History

This page's data comes from the game and is updated with every release.

The known history of the continent of Morvan, as the schools, the temples and the shamans tell it. This is the thousandth year of the Buyruk (300 A.B.).

Calendar

Two calendars are used: BY (Year of the Buyruk, from the writing of the Great Tablet) and A.B. (After the Breaking). Today is BY 1000, that is 300 A.B. The hour at midnight is called the Tablet Watch: the shards hum at that hour.

The Age of Spirits

Before people there were only the iye: spirits that have become aware of themselves. Every hill, river and wind has its iye; the oldest and greatest are the dragons.

The Age of Guests

When people came, they lived as guests on the spirits' land. The first share of the hunt was left to the iye, a tree was asked before it was cut; shamans spoke to the spirits by half-names, bargained and saw off the dead. Memories of this age: the Year of the Flood, the death of the White River and the Sand Sea lying where it ran, the Stonekin who went down under the mountain, and the Ash Century when the forests burned the plain.

The Binding Wars

A stranger came from the west: Morvan. He wrote the name of a spring's iye on jade and the spring obeyed him. That was the first binding. Over the next fifty years Morvan bound the spirits of the plain one by one:

• The War of Six Cities: the cities of the plain joined him or fell.
• The Dragon Binding: four dragons were bound. Kara Boran, the west wind, blew for a hundred days; Kor, the fire dragon, split the mountains as it was bound and opened the Cheonmun Chasm; Ane-Ruun, the deep current of the sea, and the Great Vein under the Ulu Su were bound too.
• The Great Tablet (BY 1): every binding was gathered on a single tablet, a single covenant called the Buyruk.

The Jade Age

Seven hundred years. The rivers did not flood, the roads were safe, the plain was fed every year. After Morvan's reign the realm grew and the Golden Centuries came; then part of the plains faded (the Pale Century) and the Last Khagans held the throne. The last ruler was Ayaz Hatun.

The Breaking

The last full moon of BY 700, the night Ayaz Hatun was to be crowned. That night the Great Tablet broke into thousands of pieces, and its pieces, the shards, fell across the continent. Each kingdom tells it differently:

The Regency of Hwaryeong

The Regent's Lament. The Commander's legions marched on the tower, the Shadow Divan opened the gates, a sword rose and the tablet cracked. Regent Seo Ilsei threw himself before the Hatun but was too late; he took the Black Brush and what the House of Records could save, withdrew west and swore to write the Buyruk anew.

The Throne of Geumseong

The Night of the Gate. The traitor Regent poisoned the Hatun's cup; the words broke off and the tablet broke. The loyal guard, the Shadow Chief, took the Hatun's secret-born baby and fled south by the paths the ancestors whispered. So Geumseong waits: one day the line of the Gate (Mon) will sit on the throne.

The Free Hordes of Cheongun

The Hatun's Choice. Ayaz Hatun was a daughter of the steppe; she learned that the chain was killing the world, and she did not renew the tablet but broke it. The Regent tried to stop her; the Hatun rose to the Sky that night, and the Commander sent the legions to where the shards fell.

The Age of Division

• The Waking Years (0–3 A.B.): the Ulu Su flooded for the first time in seven hundred years, forests walked, the dead rose from their graves as the Unreturned. A third of the continent died.
• The Three Proclamations (2 A.B.): Regent Seo Ilsei proclaimed his regency at Baekgaem, the Shadow Chief the throne of the baby Mon at Geumdan, and Commander Tarkan Boran "there is no throne" at Kurultai Hill.
• The War of Three Thrones (8–41 A.B.): the Burnt Bridge, the Siege of the Granary, the Bloody Snow. The war ended in weariness; the Ash Peace declared the old capital's surroundings the Ash Border: the land that belongs to no one.
• The birth of the Kıymıklı (15 A.B.): the first children with jade marks were born. The Regency wrote them into the Shard Ledger, Geumseong took them into its temples, the Hordes counted them as equals.
• The Jade Fever (60–95 A.B.): shard hunters, smugglers, sellswords. The Regency's Lawscribes began to write small commands with shard jade.
• The return of the shamans (the 70s): shamans came out openly again on the steppe and the coast; the Council of Shamans was founded.
• The River War (112–130 A.B.): eighteen years between the Regency and the Hordes over the branches of the Ulu Su.
• Ane-Ruun stirs (164 A.B.): a giant wave swallowed Velu-lahe.
• The Mountain Revolt (192–198 A.B.): the Stonekin took the high mines back from the Regency.
• The Sarıgül Report (233 A.B.): the shaman Sarıgül laid thirty years of observations before the Kurultai; the Regency banned the report.
• The Red Winter (251–253 A.B.): a winter of two years; Geumseong's granaries did not open to the north.
• The Pale Throne (270 A.B.): Geumseong's eleventh heir died uncrowned.
• The Shard Wave (288 A.B.): births of Kıymıklı grew tenfold.
• The tower wakes (296 A.B.): a green light burned atop the ruined Tablet Tower; since then the tower is rebuilt every season. People call it the Endless Tower.
• The Echo (299 A.B.): all the shards began to hum at once at the Tablet Watch; the hum grows a little longer every night.

The Thousandth Year

Today. The shards are falling again, the tower rises, and thousands of young Kıymıklı are waking.