[h1][b]200-300 A.E. (Reckoned from Thunderspeaker's Slumber and the Sack of Get)[/b][/h1]

	Warmth returned slowly to the earth in the spring of 210 A.E. through the Valleys of Five Stones. High in their mountain caves and homes, Dyarvik awoke to the singing, swelling brooks of the springtime melt. On the borders, lanky trollspawn guards with longspears rode great sure-footed dyar-goats, gestated in the hibernation wombs of ancient sleeping Dyarvik. Shrugging their great hairy cow-skin cloaks they looked up from their campfires as the spring bellows of waking Dyarvik filled the valleys. Their numbers were much diminished in the last century; despite their mutual reliance of the barumbesukeh trolls of the Five Stones, only a couple thousand trollspawn remained to guard the borders and the meagre herds of cattle that the trolls allowed then to keep. Thunderspeaker and the barumbesukeh banned trolls from birthing new trollspawn. Trollspawn would only breed true to their “ancestral” race – even trollspawn whose great grandparents were humans would still give birth to weakened, frail human children. Without a troll willing to accept and foster the child until it had strengthened into trollspawn, they had a horrific infant mortality rate. 
	One of the trollspawn chieftains, Alfrid the Long, sat listening carefully that morning to the bellows in the valleys. Over his sixty years, he had come to easily recognize the distinctive calls of the greatest stonetrolls. While the trollspawn clans owed Thunderspeaker loyalty, they bore him little love, and would often turn to the few remaining suga in the valley, who were willing to bear their children. The Five Stones leaders had overlooked this pragmatic compromise for nearly fifty years, but in recent years Thunderspeaker had grown harsher, wilder, and less predictable. He was nearing his 196th year of life, and while most trolls would slip into a longer “sleep” around the age of 150 [awaking every second year at first, and then at longer and longer intervals, until a permanent slumber united them with the bones of the Five Ancients], Thunderspeaker still woke every spring with an earth-shattering bellow as he roused his massive 40-foot-tall bulk. 
	But this spring, the call did not come. As the night fell on the valley two weeks later, and the last calls of wakening trolls died away, Alfrid turned to his second-man, leader of his personal bodyguard, and handed him a small piece of birchbark with a few small runes. It was a message for the suga in the north: after all these long years, the time had come. It had finally happened. Thunderspeaker had not awoken.
	It was a chance of history that Alfrid's message would arrive just as Winterpine himself had awoken from a decades-long slumber. The suga tribes had not forgotten their exile eighty years earlier. The dyarvikim of the north had prospered the last few decades in the hills and mountains of the north, building larger and stronger fortresses and baileys, trading extensively with the people of Yossod and Qa-Avnel, and forcing the Feinar farther and farther east. While the suga shared in this prosperity, they remembered their homeland around the Five Stones vividly, especially the Stargazer clan, which revered the sleeping bulk of Winterpine, and rejoiced at his awakening.
	Winterpine had fought a thirst for vengeance for decades that overpowered his natural desire for peace. He knew his death was nearing, and he longed to rest forever in the sacred valleys, beside his fathers and great-uncle Stargazer. With Thunderspeaker asleep, this might be their only chance to seize back control of the valleys. Yet even if every suga, alongside thousands of troll-spawn warriors, were to march on the valleys, it would not be enough to prevail over the barumbesukeh clans, let alone Stoneguard. Furthermore, it was the summer of the Great Festival. For the suga it was a grim commemoration, and few trolls outside of Five Stones dared return and challenge Thunderspeaker's authority – even in his absence. 
	So Winterpine went back, only accompanied by ten of the most ancient suga, telling his people to never give up the hope of one day returning and ruling in their true home in Five Stones, and to travel the world freely, seeking knowledge that might one day best the barumbesukeh. The trolls of Five Stones were so shocked to see Winterpine arrive at the Festival, they made way for him to speak, whereupon he gave a famous, much-repeated oration, alone, denouncing Thunderspeaker for his crimes, decrying the mistreatment of trollspawn, and arguing that luddism and insularity would make Five Stones vulnerable. Upon finishing, he gave a tremendous bellow, and repeated his message as a final death-recitation. Despite its impact on the audience, this message fell on deaf ears among the Chieftains, but many younger trolls remembered his words carefully – they had seen the strange dwarves and kobolds on their borders, watched their columns of strange war-machines march by. Winterpine had planted the seeds of doubt and progress in their minds.
