Eon XXXVII – The Shattered Crown (Quaternary)

Time Frame: 2.6 million years ago – 10,000 years ago
Common Name: The Quaternary
Theme: Ice, migration, and the breaking of elder dominions as mankind rises through a world of glacial trial and fading wonders.

Key Events

• 2.6 million years ago: The Quaternary begins as the long age of ice takes hold and the world enters repeated cycles of glacial advance and retreat.
• Early Quaternary: Great beasts flourish across the cold world and its margins, including mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, giant deer, cave lions, giant sloths, glyptodonts, and other mighty forms.
• Early Quaternary: Falling seas expose land bridges, opening new roads for the migrations of beasts and peoples.
• Around 2 million years ago: The last Elder Thing civilizations continue their decline and retreat toward the far south and Antarctica.
• Around 1.9 million years ago: Upright man spreads more widely, masters more regular tool use, and learns the keeping of fire.
• Around 1.7 million years ago: Ithaqua appears in the far north, and the decline of the voormis begins.
• Around 1 million years ago: The Great Ice Age is deepened by the joined power of Ithaqua and Aphoom Zhah. Northern realms fail beneath cold, hunger, and war.
• Around 1 million to 750,000 years ago: Hyperborea, Lomar, and the polar civilizations break apart. The voormis are scattered, the Elder Things retreat deep below the earth, and the surviving peoples of the north are driven into exile, transformation, or ruin.
• Around 750,200 years ago: Eibon, greatest wizard of Hyperborea, lives in this age. After his disappearance, his works are gathered into the Book of Eibon.
• Around 500,000 years ago: True mankind arises in fuller strength. The earliest human kingdoms, including Nemedis, wage long war against the Dragon Kings.
• Around 500,000 years ago: The Dragon Kings are driven south. The serpent people form a new Valusia, while other remnants hide and wait.
• Around 200,000 years ago: Mu stands at its height beneath the worship of dark gods.
• 173,148–161,844 years ago: Ghatanothoa rises to supremacy in Mu, and the attempt to free Ythogtha destroys the realm.
• Around 110,000 years ago: The last great glacial age begins.
• 75,000 years ago: Toba erupts in a supervolcanic cataclysm, and the cold world deepens again.
• Around 50,000 years ago: Polar shifts, drownings, and migrations reshape the world. Lemuria and Atlantis lose lands to the sea.
• Around 33,000 years ago: Fey and human peoples enter a brief age of shared cultures.
• Around 24,000 years ago: The City of the Golden Gates sinks, and the old Atlantean order is broken.
• Around 20,000 years ago: Human kingdoms rise across the Thurian lands, and Valusia passes into human hands.
• Around 18,000 years ago: A Great Cataclysm destroys the old world and brings in the Hyborian Age.
• Around 11,700–10,000 years ago: The last great glacial phase ends. The ice withdraws, and the age closes with mankind poised to rise openly across the post-ice world.

Overview

Eon XXXVII was an age of breaking. The warmth and widening roads of the previous world gave way to cold, retreat, and trial. Ice advanced and withdrew across the earth in long recurring pulses, covering whole regions, lowering seas, and remaking coasts, rivers, plains, and migrations. The world did not freeze once and remain still. It breathed in frost and released it again, and with each great breath beasts, peoples, and powers were driven to movement, loss, adaptation, or ruin. This was the age in which elder crowns cracked and the long path of mankind hardened toward dominion.

The Quaternary was the great age of ice and of mighty beasts shaped to endure it. Mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, giant deer, cave lions, giant sloths, glyptodonts, and other colossal creatures flourished across the cold lands and their borders. In some regions, the old giants survived in thick-furred, broad-horned, or heavy-blooded forms fitted for tundra, steppe, mountain, and glacial margin. The earth was harsh, but not empty. It was full of grandeur sharpened by cold.

As the seas fell, lands once separated were joined. Bridges of earth appeared where waters had stood, and through them beasts and peoples crossed into new worlds. Migrations became one of the ruling laws of the age. Herds moved, predators followed, and men in time would walk roads first opened by frost. The Quaternary was therefore not only an age of cold, but an age of passage, when distance itself was rewritten by ice.

It was also the age in which many elder powers failed. The last Elder Thing civilizations declined further and withdrew toward the southernmost reaches and the hidden depths below the earth. In the north, the coming of Ithaqua, and later the joined power of Ithaqua and Aphoom Zhah, deepened the Great Ice Age and helped bring about the ruin of Hyperborea, Lomar, and other polar realms. The voormis were broken, scattered, or transformed, while northern kingdoms failed beneath cold, hunger, and invasion. What had endured from older worlds did not vanish at once, but much of it was driven into retreat, exile, or myth.

Yet even in collapse, these elder ages still burned fiercely. Eibon, greatest wizard of Hyperborea, belonged to this age, and from its ruin came the Book of Eibon. The Dragon Kings still contended with the rising strength of mankind. Mu stood in dark splendor beneath terrible gods, and Ghatanothoa rose to supremacy there before ruin answered ruin. Atlantis lost land to the sea, the City of the Golden Gates was swallowed, and the old Atlantean order was broken. Across the Quaternary, the remnants of elder civilizations did not merely fade. They fought, scattered, transformed, and left deep wounds in the shape of history.

This was also the age in which mankind ceased to be merely one rising line among many and became a force of consequence. Upright man spread more widely, learned steadier toolcraft, and mastered the keeping of fire. Later came true men in greater strength, founding kingdoms, warring against serpent dynasties and dragon bloodlines, seizing lands such as Valusia, and pressing ever closer to the center of the world’s story. The Quaternary does not yet belong wholly to man, but it is the age in which man becomes unavoidable.

Nor was this shaping driven by mankind alone. The Great Race of Yith still worked its strange exchanges across time and mind. The moon-beasts carried off the people of Sarkomand. The Deep One city of Yatta-uc stood in its strength beneath Lake Titicaca. Rhan-Tegoth came from Yuggoth to dwell in the Arctic until worship failed and stillness took him. Fey and human peoples entered a brief season of shared cultures before that closeness ended. Even in its late phases, the Quaternary remained a world in which many orders of being still acted openly, though the balance was tilting toward mortal history.

In its final movements, the age became one of converging endings. Great glacial severity returned. Toba darkened the sky with fire from the earth. Polar shifts, drownings, and cataclysms broke old lands and peoples. Lemuria and Atlantis lost still more to the sea. Then came the Great Cataclysm that destroyed the old world and opened the way to the Hyborian Age. By the time the last great glacial phase withdrew, the ancient order had been shattered beyond repair.

Eon XXXVII was therefore the Shattered Crown in full truth: the age in which ice broke the strength of elder dominions, migrations remade the earth, and mankind rose through hardship into historical power. The old world did not pass quietly. It broke in frost, flood, war, and memory. When the ice at last withdrew, the earth stood ready for the first open dawn of human time.