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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tristissima" data-source="post: 7986479" data-attributes="member: 6162">306 years after Edammera’s Folly and 4810 years ago (overall culture equivalent: 2186 years ago / elfin culture equivalent: 687 years ago), the Umbral Court migrates shadow giants from Mitheeriak on the the Shadow Plane into the Ombrefell to live in Nidal. This was only 92 years before Aroden pulled the god-birthing Starstone from the depths and became god of humanity and prophecy. The shadow giants are descended from the shadow gigas (first descendants of the titans) and flat-out refuse to consider the possibility that their ancestors were slaughtered by the velstracs after Doloras released them from their Hellish prison. In more recent history, velstracs have tried to subjugate them ~ when the shadow giants have managed to overcome these attempts, they have literally bathed in the velstracs’ blood (as they do with every fallen enemy they face, of any kind). Their religion, as described briefly on the wiki, seems to bear some resemblance to Mesoamerican religion with sacrifice and short-stepped pyramids (oh, what I wouldn’t give to find an RPG that depicted Mesamerican religion, including nextlaoaliztli/sacrifice, without branding it evil!); their clergy is evidently made up of members of the spiritworker (a.k.a., “shaman”) class. Some traitorous shadow giants are said to have hooked their wagon to Zon-Kuthon in Xoviakain, so those must have been the population from which the Umbral Court took their elite operatives. Isolationist to the point of only dealing with proven warriors who show them proper respect, they’re used when the Court wants to leave no survivors. 64 years after Aroden did his thing (so 4654 years ago, felt as 2115 years or 664 years), a caligni seer by the name of Fiersythe collects one of the most detailed chronicles of mortal interactions with the Dark Tapestry: the Voyages of the Void. That means that, to the general multiracial populace, the book is about as old as the first Roman temple of Venus is to us, and for the elfs it is about as old as the Golden Bull constitution of the Holy Roman Empire.Eldith Lorin is founded for river transportation 4531 years ago (2059 years ago/647 years ago). That’s the last of the long-ago events on the timeline. A big gap jumps us to 618 years ago, felt by the culture as a whole as if 281 years ago and by elfin culture as 88 years ago ~ I’m a couple years into my middle age, according to Pathfinder, and my grandmothers are just a bit younger than 88, so this would be about your elf PC’s great-grandparents’ time. This is when some Nidalese attempt to forcibly convert the people of Jol, capitol of Southmoor in the Lands of the Linnorm Kings built upon the once-giant-ruled ruins of Thassilonian Torandey, to the ways of the Midnight Lord. Maybe they’d have succeeded if they tried this in the Kellid Land of the Mammoth Lords instead. The Ulfen tortured them to death ~ one of the nice things about being a Kuthite is that this was probably still considered a win by the proselytizing invaders.Gawdz, that sounds like a rad historical event to play out! Open call to any DMs who wanna run a campaign set here….413 years ago (187 years ago/59 years ago ~ so, like, as old as Michigan’s statehood, Oliver Twist, Queen Victoria’s reign, Chicago, Houston, Proctor & Gamble, the telegraph, and the daguerrotype from the point of view of the general population and in your elf’s grandparent’s time), Chelish Emperor Haliad III begins the Everwar, and Cheliax and Nidal battle for 33 years. At the end of those three decades, the Black Triune orders Nidal to surrender, which helps open up Nidalese culture to both moderation and outside influence. Huh. Last month, I attended the San Francisco Dickens Faire in celebration of Christmas ~ after all, the Victorian Era really helped create and shape our image of that holiday. Makes me wonder about the Nidalese relationship to Shadowbreak, and the cultural artifacts which owe their form to this period.Speaking of, the next thing on the timeline is the opening of the House of Lies in the Uskwood. Shockingly what it says on the tin (sort of a bardic college/school for the best liars in the world), the House was founded but sixteen years into the Uskwood. We’ll obviously get into more detail about the Uskwood in the gazetteer section, but it’s worth noting that it’s a complicated place, with Kuthite druids, two different alien invaders (by the mi-go and by xenomorph expies called the hive), and the House of Lies.The Chelish Civil War began 118 years ago (felt as 53 years ago to the culture as a whole and 16 years ago to the elfs ~ that’s historically as distant to the modern Golarionian as the Summer of Love, the beginning of the Cambodian Civil War, the Six-Day War, the Nigerian Civil War, Chinese support of the Vietcong and Che Guevara’s execution are to us, and is likely about when your elf PC was born. Nidal backed House Thrune with shadowcallers, velstracs, the Adamant Company, and a quiet purge of any diplomats and dignitaries from any Chelish houses other than Thrune in their borders.Six years before House Thrune’s victory, in 4634 AR, Shadowbreak ends with a sudden purge of moderate Kuthites in Nidal. They are sent to the Cathedral of Exquisite Agony to suffer for decades and/or to become “repatriated” as velstracs. Historically that would be as far back as, like 1982 is to us (that’s the year I was born!) and only 12 years to the elfs.42 years ago (think, like, as far back as 2001, or 2014 if you’re an elf) was a Golarionian Jack the Ripper equivalent ~ shadow beasts (the shadow template, I think, is what’s referenced here) roamed the Chelish streets of Westcrown. The vampire and former Pathfinder Ilnerik Sivanshin was supposed to stop or mitigate their attacks with a contingent of shadowcallers and Midnight Guard, but is thought to have encouraged them. Ilnerik shows up in the Council of Thieves adventure path, and I am fascinated by the similarity of his last name to that of the goddess of illusions, Sivanah.White Estrid, the Ulfen Linnorm King of Halgrim, raided Nisroch with 15 longships fourteen years ago. She then broke through a Chelish blockade at the Arch of Aroden, and sold her treasures in Absalom (possibly leaving her cousin behind?). The combination of cultural elements there ~ Vikings taking things from France by way of Riddick and The Hell-Bound Heart and breaking through a Spanish-Italian naval blockade to sell things in, I dunno, Lankhmar? Sounds epic to me!The Towers of the Fiendlorn have one last claim to fame: four years ago, one was found in the Umbral Basin, abandoned and somehow warped by the Abyss. An expedition tries to explore it and fails disastrously. This has all the makings of a ghost story that would explode across Nidal, with its mixture of closeness to their ideals and distance from their alignment (presumably matching their lawfulness originally, it is somehow tainted by chaotic energies?)</blockquote>

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