	As news of the fall of Promethea arrived, this progress became more urgent. Thunderspeaker was eventually replaced by younger trolls in practice, headed by a genial, ambitious Most High Chieftain named Undermountain. Well aware of the natural wealth of their land, Undermountain began a massive project of construction. Over eighty years, the labour of the stone-trolls had transformed many parts of the valleys with beacons, hidden tunnels and fortresses, new roads and walls to protect passes, and new fields cleared for agriculture. While many orthodox barumbesukeh refused to build walls or live in castles, and protested these new measures, they were eventually relegated to the side, and change continued. 
	In the north, the Dyarvikim roamed farther and farther. It became not uncommon for great stone-trolls to offer their services in the cities and countryside of Scalethein and Qa-Avnel during the summer, and then disappear to the mountains for the winter, returning again with several young trollspawn or trollbeasts in tow. Their hatred of slavery and mistrust of any sort of bonded or salaried labour was a constant source of tension though, and many trolls crushed and killed errant slavers, tax collectors, and nobles seen abusing their children or servants. With few qualms about personal property, they also often helped themselves to the herds or food-stocks of their hosts, seeing it as the natural repayment for their services. This gave stone-trolls an entirely inaccurate reputation as bandits and thieves – it was only with difficulty at the end of the century that dyarvikim traders became accustomed to the idea of currency. It became common for trollspawn to act as money-handlers and “talkers” in many negotiations.
	In the south, the glorious empire of Bet Aybar only expanded. Under the rule of Emperor Ahmet Panjul Djit III and with the enthusiastic aid of getterim stone-trolls builders, the city of Bet Aybar became one of the most impressive metropolises on the continent, with a population nearing 300,000. Trade flourished along the coast, and humans raised circular stonehenge-temples to the Five Ancients in the ruins of old Promethean cities. The getterim also became increasingly expert farmers, and Aybari agriculture advanced in leaps and bounds, as irrigation canals opened up new fields and new crops. Early iron smelting and iron tools began to appear from mid-century on, as rich merchants, alchemists and artisans learned from the traveling “schools” of Dyarvik schools.
	In other circumstances the Aybari army, unmatched by any nearby rivals, might have degenerated or become merely the tool of squabbling nobles, but the getterim were nothing if not dedicated to their alliance, and the trollspawn clans who made up much of the army were fiercely loyal to the Emperor and the Emperor alone. Still, by 234, the brash young Emperor Ahmet Panjul IX was determined to live up the glorious history of the Empire, and when word came that kobolds and dwarves were marching south towards Promethea, he sent out a call to arms. While the jungles of the south had been depopulated during the plague several centuries earlier, there were many small states that had arisen in the foothills of the mountains. For years, they had owed their allegiance to Bet Aybar, but Panjul IX feared they might be lured by a resurgent Promethea. Aybari spies reported that the Grand Despot of Get had received emissaries from Promethea. Panjul IX and the troll chieftains were troubled. If Getish forces marched to Promethea's aid, they could cut off Scalethien supply lines altogether. 
	So, even as the kobolds sacked Galgot, the legions of Aybar, 10,000 strong, including with 1,500 armoured trolls, also marched against Promethea. Scattering Promethean scouts and encampments before them, they arrived at the gates of Get. The Despot himself rode out to surrender; half his motley army had already scattered at the sight of the massive trolls. While Panjul IX was disappointed at victory without even a battle, he accepted, only to hear a trumpet of rage from a troll chieftain. The Despot's remaining forces were largely slaves who had been forced into service; this was an unacceptable insult to the trolls. The Despot barely had time to scream before he was crushed by a troll fist. The liberation of Get had begun. Aybari armies surged forth, and the city was sacked; in the rage of the trolls, it is possible that more slaves perished in the destruction than were ultimately liberated. Horrified by the destruction, Panjul IX for the first time in Imperial history rode home without a troll escort, leaving the trolls and trollspawn legionnaires to the conquest of Get. 
	Word of the destruction spread quickly. When Promethea summoned the slaver cities of the south, only a couple answered, the rest, terrified, looking over their walls for the distant shapes of marching trolls. Some Prometheans would escape to these cities, building small, half-breed kingdoms that were born and died in the space of a year. Get, rebuilt, was absorbed into the Aybari domain. And in the Imperial palace, the Emperor looked with new wariness of the rage of his guards – and also a lust for the power they could give him. Slowly, slowly, his attention turned to the only power that he felt could rival Bet Aybar... 
	The Scalethein Empire.

	[h3]Major Changes:[/h3]

	As above, with the largest changes seen in technology:
	Increased agricultural technology, construction of stone fortresses, mining, smelting, and production of iron in Bet Aybar. Extensive trade across the continent by stone-troll merchants. Troll astronomers and sages gravitate to Bet Aybar, and their travelling schools attract numerous human adherents.