sexual intercourse for the sake of pleasure. The most prolific display of Goblin prowess occurred as an immediate effects of human migration.
Humans—perhaps—may be the only known creatures outside of Corona. This is very attestable since 1. Documentation of Harpy-like creatures are mentioned in Goblin literature, and 2. All cultures through song and bardic tales that survive today recognize the subterranean species' ancestors as a common enemy, and before humanity ushered peace were forced to stay in underground communes and were demonised by the beastfolk cultures. Unlike contemporary Goblin historians, Human historians had a datable calendar that revolved around a strict calculation of a revolution around the material body of Nougats, the Toweric architect of the mortal plane. Little survives from the accounts that scrupulous Goblin historians created, but ancient documents are frequently endowed tribute to today's concepts of peace, constitution, and restoration. The First Golden Age of Peace—known at the time as the Age of Peace, and after the Second Golden Age of Peace after the High Forest Crises Era, renamed hitherto as the first—was ushered in after a long and intense civil conquest that would soon be reflected in the next era. The First Golden Age of Peace was dated around 620-625M (The abbreviation for Moons, the lesser frequented measure by old human historians) , about 100 Solar Years before High Forest's 1E 1, about 2 Solar Years before Goblin's 1E 1.
The Warmth of Other Suns
Humans are the only known creatures to bear bipedal species diversity in Corona. There is no clear documentation of arctic Kobold peoples, non-subterranean insectoids, or an environmental adaptation of Goblins. When humans first arrived to Corona, these peoples had spread out to areas that previously were contested by the beastfolk. Stretching from the warm sands of Sandy Seraglio to the deep woods of High Forest, humans are best known for their introduction of kingdom.
Human history before their arrival to Corona has always been an interesting subject. Before Towerism, human religion was monotheistic instead of polytheistic, and these remnant singular deities are in frequent reference to Old Human texts. Religion played a part in the day-to-day political and socioeconomic theocracy of what Old Humans call feudalism—a rudimentary, piecemeal-style form of Goblin collectivism, the base of productions include the peasantry, Old Humans who were not born into royalty, serfdom: people tied to the land that they worked on, much like slavery but serfs usually were not war prisoners and were born into serfdom, and the land-owning masters of these lowly inhabitants—kings, and their chain of vassals, or barons. About 10000 Solar Years before High Forest 1E 1, the kings of the off-island Fantasia declared war amongst one another after territorial disputes. This is one theory as to why Old Fantasia has had only one royal family when the Old Humans arrived to Corona. The royal family, sparsely named the Duke Dynasty. King Duke XVII, who reigned 3000 Solar Years before High Forest 1E 1, was to be the last line of a recent series of tyrannical kings who had sparked impressment gangs into the King’s Royal Army, taxed the land-owners exempting the highly vassals, and enthralled war with the Old Humans’ fair share of penguins. When the King was experiencing economic downturns, he tightened his grip on the vassals and now asked for tribute from the untapped source of monetary wealth. Dismayed by this new change, the vassals corroborated with the numerous barons, who in exchange demanded the King redact his taxation on vassals. The King refused, bringing with him the centuries-old declaration of the King’s absolutist monarchical power. The barons responded in kind, and produced one of the oldest written constitutions of datable Coronadian history—the Baron Concordat—which listed the grievances caused by Duke XVII and the past kings, and demanded for the constriction of the king’s powers or else he would be abdicated in uprising. The King of the Old Humans, angered, announced the dissolving of barons, and entreated his vassals to plunder the barons. Motivated by money or old ties, thousands of peasantry died every day from small skirmishes to the largest attacks of castles. About 2000 to 1000 years before the creation of the First High Forest Era, King Duke XVII was overthrown, but not without the heavy cost of the tumult of the War of Nullius—a good majority of the workforce was slain, and without proper endowment many contemporary barons were forced into the prototype for today’s function of wage labour. The Baron Concordat, all but abandoned by the dissolving of no-known heir, and the vassals of Old Fantasia extinguished, the barons decided to move feudalism to the warmth of other suns. Approximately 1000 years before High Forest 1E 1, the first humans arrived to the eastern Gulf of Corona, where some ditched their ships while others continued downstream to the Grand Lakes. Many more decided to abandon ship and traverse the Southwestern Mountain Range, and decided to stake their ground in the once-desolate deserts of Sandy Seraglio. About nine-to-ten generations after the first human had set foot on Corona, there was a clear distinction between the communities of Desert Humans, Forest Humans, and Arctic Humans. The barons kept continuous contact with each other in mainland Corona, and through the second resurgence of the Baron Concordat could the invention of kingdom be reached to all corners of Fantasia.
