Buy me a coffeeEon XXXVIII – The Dawning Age (Holocene)
Time Frame: 10,000 years ago – Present
Theme: The rise of mortal civilization from myth and ruin; the forging of cultures, gods, and nations from dreamstuff and dust.
Overview
The world exhales. The last of the great glaciers recede, peeling back from the continents like torn veils. The silence of the Shattered Crown gives way to birdsong, to the crackle of fire in hearths, and to the tentative pulse of civilization. Mortals, once prey and plaything to titanic powers, now rise to shape the world in their own image. From icebound valleys and drowned lands emerge the first villages, the first fires guarded not by dragons but by hands calloused from soil and stone.
In this fragile beginning, the dreams of gods and mortals intertwine. The stars shift to new patterns; the winds carry the scent of tilled earth and bone incense. Stone tools become relics and symbols of power. The gods are reborn in mortal likeness, crafted anew in the image of longing and fire. Magic lingers in the land, quiet but vital. Heroes walk barefoot, carrying legends on their backs. Language grows teeth, and time begins to remember names. From this Age come the seeds of all that is to follow: kingdoms, faiths, songs, and sorrows.
Ecological Dominance
Domesticated Beasts
The great megafauna of past eons dwindle, their spirits entering story. Wolves become dogs, partners in hunt and hearth. Crops are cultivated with ritual chants and offerings. Beasts once feared are now bred, honored, and consumed. Some still carry magical blood, and among early clans, beasts are kin. The Oxen of Dawn, swine of the moon, and sun-cows that bleed gold milk are kept in sacred herds, invoked in seasonal prayers.
Echoes of Titans
Rare sightings of the Last Mammoth or the Moonfang Cat become pilgrimages. Some are guardians of lost sites or bearers of ancient oaths. Their extinction is not absolute—it is chosen. In remote lands, druids whisper of Pale Lords—beasts who can speak and remember the Ice, who weep amber tears for fallen kin.
Awakening of Birds and Apes
Avian and simian intelligences stir. In hidden valleys, flocks murmur in language-dreams. A forgotten cliffside is said to be carved by a tribe of crow-scribes who remember the stars. Apes mimic ancient rituals, paint their bodies, and carry fire between tribes. Some claim they dream in glyphs and might one day shape myth.
Geography in Flux
Meltwaters and Sacred Rivers
As the ice retreats, mighty rivers carve new veins through the land. These rivers are not only sources of life but of vision. Seers drink from them to dream of future cities. The Nile, the Ganges, and the Yuna are each said to flow from wells sunk by star-serpents in the Elder Aeons.
Flooded Realms
Atlantis, Ys, Lemuria—mythic islands sink beneath the waves, not lost, but hidden. Survivors scatter, bearing relics and strange customs to nascent cultures. Coral-temples lie deep beneath modern coasts, still glowing with eldritch sigils. Sailors speak of tide-bound mirrors that show ages not yet born.
Rise of the Henges
Great stone circles are erected atop leyline knots. These become calendars, temples, and convergence points for weather-witchcraft, star divination, and ancestral communion. Some henges are built over elder ruins; others are grown from enchanted stone-seeds that bloom each solstice. Each is a monument to memory and motion.
Intelligent Cultures
The Hearth Tribes
These are the first agricultural societies. They worship hearth spirits, ancestor-flames, and the wisdom of stone. Each tribe has a spoken name and a true sung name. They gather in roundhouses built around sacred fires, passing down spells as lullabies and recipes. Kinship is defined not only by blood but by shared dreams.
The Relic-Binders
Scattered enclaves of arcane savants and salvagers, they seek to understand the fragmented artifacts and scrolls left from the Elder Aeons. Most are secretive. Some worship the artifacts themselves. They are the first historians, and the first heretics. Their maps are etched in bone and starlight.
The Dream-Seers
Descendants of Pale Oracle Clans, they speak in dreams and glyphs. They migrate with star patterns and chart fate in bone and wind. Some claim to have mapped all time. Others go mad upon glimpsing the past lives of mountains. They are midwives of prophecy and recorders of omens.
The First Cities
Forged around magical fonts, meteor craters, or buried titans. Each city develops its own magical script, legal code, and elemental totem. Some become the basis for entire future cultures. Walls are painted in pigment and prophecy, and towers hum with echo-magic. Their markets sell memory and shadow.
The Silent Orders
Groups of oath-bound monks and warriors who protect sacred knowledge and guard against the return of the old horrors. They do not speak but may sing battle-chants that awaken ancestral beasts. Some have tongues of bronze hidden behind veils.
