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History

The eras of Terrun in order, a master timeline, and the wars, cataclysms, and founding events that shaped the present. The sources agree on the sequence of the eras far more than on their numbering, so this section names the early eras as the documents name them and gives ordinals only to the two most recent, the Fourth Age and the Fifth Age.

The eras in order

Era What it covers Calendar
Primordial Age The Elemental Chaos before the Einar; ends with the Primordial War. none
Age of Titans The Einar bring order, create the Titan races and the Throne of Law; the Elder God-War. none
Age of Demons The Demonic Invasion, the birth of the Primal Dragons, Kalar's rebellion, the forging of the Worldstone and the Abyss. none
Age of Dragons The Elven Imperium and the Draconian world-empire over the Worldstone; ends with the Shattering. DE (Draconic Edictus), no dates survive
Age of Magic The age of Mithis magic after the Shattering: the great wars of Numenia and South Astia. MA, counted from the Shattering
Age of the Dark Sun The cataclysm between the Ages: the Godswar, the Death of Kalar, the darkened sun. the end of one count and the start of another
Fourth Age The world of the Marshford and Demonlands material: the Acadian Order, Tserrerak, the Sovereign Assembly. unnamed in its documents
Fifth Age From the return of the Sun to the Proturan present: the Hollowing, the Sancturi Period, the Divine Period, the Rift Period. SM and AL

Whether the Age of Magic of the older archive is the same era as the Fourth Age of the newer documents has not been ruled; see the note on the Fourth Age page.

Calendars

Four systems of dating appear in the sources. The calendars themselves, their months and festivals, belong to the Calendar page; the historical use of each is summarised here.

  • MA, expanded as Mithius Ante or Magic Age in the 2014 compendium and as Mithis Ante in the 2020 history, counts years from the Shattering of the Worldstone (0 MA). It is the calendar of the Age of Magic and of "almost all nations of Numenia" (S372).
  • DE, Draconic Edictus, is named for the Age of Dragons, but no dated event in that calendar survives (S372).
  • SM, Solis Mani, "Morning Sun", counts from the return of the Sun that ended the Age of the Dark Sun (0 SM). It is the calendar of the Sanctuary Age timeline, of the Sancturi Imperium, and of the Divine Period (S132, S326, S112).
  • AL is the calendar of the Proturan material, running to the present of 834 AL (S107). No source expands the abbreviation or relates AL to SM; the two counts carry the same early period names (the Morning, Rebirth, the Fae Resurgence, the Hollowing) at different years, which is an open question.

Fifth Age documents also date things loosely as "pre-Dark Sun" (S184, S320, S315).

Wars and cataclysms

In rough order of occurrence. Regional wars with less material are sections of their era pages.

The Timeline sets every dated event in one table.

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