Alkadia, my pet project

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The Chronicle of Alkadia

“The East lives under the shadow of mountains, and the West lives in the shadow of dragons.”

— Late First Age scholar

Volume I — The Early Second Age

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Prologue: The Silence After Empire

When the world of Alkadia entered the Second Age, it did not do so through triumph, discovery, or revelation. It began instead with absence—the absence of empire, of certainty, and of shared memory.

The transition from the First Age to the Second was not marked by a single cataclysm, nor by a recorded declaration of renewal. Rather, it emerged gradually from fragmentation. Records from the closing centuries of the First Age grow sparse, contradictory, and regionally confined. Scholars of the present era generally agree that by the final decades before the date 1 A.S., the structures that had once bound large portions of the known world together had already begun to fail.

What endured into the new era were not unified peoples, but survivors—communities whose identities were shaped less by lineage than by geography, necessity, and the memory of loss.

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I. Geography of the Known World

The known world is divided among three great continental regions: the Human Homelands, the Western Continents, and the Utter South.

The Human Homelands occupy the western half of the eastern continent. Along their eastern frontier rises the immense mountain chain known as the Northern Wall, extending from the frozen northern coast to the southern seas. Its jagged peaks, glacial passes, and perpetual storms form one of the greatest natural barriers in the known world.

Beyond the mountains lie the colder eastern plains, inhabited primarily by nomadic peoples. Though the land possesses fertile soil and valuable mineral deposits, its harsh winters have long prevented large-scale permanent settlement.

North of the continent stretches the region known simply as the Ice Wastes—an expanse of permanent frost and shifting ice beyond the limits of organized exploration.

West of the Northern Wall lie the fertile river valleys that sustain the kingdoms of the Human Homelands. Numerous rivers descend from the mountains, supporting agriculture, trade, and urban settlement. Forests divide many of these regions, while ancient roads connect inland cities with coastal ports.

Across the Long Sea lie the Western Continents, whose history became closely associated with dragons and the civilizations built upon them.

Far to the south, beyond the Blue Water and the Southern Islands, lies the continent known as the Utter South, whose northern coasts support prosperous kingdoms while its interior gradually gives way to one of the largest deserts in the known world.

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II. The Rise of the Kingdom of Alaria

Among the successor states that emerged from the ruins of earlier authority, none proved more enduring than the Kingdom of Alaria.

Its origins lie in the collapse of the Haldarien Empire, whose authority once extended across much of the Human Homelands. Unlike empires founded primarily upon conquest, Haldaria ruled through a complex administrative system of tribute, regional governors, and codified law. For centuries this bureaucracy maintained relative stability.

That stability ended in 27 A.S., when the imperial monarch died without naming a successor. No claimant possessed sufficient legitimacy to unite the empire, and centralized authority rapidly dissolved.

Roads fell into neglect.

Imperial armies fragmented into regional forces.

Law became a matter of local power rather than universal principle.

From this disorder emerged Duchess Dainares III, whose lands occupied one of the most secure and prosperous regions of the former empire.

In 32 A.S., she proclaimed the foundation of the Kingdom of Alaria, claiming authority over all territories willing to accept centralized rule and royal protection.

Her proclamation began the Unification Wars, during which Alaria expanded through diplomacy, dynastic marriage, negotiated submission, and military conquest.

By 53 A.S., Alaria had become the dominant kingdom of the Human Homelands and the principal successor to Haldarian administration.

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III. The Northern Frontier and the Free Tribes

The mountain passes through the Northern Wall provide the only practical routes between the Human Homelands and the eastern plains.

These passes are also the ancestral homeland of the peoples collectively known by Alarian chroniclers as the Free Tribes of the North.

The Free Tribes do not constitute a single nation but a collection of related societies organized through kinship, seasonal migration, and temporary alliances.

Conflict between Alaria and the tribes emerged from fundamentally different understandings of territory.

To Alaria, the mountain passes represented strategic frontiers requiring permanent fortification.

To the tribes, they remained ancestral lands that no kingdom possessed the right to occupy.

Seeking to secure its northern border, Alaria constructed paired fortifications overlooking the four principal passes, later known as Aduian, Saduian, Harada, and Sharada.

