I once started writing this from an in-universe perspective and wrote down whatever that came into my mind. As you might see, there's more than a couple references to real history.


[hider=The Continent]
"In the ancient times, human tribes started to settle on the continent of Kaledan. They were hunters, gatherers, scavengers and warriors, and they had reached upon a virgin land, with deep forests and great fields rolling as far as eye could see. For generations, they pursued a nomadic lifestyle, never staying too much time at one time. They hunted deer and other wild beasts, even an irregular mammoth was struck down, gathered herbs, roots and berries, and moved from one place to another, following the seasons. Then suddenly, after centuries of wandering, they started to settle down, building simple villages out of wood and stone. The Kaledans had discovered agriculture and animal husbandry and left their nomadic ways behind.

First cities and towns were founded around rivers and lakes, to provide their crops and cattle with fresh water. These weren't towns or cities in the modern sense, but mostly more developed villages with low earthen or timber walls. The early Kaledans upheld their tribal ties quite long, and the power of a tribal chieftain was very local and straight, mostly derived from personal qualities and merit than dynastic right or by birth. The Kaledans lived lived alongside the nature, believing that the nature was animistic and filled with all kinds of spirits, gods and fairies, both good-natured and evil-meaning, ready to help or punish humans.

This age of Kaledan is basically what the scholars would call prehistoric era; a time without recorded history or written sources. They marked important events by painting pictures into the walls of caverns, as they used them as rudimentary shelter. But as the communities adopted agriculture, early literature evolved from the practical necessity of record keeping. Someone realized the need to catalogue and keep track of populations, grain and cattle, and so early alphabet of runes and ideograms were developed. This meant the start of recorded history. This happened about four thousand years ago from present.

After the beginning of recorded history, small kingdoms were forming. From the modern river Aarde in the south to the Hartz Mountains in the north, tribes were uniting in many places into more centralized communities, often bound by hostages, marriage or conquest. Petty kings would lead their raiding parties to steal a tribe's women, food and wealth or sought to assimilate the tribe by force of arms. These conflicts were often quite small by modern standards, but they were as serious as they are today. They mostly used bronze or stone weapons, and warriors often trained for life as a separate caste.

Then came the iron. The introduction of iron was violent one, as the nation known as the Imperium conquered most of Kaledan in quick wars of conquests all the way to the Hartz Mountains. The Imperium, from the which the modern word empire is derived from, showed great speed and tenacity in annexing the different tribes and petty kingdoms of the Kaledans. It took only fifty years for them to conquer the North, as they called the continent. The Imperials were a people of tanned-skinned, dark haired men and women, who were shorter than the average blonde or brown-haired Kaledanian, but they had mastered the production of iron and thus had the better arms and armor. Also, their armies were organised into highly disciplined and professional legions, while the Kaledanians still fought as individuals, seeking personal glory and honor in battle.

For five centuries, the Imperium ruled Kaledan by the guiding hand of the governors and with the boot of the legions. Several rebellions were launched against the Imperium, and all of them were squashed by the legions, leading to massacres and other punitive measures. Over thousand years ago, the Imperium's power was beginning to vane, as the nation faced several barbarian attacks and domestic problems, such as monetary inflation and mad tyrants. For example, Emperor Lysander the Black, had bouts of madness and hallucination thanks to a genetic disorder he inherited from his father's side of the family.

Several local leaders rose to wrestle free from the imperial yoke, and thus the forebears of modern kingdoms were born. After decades of back and forth campaigning against guerrillas, the legions that had occupied Kaledan for centuries, left for good for better defined battlefields. With them, the legions took most of the imperial regime and governance, and the Kaledans were left unto their own.

Several imperial-built cities were left to ruin, as the Kaledanians never had been efficient stone-builders in their past, and so many cities and towns were either abandoned or the stone buildings were replaced by wooden ones. Thus the Dark Age began. We lack the literary sources to truly understand this period, and thus we refer it as the Dark Age.

Of the modern kingdoms, Bretaine was the first major nation to emerge from the dark left by the Imperium. King Arthur Pendraak led his band of knights into great victories and forged a great kingdon, that ruled most of Kaledan. A barbarian by birth, King Arthur's family had served the Imperium during the centuries of imperial occupation. It is said that noble blood coursed through his veins, and that he had the blessing of Maar, the ancient god of war and good fortune.

Arthur was the chieftain of a barbarian tribe known as the Jutemen which came from the east during the Imperium's reign. The tribe settled in Kaledan and its members offered their service to the Imperium as a tribute and as a step to gain citizenship. The Jutemen were known for their long, bairded beards, blond hair and skill with weapons. They were also superstitious folk, believing in the ancient Kaledanian pantheon. These gods included the aforementioned Maar, but also Wodan, the All-father of Heavens and god of wisdom, riddles and prophecy, Minmir, the god of harvests, weather and seasons, Donar, the prophesied Hero of the End Times and Dagon the Giant, the protector of all humans.

Arthur ruled for decades, and the chronicles details his reign as good and just, but as we know, the chroniclers were his loyal friends and bannermen, so how much of these "histories" are accurate, we cannot say. Time corrupts all tales, and the truth gets muddled.

During Arthur's time, there were no other kingdoms, but in the following century after his death, the Kingdom of the Highlands was formed around the foot hills and highlands near the Hartz Mountains. Poorly populated but rich in different resources, the Highlanders became wealthy and could afford building mighty fortresses to repel the incursions of the Kingdom of Bretaine. Nominally, the king of the Highlands paid homage to the king of Bretaine, but this was a just a formality between the to monarchs. In practice, the king of the Highlands answered to no man but to himself."

--- Professor Oscar Vard of the Royal University, 1463
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