The Elemental Empire - part 1 - The Grand Sweep of History

    Okay, enough world-building theory, let's start writing something and throwing out ideas.  No doubt some (or even all :) of these ideas will get re-named, revised and quite possibly thrown out altogether - but I feel like it's time to start brainstorming.  First off, I do have to say that the world of 13th Age struck a chord with me when I first read it, so I'm going to take some loose inspiration from it; though I'm also going to significantly shake things up.  I don't want or intend to step on anyone's copyright, I just mention it first to say to any 13th Age players out there that yes, I really liked the game's setting, and second to remind myself to watch my thinking so I don't cross that line.  Thus, let's start building the Elemental Empire.
    I like the idea of Ages, or periods of history that are clearly defined.  Now, in real life things are not so neat, and one culture's Age is another's inconsequential period.  So for my new world I'm going to force "ages" - which I'm currently calling "Conjunctions."  In the night sky there are several lights, colored so they stand out from the basically white stars, that move at erratic and unpredictable intervals.  Eventually they align, say there are 5 or 7 of them (enough to form a distinctive pattern), and with each alignment (called a conjunction) something terrible happens.  A magical catastrophe, plague, mass death, famine/ drought - something really bad.  No one has been able to predict exactly when it will happen, but it does get more obvious as time passes (and the lights draw closer together, I'm thinking they don't line up but rather make a shape of some kind) (I'm also debating making them disappear instead - in this initial idea they are symbols of disaster, but maybe they should be symbols of hope/ good and as they disappear they signal oncoming disaster?  I think I'm going to switch it to that, not sure yet though).  I like this idea as "something to fear" events, a powerful force that is not understood and unstoppable - the only hope is to mitigate it.  I want to leave the interval open (hence it's being a random number of years/ amount of time) so that GMs who don't want to use this can just set their stories in-between the conjunctions and not worry about it.  And while they cannot be stopped, let's say they can be mitigated, that either people have been able to divine the oncoming doom and take steps to lessen it, or that the player's have the potential to be the first to do so.
    So, this is going to be a fantasy setting, vaguely medieval, and I also want it to be big.  I've been watching a lot of Crash Course's World History on YouTube (for fun and in preparation to write this) and it's struck my by just how many different empires and kingdoms have all been active and interacting at the same time.  There seem to have been few periods of history that did not have a lot of different civilizations that all had some degree of contact.  So I want this to be a big world, with several different societies.  We've got to have magic of course, and I'm still up in the air about gunpowder and steampunk/magitech - I'm not sure just how advanced I want tech to be - though I am leaning towards having at least one society be more technologically advanced that the rest (both to give the option of tech to players/GMs and because it does sound cool to have a gun-slinging wizard [though I was not impressed by Pathfinder's archetype in Ultimate Combat]).
    My main society, one of if not the biggest, is going to be Roman Empire-esque, though also split into Western and Eastern halves that are fairly different.  It needs some "barbarians" to fight, which are going to be in the East.  Demons and Devils are in the West.  And South of it are the remains of the old empire.  Okay, let's shift gears before I go into more history - lets talk races.  I want to use the available races, but I also want to really mix them up.  The stereotypical elves, dwarves and humans have been done to death since Tolkien and while creating new versions of them means loosing out on the collective culture built around them, I just want something different.  I'm thinking that I'm not going to make completely new races (though that's tempting, another one of my favorite settings is Talislanta, who's tag line was "no elves" because it made it's own races - which creates a kind of steep learning curve, but also makes a fresh, new world to explore), but I am going to change them from some of the stereotypes that I've read.