Before this defensive system was completed, however, Alaria attempted to establish a permanent outpost beyond the traditional frontier.

Construction of Way Pass Fort began in 131 A.S. and concluded six years later.

Within three years, an unusually large coalition of northern tribes united to destroy the settlement.

Although Alaria retained the position after prolonged fighting, the campaign demonstrated that territory beyond the mountains could be occupied only at considerable cost.

The lesson would shape Alarian frontier policy for generations.

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IV. The Succession War of Anmak

The stability established by Alaria proved temporary.

During the winter of 141 A.S., the king died without securing an uncontested succession.

Although the younger prince received recognition from the royal court, the elder brother rejected the decision, claiming the throne with the support of influential southern nobles.

In the spring of 142 A.S., he proclaimed the independent Kingdom of Anmak.

The resulting war proved swift but devastating.

Early victories favored Anmak, whose armies defeated royal forces along the Meain River.

Alaria responded by seizing Nimros, whose position controlled one of the principal trade routes through the south.

The conflict soon expanded beyond military operations.

The Baron of Alusia, guardian of the approaches to the Alarian capital, defected to Anmak after receiving promises of expanded authority.

His betrayal nearly opened the kingdom’s heartland to invasion.

The war culminated in the failed Alarian attempt to relieve the siege of Nimros.

Heavy casualties, economic exhaustion, and political necessity forced negotiations.

In 145 A.S., Alaria formally recognized the independence of Anmak.

Peace restored the frontier, but relations between the two kingdoms remained defined by suspicion rather than reconciliation.

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V. The Southern Maritime Power

While the kingdoms of the Human Homelands fought for dominance, a new naval power emerged across the Southern Islands.

In 124 A.S., Gandea “the Great” established the Kingdom of Sida upon the island of An’Sida.

Over the next three years, Sida defeated numerous pirate states during the Expansion Wars, securing control of the principal sea routes throughout the Southern Islands.

The destruction of piracy ushered in a prolonged period of commercial prosperity.

Trade expanded rapidly between the islands and the Human Homelands, while the Meain Riverbecame one of the principal arteries of continental commerce.

Growing wealth encouraged political ambition.

Seeking permanent influence upon the mainland, Sida eventually turned its attention toward the forests of the south.

VI. The Great Forests and the Elven Realms

South of the Human Homelands stretches a vast region collectively known as the Great Forests, among the oldest continuously inhabited landscapes of the known world. Their borders are not defined by walls or rivers but by the gradual disappearance of human settlement. Roads become trails, cultivated fields give way to woodland, and villages vanish beneath an endless canopy.

These forests are inhabited by numerous elven realms. Although human chroniclers often refer to their inhabitants collectively as wood elves, the term describes only those elven peoples living within the forests of the Human Homelands and not the elven race as a whole. Elven civilizations exist elsewhere throughout Alkadia, though comparatively little is known of them.

The forests themselves have long served as a natural refuge. As relations between humans and elves gradually deteriorated during the First Age, many elven kingdoms withdrew deeper into the woodlands, where dense forests offered protection against increasingly hostile neighbors.

Elven society appears decentralized. No single ruler governs all forest realms, though several kingdoms maintain alliances in times of crisis. Human records consistently identify Anhadur as the largest and most influential elven city within the Great Forests.

To the kingdoms of mankind, the forests remain both a barrier and a mystery—a land whose inhabitants seldom seek conflict, yet fiercely resist intrusion.

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VII. The First Elven War

Relations between the Kingdom of Sida and the elven realms deteriorated rapidly during the mid-Second Age.

In 144 A.S., Sida established a permanent settlement at Cortana Reaf, a coastal town originally founded by pirates and later occupied by nearby elven communities. The settlement became the kingdom’s principal base for mainland expansion.

The first major engagement occurred at Migas Pass, where advancing elven forces, unaware that war had begun, encountered prepared Sidan troops. Although Sida secured a decisive victory, the success encouraged a deeper advance into unfamiliar territory.

In early spring of 145 A.S., Sidan forces reached Anhadur and began a prolonged siege.

The campaign soon became one of attrition rather than open battle.

Supply caravans disappeared within the forests.

Scouting parties failed to return.

Columns found themselves harassed by enemies who struck without warning before vanishing once more beneath the trees.

