The First Aeon
~240000
- 155000 BFA
Though Alacrian science was aware of the massive age
of the planet Tsuunahgo, "history" was at most only used to define a
period after around 240,000 BFA - the approximate date of the earliest
known draconic legends. The First Aeon of history was the age ruled by
the seven Protodragons. Each of these
immortal energy beings held sway over one realm of Lur-Asko, shaping
its climate
and managing its creatures. Eventually, the Protodragons all left
Lur-Asko,
leaving their rulership to their children, the red and white dragons.
~155000 BFA: The Asteroid
Draconic legend tells of the Protodragons protecting
Lur-Asko from
total destruction after Tsuunahgo captured a passing asteroid. Although
the rocky mass did not directly impact the planet, it settled into an
orbit too close to remain intact, and was torn apart into a stream of
rubble. Most of this debris eventually became Tsuunahgo's rings, but a
small portion decayed into the atmosphere. This resulted into over two
centuries of devastation - airbursts, hazy ice ages, and catastrophic
ozone depletion.
Scholars are divided on the
causes of the disaster. Many believe that it was a natural
coincidence of astrophysics, while others interpret certain ancient
texts to indicate that the Protodragon Nemesis the Green used his own
devices to pull the asteroid in, and that this expenditure of energy is
the incident which fractured the climate of his realm Cevelky. His
motivations for arranging the impact are a matter of additional
speculation. Draconic historians tend to avoid this and other
interpretations that cast Nemesis as a villain, preferring to portray
the Protodragons as a united front; the dragons themselves avoid
commenting on the issue entirely, as such things are "beyond the
potential concerns of mortals." Meanwhile, another theory holds Adamas
to be responsible; depending on the source, such theorists speculate
that adamant pseudogravitic anomalies arising naturally from the moon
pulled in the asteroid, while others assert that the Restless Sleeper willed
the cataclysm. Still other theories hold that a competing struggle
between Protodragon and moon is why the asteroid neither missed nor
directly impacted the planet. All of these competing hypotheses
ultimately struck Alacrian
scientists as too speculative, thus they maintained an astrophysical
accident as the likely cause.
Whatever the case,
the Protodragons were able to use an extremely powerful form of weather
control derived from their own realm-shaping inventions to protect
Lur-Asko
from the effects of the asteroid. The effects on the Far
Remote are unknown, but Wynthia was completely devastated by the
crisis; it is known that the Protodragons relocated the Vitur Roc from
northern Wynthia to the Gelid Isles beforehand in order to save them
from extinction. With the Protodragons focusing on protecting their own
seven
realms, Wynthia was reduced to a wasteland devoid of all life.
In the aftermath of their work, the Protodragons had
expended a
tremendous amount of their power, burning out their ability to continue altering the realms of
Lur-Asko. Now outmatched by the greatest of their offspring, their
transfer of rulership to the reds and whites was apparently peaceful
and viewed as reasonable.
For much of the remainder of the First Aeon, it is
thought that the dragons focused on mitigating the lasting consequences
of the incident - for example, helping the various plants and animals
of Lur-Asko adapt to the planet's new rings. Ever since the asteroid,
Tsuunahgo's nights have been significantly brighter than even the most
brilliant double-full-moon night before them. Although the rings are
barely visible in full daylight, after sundown they are a massive arc
of whitish light across the southern skies of every Lur-Asko latitude,
broken only by the planet's shadow moving across them throughout the
night. Lifeforms that require true darkness, such as some fungi and
nocturnal animals, now thrive only in caves, or in the "shadowlands"
beneath the megaforests of I'Gremsul and Hal'Tayat.
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