Return to Earth Eternal Official Lore
35 | THE AGE OF MAN BEGINS
Though the Age of Legend came to an end with the great Migration of the Beasts to the Groves, Man did not yet dominate the Earth to the extent he would. The Undead, the Vampires of the Blood Kingdom, the Dominion of the Claw, the Yeti, the Outcasts (whom Gaia did not bring to the Groves), the Dvergar and the Dragons all remained on Earth, battling against Man for their survival.
The Treekin and Amanita remained on Earth as well, though the former retreated deep into the forests and the latter continued their enigmatic, never‐ending search in the forests, mountains, and marshes of the world. In time, the Treekin began to find themselves weakening as they had in the past when circumstances forced their confinement within the Great Forest. Without the exposure to the wider world they put their roots down and drank deeply from the soil and water. They grew sleepy and one by one the Treekin began to fade into the arboreal background. In the space of a handful of centuries, the echoing footfalls of these mighty creatures would cease to echo within even the deepest and most sacred forests on Earth.
The Veiled War
The Vampires were forced to retreat into the deepest parts of the Carpathians, abandoning most of the Blood Keeps. With the weakening of their creators and mortal enemies, the Ferals of the Dominion of the Claw made outright war upon the diminished Bloodkin and the two groups spent thousands of years in a war that took place in the shadows, almost (but not quite) unnoticed by the burgeoning race of Man. This Veiled War, as it was called, was witnessed by Man only in brief glimpses, though fragments of Man’s writing we have found since tell us that the stories they told their children included both Vampires and Ferals. It is likely that both of these races would have attacked Man here and there, on the fringes of his civilization, inspiring Man’s nightmares of the two.
When the Feral Ursine and Fangren formed the Dominion of the Claw after rebelling against their Bloodkin creators, they cast out the Longtails, feeling that they were too small and weak to be allies with. These Feral Longtails, like the uncorrupted Longtails, chose a nomadic existence, splitting into small tribes. They traveled in secret, always sticking to the wild places of the Earth for there was no struggling against the might of Man. In their travels, they learned to master dark magics with darker purpose and soon Man had another enemy in the shadows, for the Feral Longtails became the very Gloom Witches we know today.
Man’s Ascendancy
Most of the beings of Earth fled into hiding as Man grew into his ascendancy, but some fought back. The Yeti launched no offensives but fell upon any Men who entered their domain with crushing ferocity. The Outcasts fled deeper into the mountains but would frequently raid the encampments of early Man. As humans grew more numerous and sophisticated however, the Outcasts were also forced into a purely defensive strategy.
The Undead, under the leadership of Abidan, the Metalich, had taken advantage of the Bitter War to rise to the surface once more and plague the Earth. For hundreds of years their skeletons, zombies, mummies, and liches preyed upon Man until, as with all others, the tide turned and Man’s sheer numbers and organization overwhelmed the Undead, pushing them deep into the UnderRealm, where Abidan brooded in his seat of power in the Undead city of Sheol.
The People of the Skull and Dvergar both made war upon Man, the former from their kingdom in the Ural Mountains and the latter from their frozen underground home of Nidavellir, only to meet with eventual defeat. They too forsook the surface world and fled, ragged and desperate, deep into the vast caverns and tunnels of the UnderRealm.
Last of the known world to fall to Man were the Dragons, for in Man they finally encountered an enemy mighty enough to not simply rival them but to turn the hunters into the hunted. Though Man did not possess the secret of forging dragonsteel from the ash of dragon bones, he prized the act of dragon slaying as a marker of great heroism and soon these immense wyrms were hunted nigh to extinction. A mere handful survived the Age of Man, hiding in the wilderness and the few caverns accessible to beings their size.
Dominion
Man now held unchallenged dominion over the Earth and he began to take its bounty on a scale never before imagined. The forests of the world began to fall to his axe and he opened great rents in the Earth to take minerals, stone, and more. He plundered the seas of its immense bounty and, unknowing, even slew most of the slumbering Treekin, mistaking them for ordinary trees.
Of all the known creatures remaining on the surface of the Earth, the Amanita were the closest witnesses to Man’s actions, for the Shroomies have always had the ability to escape notice when they wish to. They watched while they continued their unending search and for the most part ignored Man, for the searching of the Amanita is paramount to them.
The Amanita Virosa
But some could not ignore. Some could not turn a blind eye. For some of the Amanita, watching Man desecrate the Earth was nearly intolerable, and the destruction of the Treekin they had watched grow from acorn and sapling proved to be too much. Their hearts turned angry and their minds turned bitter. Twisted with the hatred of Man, these Amanita became the Amanita Virosa, which means ‘Destroying Angel’ in the old tongue, though they are most often called simply the Black Shroomies for the darkness that has taken hold of their souls.
When Men disappeared from their beds at night, never to be seen again, it was as often the work of the Black Shroomies as it was the Gloom Witches or Vampires, for in sharp contrast to their Amanita brothers, the Amanita Virosa hated Man more than any beings on Earth.