The Coming of Dominionship
The rise of kingdom and monarchy was due to no other than King Atlas Amadeus I, who had set up the High Forest Dynasty in the First Era. King Amadeus’s rise to power is nothing short of a spectacular feat.
King Atlas Amadeus I (1E 1—1E 84) was of no lineage to the family of the Old World, but instead insisted that he was a new ruler who was prophesied to unify the human collective provinces, and eventually the whole of Fantasia. Corona was seriously taken aback by the foreigner’s high plans—as they previously were content with the passive humans. As a result, the Orc peoples unified in the face of being treated as whelps, and the slaver-races of the Goblins in turn declared dominion. The Kobold, fearing the slavers, declared dominion as well despite a civil war. Facing both a discontented peasantry in the ancient Endless Fields and harassed by a hastily-made group of advisors, Amadeus I needed a solidifying piece of unification to allow the High Forest humans to bring peace forcibly but not so bloodily into what he envisioned as a Coronadian Empire. So too did the dysfunctional & nascent beastfolk.
Towerism
Because of the classical teachings depicted in the Old World’s influence, a common route from lineage was the championing of princes and princesses, especially the latter, and already was their triumph much paraded in the streets of past kingdoms—wherefore the princesses—who would come to rear the children—would continue the dynasty. The construction of towers to further champion the princesses would be played both in the ensuing war to follow, and would come into play during the Dragon Queen Crisis.
In the rebirth of the championing of princesses, High Forest humans were less involved with religion than their Old Human counterparts. King Atlas Amadeus I, in a stint before the declaration of empire, studied early Old Human writing and reflected on the actions of King Duke I. Alongside King Amadeus I was the Mott Decidius the Advisor, who—hotly contested amongst scholars—arguably the most influential and thus the most significant of all the coming of Towerism. Decidius wanted to reform Dominion as much as King Amadeus and his Council Circle wanted to, but with the escalation of redefined editions of Old World politics as well as the preparation of new editions, Decidius stressed a strict minimalism on monarchy. He only seeked reform, and not total destruction of the institution, for he knew the dangers of popular politics—in fact disproving the heretic anti-absolutists of the time—and wrote Handbook of the Coronian Knight about 2 Solar Years before High Forest 1E 1, which reflected his perspective on dominion, dubbing the actions of the Emperor as the philosophy of the innocence of the Princess. Popular with the commons, many people shared Decidius’s concerns that monarchism was to sour as quickly as the Old World dynasty because of corruption. There was an increase in religious expression, and even inside the King’s Circle there were many calls for reform. Though Towerism was hard to comprehend between the thinkers and the aristocrats, and even harder to the commons, Decidius cleared this with a clear revision of Knighthood. No longer would the duration of kingdoms rely on lineage and royal marriage—knights under the benevolence of the King and the great triumphs that he leaps through in order to court the princess could thus marry her and continue the dominion. This sparked revolution amongst the kingdoms—kingdoms and all kingdoms over and under the land, in the sky and in the water—to gain the efficacy of both the commons and the knights to idolise the princesses due to this expansion. Considered irrevocable, with unalienable permission, after the Declaration of Towers Concordat at the beginning of the First Era, the High Forest now had successfully proclaimed kingdom, and this pattern continued all throughout Corona. What we now know today as Towergirls has been born.