Dwarves and Gnomes
Burrowed into sacred hills and underworld veins, these sturdy kin are master artisans, rune-shapers, and secret keepers. They craft wonders from stone and metal, whisper to the bones of the earth, and guard vaults of pre-Dawning lore. Their songs are deep and old, echoing the hammerbeat of creation.
Elder Kin (Elves, Fey-touched)
Fading yet potent, they dwell in liminal spaces—fogbound forests, twilight groves, and ruins of the Flowering World. They engage with mortals through riddles, pacts, and omens, shaping early poetic traditions and magical rituals.
Scaled Remnants (Draconic Lineages, Lizardfolk)
Survivors of draconic bloodlines or descendants of titanic reptiles, they dwell in sunken valleys or steamy wetlands. Revered or feared, they carry knowledge of the Deep Time and wield elemental magics tied to bone and scale.
Skykind (Aarakocra, Cloudborn Fey)
Whispered of in mountaintop myths, they descend during eclipses or solstices. Bearers of forgotten celestial scripts and messengers of storm-gods, they often appear in the earliest stelae and tower murals.
Magic in This Age
Ritual Magic and Symbol
Magic is deeply tied to rhythm, repetition, and symbolism. Tattoos, chants, cairns, and woven charms carry power. Every act of daily life may be a quiet spell. A mother’s lullaby might still the wind; a fisherman’s net woven under a full moon catches dream-fish. Memory is the mortar of magic.
Stone and Spirit
Some stones remember. These Memory Stones serve as libraries and oracles. Spirit-bound stones act as tribal advisors or keepers of oaths. Wanderers may hear voices in cairns built of lost bones. Some stones weep when touched by truth.
Hero-Magic
Deeds define reality. To slay a frost-beast or climb the Singing Peak may grant a mortal new magical gifts. Names become spells, and tales are a kind of enchantment. Weapons may awaken to songs sung over generations. A well-told story might stop a war.
Seasonal Witchcraft
Magic flows with the turning of the year. Harvest rites, equinox trials, and winter feasts bring latent powers into bloom. Some hedge-witches channel entire seasons, their hair turning green or white with power. Their gardens bloom with sentient herbs.
Conflict & Harmony
The Fire and the Field
Some tribes cling to the way of fire—the nomadic, hunter-warrior path. Others settle into the field, seeking peace and rhythm with the land. Conflict between these philosophies shapes early lore. Some believe the world must be fed to the fire; others that it must be planted. Blood fertilizes both paths.
Rise of Ancestor-Gods
As memory deepens and stories persist, certain revered ancestors become proto-deities. Some are benign. Others demand tribute or shape laws through dream-command. Shrines grow around burial mounds where bones whisper. Entire lineages are built on the favor of the dreaming dead.
The Naming Wars
As language spreads and diversifies, wars are waged over sacred words. The True Name of a river, mountain, or relic can grant dominion. Scribes and bards become warriors. Entire tribes vanish after their tongue is stolen. Some names become curses; others, gates.
The Echo Rebellions
Rebellions of spirit-born children against the elder totems. These visionaries break tradition to found new paths—early schools of alchemy, shadow-craft, or dream-forging. Some are branded heretics. Others become gods. Their songs defy age.
Legacy of This Eon
From the Dawning Age come the roots of history, myth, and language. The gods of tomorrow are born in the dreams of this age. Mortals move from surviving to thriving, and the world becomes legible, nameable, ownable. The first libraries are bones and firewood. The first temples are shadows and story.
The Dawning Age does not end with silence or flame but the whisper of a new question echoing across rising cities: What will we become?
And in the corners of the land, buried in henge-shadow and silted ruin, remnants of elder magics slumber, waiting to be found.
Notable Creatures
- Sunhorn Elk (Beast/Celestial): A golden-antlered deer seen only during solstice. Said to bear messages from the sky.
- Stone-Sung Serpent (Monstrosity): Dwells beneath ancient barrows. Its voice carves spirals into rock.
- Harvest Wight (Undead/Spirit): The soul of a mistreated field, risen to guard the land in spectral rage.
- Ley-Rook (Construct/Elemental): Guardians of henge-sites, shaped like massive avian statues powered by geomancy.
- Echo-Hare (Fey): A long-eared trickster that speaks with the voices of lost children and guides pilgrims to forgotten sites.
Sites of Power
- The Singing Peak: A mountain that hums with ancestral harmonies. Climbing it grants visions.
- The First Flame: An eternal fire kindled from the breath of a dying fire-elemental.
- Stone-Eye Vale: A circular field of standing stones, each aligned with a star or god-name.
- The Riverborn Codex: A floating script that appears once a generation on the surface of a sacred lake. Reading it binds a soul to prophecy.