    So first we have the Dwarvin, Nomin, Elvin, and Giatin: these are the oldest races.  Dwarves become Dwarvin, they are still shorter, extremely durable, and craftsmen.  They are physically related to stone, I'm not sure if I want to say they're essentially living stone, which sounds kinda cool but is going to little too far I think, rather maybe they are stone-like, which stone bones and tough skin (maybe even with stone plates as a kind of exoskeleton).  They are family and clan focused.  They are amazing singers, because they don't have darkvision, instead they have echolocation like bats (or "blindsight" in Pathfinder terms), and their mouths are formed in a way that gives them that ability and also makes them incredible singers (maybe magically enhanced).  They are also consummate liars, exaggerators, hagglers, and braggarts.  Gnomes become the Nomin, they are the shortest race (or one of the shortest races) and while Dwarvin are craftsmen like blacksmiths, Nomin are craftsmen in engraving and fine detail.  They are secretive, quite and taciturn among outsiders - they like to listen and watch.  They are nimble and intelligent, natural scientists, researchers, inventors and detectives.  Not cartoon-ish buffoons like in the Dragonlance series (which other settings seem to emulate as well), but rather smart, clever and crafty.  Elves become the Elvin, who are tied to the land and nature.  Like the Dwarvin I'm debating having the Elvin be living plants (maybe like the Sylvari in Guild Wars 2).  Elvin are master herbalists, weavers, astronomers.  They were the first Druids.  They are very serious, and hold oaths to be sacred and unbreakable.  Last of the oldest or original races are the Giants, or Giatin.  I'm thinking they're 10-15 feet tall, which is around the 12-20 they seem to be in most editions of D&D.  I don't really want to go with the "large, slow and stupid" trope, but I'm not sure what kind of unique identity to hang onto these guys.  I think they're the architects and city-builders of the setting (maybe also administrators and bureaucrats).
    These are the oldest races, the first in the world, and the first few Conjunctions/ages had them fighting with each other, which culminated in a magical war and disaster that created the Humin.  Humans, err... Humin are creatures of magic.  They take to spellcasting like breathing, and all have some minor aptitude with magic at least.  They have the shortest lives, living to just 50 years or so compared to the hundreds of the first races, but Humin also live the most with what they've got.  They grow and reproduce the fastest, which over time has led them to become the dominate species on the planet because their population can bounce back the quickest from the periodic disasters of the Conjunctions.  Physically Humin are weakest of the races, they have no special innate abilities like the First Races, but the Humin gift for magic (or magick ?  I do kind of like spelling it with the "k" for some reason) - the Humin gift for magick means they can be very powerful.  The First Races broke the laws of magick in the disaster that created the Humin.  A side effect of being so tied to magick is that Humin are highly unique.  There is no "DNA inheritance" like we Humans have, a Humin child can have nothing in common with it's parents physically.  This "wild magick" also means that Humin can breed with virtually any other living beings, creating the "crossbreeds." (there has to be some damn explanation for why the only half-whatever races are human-based :)
    So the earliest Conjunctions/ ages were ruled by the First Races, until they nearly wiped themselves out in magickal warfare and created the Humin.  The next several ages saw the Humin rise to power, culminating the the Wizard Kingdom - which then caused another magickal disaster that almost destroyed everybody.  After two near-extinction events based on magick, the Humin and First Races grew closer and began to restrict and control magick (outlawing it was not an option, Humin are innately magickal after all) and together (for the first time) formed the Elemental Empire, which would seek to create and maintain balance in the magick of the world, and between all the races (which had mostly been warring with each other so far).
    The same Conjunction that created the Humin (or shortly thereafter) also created the "Barbarian Races."  These are generally split into the Bestial Races, hybrid animal creatures like the Pegasi and Gryphons, and the Elemental Races, humanoid elementals (not cross-breeds, but rather advanced elementals with sentience).  The disaster that destroyed the Wizard Kingdom also created the undead, minions of the Silent King.  The Elemental Empire would spend the next few Conjunctions fighting these three forces.  After a few conjunctions the Prismatic Dragons would rise (so named because they were multi-colored), leading to the conjunction that ended with the Draconic Sundering (a dragon civil war that nearly wiped out the Empire).  The following conjunctions would see the invasion of the Demons and the intervention of the Pantheon (the general term for all the gods of light/ goodness), which would split the expanding Empire into two halves, each technically the same Empire but with significantly different customs and development.  The Western Empire, the closest to the Demonic Invasion, began to develop and rely on technology - the first major culture to do so - because the Demons are able to twist and warp magick (the Infernal are incapable of directly using magick, they can only manipulate it).
    Which is about where I want the setting to start.  This is all focused on one continent, the northern half of the map, and I'm working on filling out the rest of the world (since I want a variety of cultures and civilizations).  I've rambled on for quite a while (well, this is feeling kind of long to me at least :), so I'm going to wrap it up here and be back next week with some more broad brush-strokes of the world, then I'll start writing some specific details.  Until then, if you have any thoughts or comments feel free to make them below - you can find my email address in my Google Profile on the right and I'm @d100mechanic on Twitter.