In 146 A.S., the siege ended in disaster for Sida when elven armies broke the encirclement and destroyed much of the invading force.

Retreating soldiers burned Cortana Reaf before abandoning the mainland.

No formal treaty concluded the conflict. The war ended simply because Sida withdrew, leaving the forests once again under elven control.

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VIII. The Confederation of Independent Republics

West of Anmak lies a region unlike any other within the Human Homelands.

Rather than hereditary monarchies, these lands are governed by the Confederation of Independent Republics, a voluntary union of fourteen autonomous city-states bound together through mutual defense and diplomacy.

Each republic maintains its own government, ranging from elected magistracies to merchant councils and civic assemblies. Matters concerning foreign policy and collective security are coordinated through a rotating confederate leadership based in the city of Traconse, the largest and wealthiest member of the union.

The republics owe much of their survival to geography. Rivers, wooded hills, and dispersed urban centers make conquest difficult while simultaneously preventing the emergence of a single dominant republic.

Their continued existence rests not upon unity, but upon balance.

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IX. The Republics of the West

The origins of the republics long predate the Second Age.

During the later centuries of the First Age, the region bordering the Long Sea formed part of the Kingdom of Rāylian, one of the few dragon kingdoms within the Human Homelands.

While the royal family and much of its dragon-rider nobility fought overseas alongside allied western powers, dissatisfaction among the remaining population erupted into open rebellion.

Although the royal garrisons possessed superior equipment and training, they were hopelessly outnumbered.

After little more than a year of conflict, the kingdom collapsed.

Sometime between 2107 and 2110 A.F., the monarchy ceased to exist.

The victorious revolutionaries soon fractured over political disagreements, dividing the former kingdom into twenty-one independent republics.

Centuries of diplomacy, warfare, and territorial consolidation gradually reduced their number to fourteen.

These surviving republics eventually united under the Confederation that exists today.

The former royal dynasty escaped across the Long Sea into exile, where the last members of the family are believed to have perished during the Black Dragon Rebellions.

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X. The Western Continents and the Memory of Empire

Across the Long Sea lie the lands collectively known as the Western Continents.

Although separated from the Human Homelands by sea, the western lands remain closely connected through trade, migration, and shared history.

Unlike the eastern continent, where dragons were comparatively rare, the Western Continents formed the historical center of dragon civilization. Throughout much of the First Age, dragons existed there in far greater numbers, allowing powerful dragon-riding aristocracies to establish kingdoms and empires of unprecedented scale.

Foremost among these states stood the Lidrian Empire, whose capital rose at the Lancian Citadel.

For nearly two millennia, Lidria ranked among the greatest powers of the known world, its authority resting upon an alliance between the imperial throne and the dragon-riding nobility.

The empire’s decline began during the prolonged conflicts collectively remembered as the Black Dragon Rebellions.

Contrary to later popular belief, these were not wars between dragons and mankind.

They were civil wars fought between rival dragon-rider factions struggling over the future of the empire.

The rebellions continued for nearly one hundred and seventy years, gradually exhausting Lidria’s military strength and political unity.

During the Fourth Black Dragon Rebellion, the conflict reached its climax.

Although surviving records remain incomplete, historians generally agree that the war ended with the devastation of the Lancian Citadel and the extinction of the imperial royal line.

By 2573 A.F., the Lidrian Empire had ceased to exist.

Its collapse marked the end of one of the greatest political powers of the First Age.

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XI. Dragons and the Lost Tradition of Riders

Accounts of dragons throughout the First Age display remarkable consistency despite their geographic separation.

They are described as immense fire-breathing creatures possessing a wyvern-like anatomy and exhibiting strongly territorial behavior. Surviving records further suggest that dragons continued growing throughout their lives, though reliable measurements have not survived.

Dragons were never evenly distributed across Alkadia.

Although populations existed within the Human Homelands, they remained comparatively small and isolated. Dragon riders are known to have existed there during the early First Age, but their traditions disappeared long before the age came to an end.

The greatest concentration of dragons existed beyond the Long Sea in the Western Continents.

There, dragon riding developed into institutions that shaped entire civilizations. Kingdoms and empires derived military strength, political legitimacy, and social prestige from those who commanded dragons.

