Baran+Timeline

(Draft) -450 Gnome Titan Houses rule over Halfling shires and are the guardians of human republics. Elsewhere draconic protectorates watch over equally bucolic shires. -400 The Gnomish Battle Mage warlord Garek plots a war of conquest, beginning with an epic spell cast that begins the dragonplague. Like all his great spells, it echoes into eternity through the shadow. -388 Garek perfects the incantation for the Warp-Gale to defeat elven armies. Warpgale putters out in Prime but persists in plane of shadow and tears away the long threads of the astral. This will affect the function of teleport in Baran into the present. -370 The human republics unify in what is called the Graywatch Confederation for mutual defense vs. the Garek. -360 Strapped for manpower vs. the Garek, the other gnome titan houses begin incantations from an ancient book of their God, Pangrus...a great spell to call an ally and cement their friendship. It's actually a book placed by the trickster/thief god Draper. What begins as a Godly joke will change The history of Baran forever. Orcs, long a nuisance at the fringes of civilization, are fused with the inventive spirit of the gnomes and given a powerful memetic revision by the incantation. Ork hordes begin to swarm and pledge themselves (at first) to their Gnomish creators. http://redfork.wikispaces.com/ -355 Odin one-eye sees these creatures as the best recruits he's yet seen for Ragnarok, and makes inroads by sending visions to their Shamans, hoping to capture the worship of the tribes. His message is one of 'prove yourself the best army.' Unbenknownst to him, however, Draper has placed a trap upon his creations that causes any deity sending visions to the orks to be authentically true, when they are in fact perverted by the dweomer-rich fabric of the ork mind.. Yiders, gawd of strength, falls for the same trap. Odin and Yiders' visions create the fallacies of Gork and Mork in the ork psyche. The pantheon believes that Gork and Mork are newly generated godheads, even Odin and Yiders, and so neither of them ever gain power from the orks, and Odin gives up and begins upholding covenants with his other followers, aiding them in battles vs. the orks. Yiders continues to hold up the Ork as the penultimate form of strength, but insists that they are just that--just short of perfect, and that in defeating them one proves their worth to Yiders. -350 The Gnome Titan Houses, some of which were already secretly conspiring with Garek, pervert the alliance with the Orks. Orks begin to fight 'the enemies of the Gnome Alliance' until ultimately the world unravels as Ork fights ork and so on... -348 The Night elves, long allies of the Graywatch confederation, join it. -345 The unforseen emergence of an ork warlord that unifies the horde under one law allows the orks to finish off Garek. -330 On the far side of the continent Graywatch finishes the bulwark of its great wall vs. the orks. The mammoth project requires a high degree of centralizaiton, and the confederation begins to appear as a nation for the first time. -300 Graywatch-ork wars begin. -270 The witch-king surfaces in the Gallidun desert. -240 The first breach. An orkish armada bypasses the great wall by sea in a great fleet of war barges. War rages across the confederation for eight years. -232 The mysterious armies, legions of black-robed spearmen and terra-cotta warriors appear on the side of one Night Elf general. He beats back the ork invasion and institutes a consular republic. -215 The Graywatch empire begins. -200 Due to the clout of the empire the Night elves are ascendant in power in many provinces. Many noble families adopt the customs and manner of the people of the dark forest. While there are many totems of the Night elf people, it is the totem of the Emperor's clan, the spider, that ascends in the eye of the masses. A few other Night elf houses, of the tiger, owl, and bat, hold on to prestige, but only the Tiger Totem ever moves out of the Darkweald. -185 Due to the prestige and vogue attached to the night elves' nobility, many of the royal lines are now half-elven. -150 By now most of the mainland elven settlements outside of the empire are driven into deep hiding in the forests, concealed by magic. The same is true of the dwarves; the dwarf race is divided into the mountain and sea races, each retiring to their respective venue to hide from the ravages of the hordes. Praying to the Gods of war, a lonely band of elf refugees in the northern plain recieves a boon that changes them. They become the Grevan. -100 The emperor begins a great mobilization to expand the empire across the continent and end the menace of the horde. -85 the first wave of campaigns into the wilderlands are successful. Contact is made with Dwarven fastnesses and alliances are forged. The Graywatch Empire now spans from the Eastern Coast to the inner sea. -80 The Grevan subject the other tribes of the North-East part of the continent; the Orks are cut off by the arm of conquests from the Empire. The Grevan Warlord Man-kyrus emerges. -70 Despite the new Grevan Threat, the emperor continues his conquests into the wilderlands, militarizing the north border and beginning construction on a new wall. -65 A new ork warlord emerges and begins a conquest of the empires' fringes. Manpower from the Grevan frontier is drawn away. -51 The Emperor's Mysterious Army is sent out again to the southern fringes of the empire where it campaigns against the armies of the Lich-King. Grevan armies win battle after battle against the retreating armies of the Empire. -50 The horde steamrolls itself to the margin of the old Great wall before its defeat. The capital is captured and Mankyrus proclaims himself Graywatch emperor. -49 Mankyrus He then marches west against the border armies at the wall but is stopped at the Bay of Kiro where his armies are bottled up beween the Jeren Moutains and the Imperial Fleet, unable to make a breakthrough. After months of marching around the Jeren Mountains to try and find another way into the West Frontier, A three-day eclipse in autumn brings on a severe winter. While this is something the Grevan take in stride, their new human vassal troops begin to wither away in the cold. At the battle of the Moonlight the Western armies attack. Mankyrus has no choice but to retreat and accept a three-year truce. -48 The Eastern Island provinces of the empire, not yet conquered by the Grevan, officially secede from the empire, calling themselves after the old republic, the Confederated States of Graywatch. -47 The west frontier, find an imperial heir and it begins to be referred to as the Western Graywatch Empire. Many thousands of Grevan warriors return home, wary of being 'softened' by living among the conquered peoples. The grevan that remain will be called sar-grevans. -46 Envoys between the CSG and the WGE meet; while they agree in principle to opposition to the Grevan, the CSG refuses to accept the continued rule of the Night Elf dynasty. The truce ends in winter, but no side begins campaigning. -45 the war renews in earnest.