The his­tory of Nume­naria is divided into Cycles of five thou­sand years. Each cycle rep­re­sents the wax­ing and wan­ing of mag­i­cal power in the world and are fur­ther divided into the epochs of Chaos, Dis­cord, Con­fu­sion, Order and After­math. These cycles are only known to mages, some priests and mag­i­cal creatures.

The story takes place on the eve of the Fifth Cycle, but human kind’s place in the world can­not be under­stood with­out know­ing some ancient history.

In the dis­tant past, Nume­naria was ruled by the Vanara, a race of ape-like humanoids who built a technologically-sophisticated civ­i­liza­tion with cities and nations all over the world. They enslaved the Elves and Halflings who shared the world with them and har­nessed Numenaria’s magic through arcane tech­nol­ogy – tech­nol­ogy that can still be found in the world. Their civ­i­liza­tion can best be described as Bar­soo­mian or High-Atlantean. Ape-men used strange tech­nol­ogy to strive with the swords and sor­cery employed by the Elves and Halflings, and all fought the weird crea­tures that occa­sion­ally spilled through the dimen­sional gates that dot the world.

In the Third Epoch of Dis­cord, giant, magic-wielding spi­ders now known as Doom Weavers invaded through a dimen­sional por­tal and began a war with the Vanara that lasted millenia.

As the wars dragged on, both sides cre­ated, sum­moned, bribed, hired and enslaved crea­tures from other planes and used them as their ser­vants and shock troops. One of the races enslaved by the Vanara, the Humans, learned tech­nol­ogy from the Vanara and magic from the Elves. When their power and knowl­edge had become full, the Humans won their free­dom by over­whelm­ing the Cyr­i­ans, psionic dog-headed war­riors from the dis­tant star Cyria the Vanara employed to han­dle their slaves.

In des­per­a­tion, the Vanara allied with the Humans and tribes of other escapees against the Doom Weavers. The Slave Races, which regarded the Vanara not as allies but a lesser evil, gained pos­ses­sion of their for­mer mas­ters’ Dooms­day weapon and unleashed a series of cat­a­clysms that shat­tered both the Vanara and the Doom Weavers.

Humans rebuilt the fastest and by the mid­dle of the fourth cycle were build­ing a civ­i­liza­tion out of the ruins of their Vanarian mas­ters. Under the lead­er­ship of a pow­er­ful sorcerer-king named Astro­tolic, mankind became a scourge to both the Vanara and the Doom Weavers. How­ever, as Astrotolic’s super­nat­ural age and power increased, so did his lust for more. His thirst for power twisted him into a force of evil whose grow­ing atroc­i­ties only ceased when he was deposed in a civil war. The war nearly destroyed human kind and cre­ated a cul­tural rift between the king­dom of Kyr­ishia and the five king­doms to the north: Dar­ril­hin, Thoes­trand, Ryeld­den, Lour­dril and Lumartia.

Astro­tolic was defeated but not killed; he is a lich, trapped and brood­ing in the Black Obelisk of the Five-Sided Tem­ple in Kyrishia.

The cur­rent story:

With Astro­tolic effec­tively trapped for eter­nity (we hope!), humankind had to decide what to do about magic. The north­ern king­doms embraced the cult of Gob and destroyed all the magic users, high places and mag­i­cal arti­facts they could. They also mas­sa­cred all non-human sen­tient beings left in their ter­ri­to­ries. The sur­vivors fled to Kyr­ishia, the only realm in Nume­naria where com­mu­ni­ties of all the races, includ­ing the Vanara and the races they enslaved thou­sands of years ago, live together in peace.

Kyr­ishia, mean­while, eschewed only destruc­tive magic and embraced the Five-Fold Law: What­ever you send out will come back five-fold. Kyr­ishia also insti­tuted a con­sti­tu­tional monar­chy defined by the Code of Law, the Code of Arms and the Rights of Mor­tals to pre­vent the trep­i­da­tions that King Astro­tolic inflicted on his sub­jects. Mer­chants from the cities and races of Kyr­ishia trade amongst them­selves, and food is so abun­dant that star­va­tion is unknown. Thus, Kyr­ishia is pros­per­ous and free, whereas her north­ern sis­ter king­doms are lan­guish­ing in true medievalism.

Kyrishia’s utopia would be too good to be true – if it weren’t for the new age of war and des­o­la­tion about to be unleashed from the North­ern Tier.