Primordial Age¶
"Fae magics ruled and great elemental lords shaped, played and created on the Material Plane." — The Nature of Magic (S208)
The Primordial Age is the time before the coming of the Einar, when Terrun was an Elemental Chaos and the only powers in it were the Elementals and the beings that rose from them. It is the first era the sources name, and the one about which they say least. It ended with the arrival of the Einar and the Primordial War that followed, which opened the Age of Titans.
The sources that number the Ages call this the First Age (S001, S208, S386). The ordinals of the Ages before the Fourth are not yet ruled, and this wiki uses the names only.
The Elemental Chaos¶
Before any other plane existed there was the Elemental Chaos, which "pre-dates the arrival of the Einar and every other plane" (S001); every later plane is built on top of raw elemental energies that the Einar brought to order. In this age the Material Plane, if it can be called that, was "a barren place, a physical expression of elemental energies given off by the elementals" (S013), and when the Einar arrived it was "an Elemental battlefield, with the elements in a state of constant conflict" (S386). The Elementals "literally create and form matter upon which all other creation rests" (S001), and with the Eldritch they are the only true natives of Terrun. The Elemental Chaos as a plane, and what remains of it, is Cosmology's subject.
The magic of the age was Fae magic, elemental magic, which "existed when Elemental Chaos ruled" (S279). Arcane magic did not exist; Ethereal magic has always existed, but no one on Terrun practiced it (S208). The Primordials, the greatest of the elementals, "have been around since the beginning and cannot be destroyed" (S279), and the Eldritch are believed to be Primordial Elementals who ascended, leaving most of their elemental nature behind to become beings of immense psychic power (S001). How long the age lasted is unknown; "many scholars assume millions of years" (S208).
The arrival of the Einar¶
The Einar are not from Terrun. Their "origins unknown but they are not originally from Terrun" (S429), and the older gods-lore credits Kalar with bringing them here. Their arrival "heralded the end of the First Age (Primordial Age), the Primordial War and the start of the Second Age (Age of Titans)" (S001). They claimed dominion and sought to bring order to the Inner Planes; the Elementals resisted, and the Primordial War began. The Eldritch, for their part, allied with the newcomers (S001), while the Dwarrow sided with the elementals against "the invaders" (S529). The war itself, and the Throne of Law forged at its end, are told on the Primordial War page.
Gap
The sources do not say where the Einar came from, how many arrived, or whether anything on Terrun besides the elementals, the Primordials and the proto-Eldritch had a will of its own before they came.
Age of Illumination¶
The gods-overview of 2019 (S429) opens its history of Terrun with an "Age of Illumination" whose one event is the War of the Gods, before an Age of Titans, an Age of Faerie, an Age of Dragons and an Age of Magic. It is the only document to use the name, and it gives no account of the age beyond that line. Its War of the Gods, in which Kalar was banished or killed and became a sleeping god, is the same conflict the newer history dates to the Age of Magic as the God Wars; the placement at the beginning of time is an earlier reading and is recorded here only as a name.
Earlier accounts¶
The 2014 Compendium (S372, S384) has no age before the Einar at all. Its history begins with an Age of Titans that covers "Formation of the Earth, Initial Evolution of Lifeforms" and the creation of the Titan races. The cosmology of 2022 (S013) likewise says the Material and Elemental Planes both predate the Einar, where the 2026 revision (S001) has only the Elemental Chaos predate them and the Material Plane built afterwards; that difference is filed under the Primordial War.