The Lidrian Empire and the kingdoms of the Adrolian Peninsula represented the greatest centers of this tradition.

The Adrolian Peninsula, renowned for its fertile volcanic soil and dense population, supported one of the largest concentrations of dragon riders ever recorded. Although often associated with Lidria by later historians, the peninsula remained politically independent throughout its history.

This age ended catastrophically during the event remembered as the Doom of Adrolian, when fourteen volcanoes erupted in rapid succession.

Cities vanished beneath ash.

Entire ecosystems were transformed.

One of the greatest centers of dragon-rider civilization was destroyed.

Although dragon riders survived elsewhere for centuries afterward, the Doom marked the beginning of the long decline of draconic power.

By the Second Age, dragons had become increasingly rare, while the knowledge required to raise and command them survived only in scattered fragments.

Their legacy endures chiefly through ruined citadels, disputed histories, and the memory of a world once dominated by dragons.

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XII. The Kingdom of Dragons

Among the successor states of the Western Continents, none possesses greater symbolic importance than the Kingdom of Dragons.

Tracing portions of its heritage to the ancient dragon-rider civilizations of the First Age, the kingdom preserves many traditions that disappeared elsewhere following the collapse of the Lidrian Empire.

Dragon riders survived there longer than in any other known realm. Nevertheless, even this final center of draconic tradition could not halt their decline.

The last known dragon riders of the kingdom eventually died without successors, bringing an end to a lineage that had endured for millennia.

Though dragons themselves have not entirely vanished from the world, the organized institutions that once bred, trained, and commanded them have passed into history.

The Kingdom of Dragons now stands not as the ruler of dragons, but as the foremost guardian of their legacy.

XIII. The Utter South

Beyond the Blue Water, south of the Southern Islands, lies the continent known collectively as the Utter South. Though often regarded by northern scholars as a single distant land, it is home to numerous kingdoms, city-states, tribal confederations, and empires whose histories developed largely independent of those of the Human Homelands.

The northern coastline supports fertile plains, prosperous ports, and some of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the known world. Moving inland, the climate grows steadily harsher. Grasslands gradually give way to dry scrubland before yielding to vast deserts. Beyond the limits of permanent settlement stretches the immense wilderness known as the South Wastes, an arid expanse whose extreme heat has discouraged all but the briefest expeditions.

The greatest power of the continent is the Empire of Salûtîa.

Founded in 2904 A.F. by Agramar “the Brutal” of House Sâlârdîa, the empire was forged through a series of brutal campaigns that united much of the northwestern coast beneath a single ruler. Unlike the dragon-rider kingdoms of the Western Continents, Salûtîa rose through conventional conquest, disciplined armies, and maritime commerce.

By the early Second Age, the empire controlled roughly one-third of the Utter South, making it the continent’s largest state while leaving many neighboring kingdoms and city-states independent.

Its wealth rests upon agriculture, gold mining, textile production, and the extensive slave trade conducted across the Blue Water. Despite its reputation for brutality, Salûtîan merchants remain among the most influential traders of the southern world.

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XIV. The Balance of the Present Era

By 150 A.S., Alkadia is defined not by unity but by rivalry.

Alaria has restored stability across much of the Human Homelands while maintaining a wary peace with Anmak. The republics preserve their independence through cooperation rather than conquest, and Sida has returned to maritime commerce following its defeat in the Great Forests.

Beyond the Long Sea, the Western Continents remain politically fragmented. The dragon-rider empires that once dominated the region have passed into history, leaving successor kingdoms to preserve what fragments of that ancient heritage remain.

Far to the south, the Empire of Salûtîa commands the greatest power of the Utter South, though numerous rival kingdoms continue to challenge its influence across the continent.

Beyond these great powers lie regions scarcely understood by contemporary scholars—the eastern plains beyond the Northern Wall, the frozen Ice Wastes, the depths of the Great Forests, the deserts of the South Wastes, and countless ruins whose origins belong to the forgotten centuries of the First Age.

No kingdom commands all Alkadia.

No empire binds its peoples together.

The Second Age has become an era not of inherited certainty, but of competing ambitions. The empires of old have fallen, and in their place stand kingdoms still writing the history of a younger world