Age of Wonders

The Age of Wonders was the great civilization that arose in the centuries following the Korvak War. It was an era in which the mortal races learned to master the magical forces revealed to them by Demmazon and combined that knowledge with increasingly sophisticated technology.

The civilizations of the age eventually reached a level of prosperity, magical advancement, and technological achievement that later generations would remember as a near-utopia.

The era was ultimately brought to an end by the Fall of the Age of Wonders.

The Rise of Civilization

The Age of Wonders followed the defeat of the Korvaks.

During the Great War, Demmazon revealed himself to mortals and taught them how to understand and control the magical forces around them. The knowledge did not immediately produce the civilization that would later become the Age of Wonders. Mastery of magic required generations of study and development.

Over time, however, the various races flourished.

Magic became an integral part of civilization, and mortals learned to apply it alongside conventional technology. Magical knowledge was used not merely by individual spellcasters but as part of the infrastructure of entire societies.

This combination of magic and technology transformed the world.

Cities, transportation, scholarship, engineering, warfare, and everyday life all benefited from capabilities that later civilizations would struggle to reproduce.

The Great Kingdoms

Seven great kingdoms dominated the civilized world during the Age of Wonders:

Aegea — one of the great human kingdoms and the center of much of the world's accumulated knowledge.
Toreon — one of the great human kingdoms and ultimately the only major human kingdom to survive the Fall.
Menasta — one of the great human kingdoms.
Rictaria — one of the great human kingdoms.
Alliandea — one of the two great elven kingdoms.
Seratollia — the other great elven kingdom.
Krondos — the great dwarven kingdom, ruled by Thorn Runehammer before the Fall.

These kingdoms were not isolated civilizations. Each possessed a Travel Gate, allowing instantaneous travel between the great kingdoms.

The Travel Gates made long-distance travel extraordinarily easy and supported the movement of people, goods, and knowledge throughout the civilized world. Their existence was one of the clearest demonstrations of the technological and magical sophistication of the age.

Magic and Technology

The defining characteristic of the Age of Wonders was the successful combination of magic and technology.

The people of the age did not merely possess powerful individual spellcasters. They had developed societies capable of incorporating magical knowledge into their broader civilization.

The result was a world considerably more advanced than the civilizations that followed it.

Much of that advancement was dependent upon the magical environment of the age itself. When that environment disappeared during the Fall, later civilizations could preserve some of the old knowledge and artifacts, but could not simply recreate the world that had produced them.

The Five Gifts

The The Five Gifts originated during the Korvak War and remained among the most powerful artifacts in existence.

Demmazon created the Gifts using power embedded within the world itself. The creation of the Gifts required him to merge a portion of his own realm with the mortal world, preventing the process from destroying the planet.

The five Gifts and their bearers during the Korvak era were:

White Gift — Vestal Stone, borne by Vestal Stone, the first paladin of Demmazon and the strongest of the Gift bearers.
Red Gift — Kjeldin, associated with Evocation and offensive power, and later believed to have had a Necromantic focus.
Blue Gift — Salendaius Moonstrike, a woman associated with Conjuration. She did not survive the Korvak conflicts, and the Gift was subsequently lost.
Yellow Gift — Alantarin the Wise, associated with Protection.
Green Gift — Thorn Runehammer, associated with Transmutation.

Following the Korvak War, the Gifts were lost or hidden.

They would not become central to the history of the world again until their rediscovery near the end of the Age of Wonders. Those events belong to the Fall of the Age of Wonders rather than the history of the civilization itself.

The Great Civilizations

The Age of Wonders was home to several distinct cultural powers.

The human kingdoms of Aegea, Toreon, Menasta, and Rictaria formed the major human civilizations.

The elves maintained two great kingdoms, Alliandea and Seratollia. Elven civilization reached a particularly high level of magical and cultural development during this period.

The dwarves were centered upon Krondos, ruled by Thorn Runehammer. Their civilization represented another major branch of the magical and technological development of the age.

The differences between these peoples and kingdoms did not prevent them from participating in a common civilization. The Travel Gates and the widespread mastery of magic created a degree of interconnection that would largely disappear after the Fall.

Demmazon's Realm

During the Age of Wonders, the mortal world was connected directly to Demmazon's Realm.

The connection originated during the creation of the Five Gifts. Demmazon merged a portion of his realm with the mortal world to compensate for the enormous amount of power drawn from the world during the creation of the Gifts.

The boundary between the two became the place later remembered as the End of the World.

The connection also contributed to the pervasive magical environment of the Age of Wonders. Magic was not merely something that individual mortals could wield; the world itself was saturated with magical energy.

This connection would ultimately be lost during the Fall.

The End of the Age

For centuries, the civilizations of the Age of Wonders continued to develop.

Eventually, however, the Five Gifts were rediscovered.

Their rediscovery began a chain of events that would destroy the civilization of the age and fundamentally reshape the world.

Those events are documented in Fall of the Age of Wonders.

Legacy

The Age of Wonders became the lost golden age against which later civilizations would measure themselves.

Its ruins, artifacts, surviving writings, and magical creations remained scattered throughout the world. Some institutions survived in altered form, while others disappeared entirely.

The surviving Travel Gates became monuments to a civilization whose magical infrastructure could no longer function.

The Grand Library of Toreon, for example, survived the Fall and became the greatest known repository of accumulated knowledge in the later world, while many of the great institutions and cities of the age were destroyed.

The physical remnants of the Age of Wonders therefore became increasingly rare and increasingly mysterious as the centuries passed.

Later generations preserved many stories about the era, but often lost the knowledge necessary to distinguish historical events from legend.

What Is Established

The following are established characteristics of the Age of Wonders:

It followed the Korvak War.
Mortals developed extraordinary magical and technological capabilities during the era.
Seven great kingdoms dominated the civilized world.
Each great kingdom possessed a Travel Gate.
Aegea, Toreon, Menasta, Rictaria, Alliandea, Seratollia, and Krondos were the great kingdoms of the age.
Thorn Runehammer ruled Krondos before the Fall.
The Five Gifts existed as immensely powerful artifacts.
Demmazon's Realm was connected to the mortal world during the era.
The world possessed a pervasive magical environment that supported the civilization's extraordinary development.
The civilization was ultimately destroyed during the Fall of the Age of Wonders.

The surviving material does not establish every aspect of the civilization's political structure, economy, population, or everyday life. Those details should not be assumed merely from the technological and magical achievements known to have existed.