General World History of Thelius

Overview

The world of Thelius has a long history, but a vast majority of it has been lost to time due to a horrific and prolonged event known as Starfall. About 700 years ago, Thelius was in it's renaissance. The world was full of new expressions of art, science, philosophy, and more. Cultures were shifting and the world was making steady progress towards an enlightenment period and an industrial revolution. The various sentient species of Thelius mingled and coexisted, some more peacefully than others, but each knew of the others and relationships were built.

However, the overall prosperity didn't last. See, the stars in Thelius' sky are stagnant and unmoving, but for some reason unknown to the people of Thelius a star simply fell from the heavens one day. When it impacted the ground, it devastated the area around it for miles, ripping up the ground and vaporizing even the very stone that was nearby. The worst of it, however, was the fallout. The plume of debris and smoke that emanated from Starfall Crater was different than it should have been. Rather than toxic gasses and a cloud so big that it would blot out the sun for weeks or even months, the cloud took a more condensed form and glowed with a light blue light.

This cloud, known as the Star Storm, moved across the land and everywhere it touched, chaos would unfold. Everything it touched would warp and waver and reality would change. The rules that governed the universe would cease to hold sway where ever the storm found purchase. Entire civilizations were wiped off the face of the world in a matter of months.

After a few desperate years of this horrific storm sweeping around the world, new creatures appeared. These Starborne creatures appeared to have been born of the Star Storm because they fed and thrived off of its energy. New plants, herbivores, and predators created an entire ecosystem around the energy of the Storm that began to thrive. Their population exploded rapidly, and as they fed off the energy of the storm, it got smaller, and smaller. Eventually the storm ceased to be a problem, but a new problem presented itself right away.

Not only was the entire world reshaped, but now it was filled primarily with Starborne creatures and their primary source of food was dwindling rapidly, so they were turing to anything else they could eat. That primarily meant each other, but also meant every other creature near by. What few people remained were nearly wiped out by these ravenous creatures until many of them died out.

After the 200 hundred years containing Starfall, the Star Storm, and consequent Starborne Creature explosion, the world settled into an uneasy quiet. The Star Storm was gone, the Starfall Creatures were adapting to a world without it, and the sophonts of Thelius began to rebuild. Each of the Thelisian species founded a city-state which are now known as the Ancestor City-States. They were strongholds built during the Starborne Explosion where they could survive and weather the changing world.

And that's how the world found itself, and it stayed that way for about 500 years. During this time, each of the Ancestor City-States rebuilt their culture, discovered new ways of defending themselves from their hostile environments, and more-or-less prospered. Each of these cities were inhabited by only one species, and over time the knowledge of the other species faded into legend. Nearly all documentation of the time before the Starfall was lost except for a few maps and books, and for each of the species the world became very, very small. Then, the airship was invented.

Around 500 years after the founding of the Ancestor City-States, the first airship was constructed in Kulasis, the desert city of the Slated, and the world began to be explored in ernest again. The Slated were desperate to escape their desert city, since the environment there was incredibly unforgiving. Some of the biggest Starborne creatures burrow beneath the sands, sandstorms are frequent and intense, and food is very difficult to grow. The Slated's entire culture was built around progress and innovation with the goal of finding a new home. With airships at their disposal, they found one.

At the center of a large area of meadows, grass, and meandering streams rises a singular and great plateau, and it was here that the Slated founded their new city: Avidal, the City of Progress. Over the course of the next 50 years, they constructed their new home, continued exploring the world, and never lost their sense of innovation. Over time, they re-discovered the other peoples of the world and invited them to help in the construction and expansion of Avidal, to make it a hub of ideas, cultures, and inclusion.

The world continued to get bigger as new methods of communication were invented such as long distance radio, allowing rapid communication between the far flung cty-states and the new settlements that began to spring up with the realization that the Starborne populations had declined immensely. Airships allowed for trade and transportation to the various Ancestor City-States allowing the exchange of goods, knowledge, and labor. Guilds became a standard business practice for groups of skilled workers to join together to create groups of protected labor, and for 50 more years the world grew and prospered.

As the world currently stands: industry and engineering is picking up; Starborne creatures are being studied and understood, but also hunted for their Star Gems; the great Starborne-ologist, Heinris Navidus, has discovered ways to utilize the power of Star Gems as an energy source; The drug known as Stardew is growing in popularity even though it is a crime to use or possess it in most places; Centrifuge Technology is just beginning to emerge; and there is still so much wilderness to be explored, and so much knowledge about the times before the Starfall to be discovered.