Buy me a coffeeEon XXXVII – The Shattered Crown (Quaternary)
Time Frame: 2.6 million years ago – 10,000 years ago
Theme: The fall of ancient dominions, the fading of gods, and the rise of mortal destiny amid glacial tides.
Overview
The Shattered Crown marks the twilight of the Elder Aeons. It is an age of reckoning, where time itself fractures under the weight of accumulated magic and prophecy. Once-mighty empires of dragons, fey, and aberrations crack under the pressure of internal rot and the surge of a new force: mortality unbound by divine command. Ice creeps across the world in waves, each glaciation a cleansing breath, a reset.
The auroras blaze with dying magics, and the stars shift, as if aligning to forgotten oaths. The gods fall silent or retreat into mystery. Time frays, causing echoes of futures and pasts to overlay. Great magical cities vanish overnight, pulled into demi-realms or lost across timelines. In the midst of this collapse, the inheritors rise: mortal-kind, clever, stubborn, unsponsored by any pantheon. This is the last age where titans walk the world.
Ecological Dominance
Beasts and Megafauna
Giant sloths, woolly mammoths, cave lions, and towering terror birds define the wilderness. Many are sacred or bonded to mortal clans. Their extinction is mourned in epic poems and soul-chants.
Avian and Beast Ascendancy
With the dragons nearly gone and many magical predators extinct, birds, wolves, and apes expand their dominion. Some show strange signs of awakening intellect or ancestral memory.
Aberrations in Retreat
Those spawned from the dream-realm and void—mind flayers, starborn entities, and fractal horrors—begin their slow collapse. Some burrow into the Hollow Earth or the Deep Night. Others are slain in climactic last wars.
Geography in Flux
Glacial Epochs
Four great ice ages sweep the world, advancing and retreating. These glaciations are not just climatic—they are magical pulses, woven from the death of leylines and the shattering of divine pacts. Each freeze buries cities of gold, temples of flame, and oceans of prophecy.
Continental Realignments
The continents near their present configuration. Old ley-paths collapse or realign. Former magical nexuses become unstable or inert.
The Cracking Sky
The sky grows thin. Celestial phenomena (such as the “Frost Comet” and “The Wound Star”) tear at the boundaries between realms. Falling stars are whispered to be angels cast out for betrayal.
Intelligent Cultures
Last Empires of the Elder Races
Surviving factions of fey, dragons, aberrants, and elementals make final stands. Most are ossified, over-proud, or corrupted. Some attempt to merge with younger species to preserve legacy.
Rise of Mortal Nations
Humanoids like dwarves, elves, orcs, kobolds, and goliaths flourish. Unbound by divine command or fey law, they found nations, invent early runic alphabets, and rediscover lost magics. They are not yet alone in the world—but they are no longer pawns.
The Pale Oracle Clans
Wandering mystic tribes who interpret the world’s dreams. They leave ice-carved stelae, half-song and half-warning.
The Hollow Keepers
Secretive protectors of buried relics and memory-vaults beneath the ice. Believed to be hybrid descendants of surface beings and deep dwellers.
Magic in This Age
Leyfall
Many ley lines rupture or fade. Magic becomes localized and wild. Some zones surge with residual power, while others become dead-magic wastelands. Ritual and mnemonic magic replaces broad spellcasting.
The Last Star-Fires
Fleeting celestial magic tied to constellations and comet paths. Star mages work miracles few understand and often burn out in the process.
Totemic and Blood-Bound Magic
Mortals forge pacts not with gods, but with ancestral spirits, beasts, and elemental memories. Bloodlines carry power, and bone-carved spells speak to the soul of the land.
Conflict & Harmony
The War of Frost and Flame
A centuries-long clash between the remnants of the fire-kin (elementals, red dragons, phoenix cults) and the glacial host (frost giants, white wyrms, and winter fey). This war reshapes continents and leaves the scars seen in present-day mountains.
The Pactfall Betrayals
Many ancient species break their ancestral oaths—to gods, dragons, or courts of fey. This leads to both enlightenment and chaos.
Emergence of Free Will
More than armies or cataclysms, the true revolution is mortal autonomy. Without divine destiny or mythic shackles, mortals begin to ask, “What if we choose our own purpose?”
Legacy of This Eon
The Shattered Crown is both end and beginning. The gods grow silent, the dragons sleep, the aberrations vanish into myth. Magic dims but becomes more intimate. In the wake of collapse, mortals find language, story, and self.
The fires of the next eon—and of recorded history—are kindled in the frostbitten ashes of this one.
Notable Creatures
- Frostblood Behemoth (Beast): An armored mammoth with glacial breath.
- Wendighast (Undead/Monstrosity): Spirits of the frozen lost, cannibalized by time and hunger.
- Skyshard Elemental (Elemental): Crystalline beings born from the Frost Comet’s fall.
- Totem-Walkers (Construct/Spirit): Sentient effigies animated by ancestral memory.
Sites of Power
- The Mirror Vault: A glacier cave filled with time-reflective ice. Events from past and future flicker across its surfaces.
- Citadel of the Last Ember: The final stronghold of the fire-kin, now buried in obsidian beneath the northern snows.
- Starfall Basin: A crater where a celestial being crashed, birthing strange flora and timeless melodies.
Eon XXXVII ends not in fire or flood, but in silence—a held breath before the first dawn of mortal time.