All who reckon time know…

that it is currently the year of the Iron God, 499 ASK. It has been 499 years since the Seven Kings of Tyrhus bore witness to the Revelation and Ascension of the Pontiff Friso. This Ascension marked the end of the Age of Law, but not the end of law or lawful men. Instead, it marked the beginning of a Maesian age, an age of renewed justice, faith, and admonition, the Age of Seven Kings.

We know that the heretic Ovantans reckon time differently. We are told that they mark this as the Year of the One-Eyed Wolf Straddling the Stream, but more than that we do not know.

The Ages of Oerth are these…

Before time was counted, kynd lived and died, built and destroyed, and ever made war upon one another. This was the time before the Ages.

Then the Lords of Law spoke to the men of Oerth and instructed them in lordly ways. This is when they first raised thatch roofs to divert the weather, first tilled the fields so there was bounty and not starvation, first learned to make peace, and first built stone walls to protect themselves. But these things attracted the agents of Chaos who, by their nature, must bring all order to ruin. This began an age of endless war, the Age of Chaos.

After a thousand battles, the great

We live in the Age of Seven Kings, the Maesian age. However, four of the seven nations that witnessed the Ascension have disappeared from Oerth, destroyed or faded into shadow. For this reason, many call this the Wanting Age. Some believe that an Age of Winter is coming, an age that will wipe away the legacy of the Summer Kingdoms. For them, this age is simply the Long Gloaming, a period for the eventual collapse of all things.

As the Age of Law drew to an end…

the Summer Kingdoms, who had imposed the peace of one hundred generations, were fading. Most had already slipped into the currents of history, to be, at best, remembered in the half-light of awe and ignorance, and at worst, utterly forgotten.

As that age lay dying, a man called Friso lay in a dried-up riverbed, a man from the Summer Kingdom of Thannis, hiding from the marauding soldiers of his own nation, who pillaged the very lands that they had been born to. The world of Friso’s father, and grandfather and back for a thousand years, was ending.

His Revelations tell us that, in this moment, Friso received the instruction of Maes, the True God of Law and Iron. From the bowels of the earth, the Gifts of Maes were delivered to Friso, and Friso slew his attackers and led his people out of Thannis. Friso told his people of the Strictures, and bade them to purify themselves and to live purely. Friso led his people and marched for one hundred days and placed a stone on the hillside. This stone was the first stone of Goschlar, the center of Oerth and the eternal kingdom of Essel.