The Infancy of Empires: War of the Skulls
The immediate impact of claiming dominion amongst the concrete kingdoms was social turmoil, that was quick to subside by the militarisation of these aforementioned kingdoms. By 1E 2, King Atlas Amadeus I had amassed an army that could withstand the Goblin and Orcish onslaughts, who were the realest threat to the High Forest Humans. In 1E 5, the Desert Human Kingdom’s Poc-de-Sol I (High Forest 1E 1—3E 45) seeked war with the High Forest Humans after allying with the Kobolds, and thus were excommunicated by Amadeus I. In the north, the Arctic Humans chose to permeate into a confederation, but this was quickly stamped out in the war to come. Jungle humans were driven out after Desert Humans fell as well. By the end of the nascent era of these empires and the permeation of the kingdoms we now know today, the humans had coalesced into the rich centre of the High Forest Kingdom.
An important factor of war at the dawn of the High Forest Kingdom and other kingdoms that mirrored it was the military foundations that these religious countries took. These in turn created even larger divisions that stimulated tension even inside an Empire. In High Forest 1E 3, the Orcish Estates elected Warlord Prac cho-He, who failed to bring Towerism into the Orcs and in the harvest season, substituting the recently-abdicated Grot-Fang I—who successfully installed the first of a long line of Orc princesses that would come to control the Orc conquerors via the crowning of the title of Princess in battle—a rough variation of Towerism, but fundamental nonetheless. The Orcish Estates effectively dissolved the orc princess lineage however, and this was received with great backlash from the High Forest Kingdom.
Atlas Miltas Amadeus (Born 17 Solar Years before 1E 1, reigned from 1E 84—2E 10), son of Atlas Amadeus I and Human Princess Bjork Fluffheart, was by 20 years old a military general in the High Forest Kingdom who had learned his tactics via human chieftain manuscripts. The declaration of war against the Orcs had brought serious repercussions—the Desert Humans had begun speculation of a treaty with Kobolds to distance themselves from the war, and the Goblin, Insect, and Drider princesses had begun affiliating themselves with the Orcs in favour of driving out the humans. Miltas Amadeus was a knowledgeable tactician, but the odds had seemed slim especially since his tactics were out of date, requiring field movements of pikesmen and shield-carriers, and the belligerents’ choice of alliances were stacked against the High Forest Kingdom. Because of his father’s worrisome protection, Miltas was prevented from providing any input to the war council, thus he was out of the picture for much of the war.
The Orc Kingdom was very powerful, and since it was situated in the mountain ranges, very difficult to attack. The humans laid siege to the Orc Kingdoms—who a whole 2 hours after the first barrage of warriors announced the Edict of Estates, which called for the dissolution of Towerism and the demonising of monarchy. This fell on deaf ears by the Orcs’ allies, who quickly worked against the Orcs. In 1E 5, in tandem with the growing unpopularity of the endless casualties brought about by the siege, the Sandy Seraglio kingdom declared war on the High Forest Kingdom. Miltas Amadeus, who was little-known at the time, was now allowed back into the War Council. He assumed command of the High Forest Army, and laid siege to the Orc Kingdom, and succeeded. In one folktale, after taking over the populous city of Hock ra-Jun, Amadeus decided the plunder was too great not to be taken, and slaughtered all the male Orcs and made slaves of the women and children. This and other grand victories were due to Miltas Amadeus’s uncanny tactics—one including digging under the rock to get to the Orc stronghold sewage system. After 85 years of war, the Orc Estates capitulated after the Battle of Wandering Mountain, and Grot-Fang I was reinstalled to the throne and the princess returned. The Edict of Estates was redacted and the estates themselves dissolved into the Wandering Mountain Kingdom. Returning back to High Forest, Amadeus was celebrated widely for his victories. The other kingdoms were impressed, and so in 1E 85 joined the High Forest Kingdom in alliance. The War of the Skulls (1E 3—1E 85) had brought in the Golden Era of Peace.
Up next:
The First Golden Era of Peace
Dwarves
Prelude to the Great War