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102-1 BFA: Third Alacrian Era     Alacrian civilization began a sharp decline after the Draconic Wars. Some say that the enlightened teachings of the Golden Age had been forgotten in the conflict, while others claim that optimistic Rationalism was simply insufficient to sustain a culture through the reality of war. Certainly Archon and the other white dragons had much to do with accelerating the collapse. Whatever the philosophical details, the entire civilization gradually devolved into infighting. Several Alacrian factions continually warred between themselves, and most technological and cultural progress that occurred was directly related to war.

The Thirteen Factions
    During the first years of the Third Era, Alacrian civilization was politically and culturally broken up according to the borders of its 13 major city-fortresses. The cities themselves were extremely well-defended and hardly ever conquered, though the other settlements and industries in their territories were the subjects of constant war. The only exception was the Wynthian city of Fortyservus; it found itself largely outside the wars, but instead dealt with devastating internal rebellions throughout its much-larger territory. Amidst the desperation of certain cities whose economies were most devastated by the Draconic Wars, Ascendant philosophy rematerialized and rose to power, further exacerbating the conflicts with an ideological element.
    Practical alliances were occasionally made between Alacrian factions, usually to be broken later. Peace was invariably temporary and little more than a ruse. All the wars, battles, treaties, and internal power struggles would take several large books to fully chronicle. Sages may attain quite a knowledge of these tomes, but such matters are beyond the scope of this chapter (and very rarely useful).

90 BFA: The Path of the Rift
    As Alacrian factions began to turn their weaponry on each other, Aterr leader Atro Vys urged his kind to withdraw from the "Blinded Ones." During the Draconic Wars, the Aterr served alongside the Alacrian military, and Vys blamed many of the grievous losses of the Wars on foolish Blinded strategies. He viciously lambasted Draconic Wars generals for constantly serving the interests of Alacrian politics rather than simple dragonslaying, and in the years afterwards became almost as antagonistic to his fellow Alacris as he was to the white dragons themselves. He embarked upon the Dark Path of the Rift - the belief that Aterr are wise to remain separate from Blinded society and take no political sides, which would become the dominant position amongst Dark adherents across most of history. Throughout the Third Era, the Aterr remained neutral in the inter-faction conflicts, and are often considered a separate faction of their own. Despite their tiny numbers, the Dark Ones and their followers were able to make themselves a disproportionately difficult target thanks to their immense arcane power and cunning. The Tennebris proved just as impenetrable to attack as the thirteen city-fortresses.

55-40 BFA: The Fallen Acolytes
    In a time when the white dragons seemed to be right about the evil nature of mortals, Gah’Henna and the rest of the Red Synod were desperate to salvage their own philosophy. In the 50s and 40s BFA, the reds rallied their few remaining acolytes and focused on carefully expanding their ranks. In a way ironically similar to Vys' Rift, the Red Synod directed this chosen few to extract themselves from the Alacrian factions, beginning the tradition of red draconic abbeys. During the Third Era, these abbeys were extremely well-fortified. Just as the white dragons adapted Alacrian technology during the Draconic Wars, now the red dragons helped their acolytes to develop defensive measures. Most notable was the development of some type of energy weapon called the Oculis. Precise details are hard to come by, but it seems that the Oculis was a weapon of mass destruction, intended to deter the Alacrian factions from attacking the acolytes with their own superweapons.
    The efforts of the red dragons were effective for a time, and their abbeys successfully evaded conquest by the Alacrian factions. Unfortunately, they drew the attention of Archon and his white acolytes, eager to foil any plot to disprove their philosophy. After years of massive psychic assault, Archon was able to fatally tempt the abbeys. All their teachings of virtue and struggle were unable to shield the red acolytes from the diabolical effort, and they soon fell into internal conflict and hatred of the Alacrian factions. Those influenced by Archon staged a final power coup within the abbeys, seizing control and turning the Oculis weapon against the Alacris. Lur-Asko was devastated by this attack, as well as the immediate counterattack against the acolytes. Now referred to as the Fallen Acolytes, most were killed by the Alacrian retaliation, while others went on to become servants of Archon.
    The Fallen Acolytes shaped the philosophical evolution of Lur-Asko, and continue to be fodder for arguments today. Red dragons use them to justify their refusal to interfere more directly in Lur-Asko affairs. White dragons claim them as proof of their ideas. Dark Path adherents, Preamblians, and others use the Fallen Acolytes to accuse red draconic disciplines of ineffectiveness in resisting temptation, despite this being touted as a primary goal of red philosophy.

12-1 BFA: Atra Eclipsis
    After Atro Vys passed, practical leadership of the anarchic faction shifted to Atra Eclipsis, a charismatic young Alacris Aterr. Eager to intervene in Blinded society in defiance of the Path of the Rift, Eclipsis united most of the Darkened and led a grand effort to neutralize the most dangerous Alacrian factions. Of particular concern to her was a device called the Tylum Futuro (“weapon of the future”) being developed by the Ascendant regimes of Dira and Standux. This mysterious project was undertaken with the help of the Fallen Acolytes, and would eventually become the engine of the Fall.
    Meanwhile, those Aterr who remained on the Path of the Rift chose to abandon Lur-Asko to its fate, accusing Eclipsis of wasting Aterr blood to save a worthless land. Many of them followed Atru Lapsis to Wynthia in an attempt to escape the constant conflict that occasionally risked even the Tennebris. Ultimately, their Alacris members were unable to evade the Fall.
    Eclipsis and her Aterr and followers were successful in destroying the Tylum Futuro in Dira. However, their resources were severely depleted by the effort, and they were unable to find Standux’s Tylum before the Fall.

The Fall of the Alacris Year Zero    Eventually, the conflicts of the Third Era came to a sudden end. For many centuries, the Fall was shrouded in mystery and conflicting accounts, with much of the world too focused on surviving the aftermath to puzzle out exactly what had happened. Eventually, ancient factions who survived the Fall came forward with their records, and the many finds of the Adventuring Age have allowed modern historians to piece together other facts about the disaster.
    The first and clearest fact known regarding the Fall, based on the large body of evidence from Atra Eclipsis' campaigns, is that the Alacrian species was eliminated by Standux’s use of the Tylum Futuro. Today, it has been established that the Tylum was a type of sophisticated bioweapons laboratory, which exploited a key weakness in Alacrian civilization during their Third Era. There were many voices amongst the Alacris, most beginning the decade before the Fall, that repudiated the long-standing practice of genetic engineering within their own species. Aterr and military records from this time also claim that Planneh'Ah, the One of Deception, was the white draconic voice behind many of these movements - a clear connection to the white acolytes behind the Tylum Futuro. Ascendant philosophy and its anti-intellectual tendencies lent further power to these ideas. In the years immediately prior to the Fall, the war-torn and confused Alacrian civilization gave in to the demands of the anti-progress movements, resulting in genetic degradation and a purge of knowledge regarding the biological sciences. The Tylum Futuro exploited both these effects, resulting in a biogenic plague that Alacrian society no longer had the ability to cure. Though it had no effect on non-Alacris, it spread throughout all thirteen Alacrian factions and led to the deaths of nearly the entire species within a single half-season.
    The exact details of how the Tylum plague actually worked biologically are lost to time, though it seems unlikely it could be dangerous to other species even if recovered. It is generally accepted that it would have been easy for Golden Age Alacrian civilization to control and cure. Still, a few voices in today's Lur-Asko hold it up as a sign that genetic engineering should never be revived; most voices attack this conservative sentiment as the very corruption that led to the Fall.
    It would have been possible for individual Alacris to survive the Tylum plague in cryostasis, or if they were heavily treated by arcanists or corallurgists soon after infection. In the Adventuring Age, many discoveries revealed that this did in fact occur, with dozens of named Alacris leaving records of their survival. Still, the number of survivors was too small and their locations too dispersed to comprise a viable breeding population after the Fall. The last documented Alacrian survivor was a man whose stasis chamber shut down in the late Imperial Age, and fearfully concealed himself until his death. Theoretically, an Alacris could still be found in stasis today, as Alacrian cities and ruins continue to be explored; such a discovery would be groundbreaking for Lur-Asko academia, though doubtless terrifying for the survivor.
    Some Alacris - most before, but some after the Fall - foresaw their own extinction and took measures to preserve what they felt was the best of themselves or their culture. Many major finds of preserved Alacrian technology and lore have come thanks to such efforts: a major historical cache here, an airship component blueprint there, a preserved library or scientific computer elsewhere. In some parts of Alacrian cities, automated defenses that would normally repel the Subject Species are found conveniently shut down, or perhaps replaced by a challenge meant to test the worthiness of post-Alacrian survivors. Though the vast majority of Alacrian ruins are devoid of any intent to be explored, adventurers dream of the exceptions - places deliberately prepared by the last of a doomed species, intent on passing down some portion of their once-golden legacy.

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