#eqia

[magic-is-something-we-create]

happy wbw!! seeing you do this again put a smile on my face, not gonna lie :) history in fantasy novels and worlds is always on my mind, so what are some of the well known historical events of the firebreathers world? (besides the eternal three effing everything up 1000 years prior to fb) how much of the history/culture of the other species is touched on in the book?

:D!! happy WBW to you too, Lila!!! im glad to be doing it again <3<3<3

also this got super long so i’m putting a read more in the middle :D

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Other than the Fall of Fahrial, there are a few historical references in Firebreathers, yes!

The most prominent ones outside of that tend to be in about other past Decays or Growths! If I remember correctly, the first mentioned is probably the Vocal Growth - which is the basis for their current calendar, fun fact! - which is what brought about a magical Common form of all languages, as well as introducing other linguistic magics (i.e. Calling) to the world. This was almost two full Cycles before Firebreathers (the year is ~3994 at the start), and was kind of known for being the first real opportunity for everyone everywhere to connect with people outside of their locality easily.

Another Growth that’s mentioned a lot was the Bloody Growth, which,,, is a bit of a scary name, fitting for the pretty scary magic brought with it. This was when humans were given Runic magic, and was the Growth before the Eternal Three!

Decays also have a lot of influence on the world and history, and as such, they tend to take a much bigger focus when the characters are in the areas that were affected. So, in Sieril, there’s a lot of reference to the Rillian Decay, which hit in the year 1000, and effectively reshaped Sieril from a prosperous, populated land, into one swarming with dangerous creatures and ruins of civilization. Even now, nearly 3000 years later, the Sharali are affected by the diseases introduced, and Sieril only has a few livable cities overall. (Veratrum has spearheaded aid efforts to help the Sharali during her reign, but due to the magical nature of a lot of the diseases, they’ve hardly made progress overall.)

Another Decay that’s brought up quite a bit is the one that happened before year 0 - I haven’t come up with a great name for it yet, but for now, I call it the Eqian Decay, after the continent it affected.

It’s a good idea here to note that there is no Eqia on the Ehlverse maps.

Now, between the eastern Maelands and Sieril, there’s a massive ocean that’s probably around the size of the Pacific, and Eqia used to be in that area, not terribly far from the Maelands, and ran from up near the southern reaches of Emarye, down beyond the far southern reaches of Deltierin.

[here’s the current map for reference]

[it would kind of look like a big gash across the upper right corner, and it would end down in the bottom left, and beyond the current map scale]

Eqia is where humans in the Ehlverse actually came from, though a few had made their way to the closest areas of the Maelands by the time the Decay struck. Which is good, because otherwise, there would be no more humans.

But it’s been so long since the Decay that there are very, very few surviving records of what Eqia was like. All we know is that thousands and thousands of years of human history is gone, as well as anything else that existed on the continent. Which, according to some of the scattered accounts, there were other entire empires and peoples that weren’t human. Gone with the continent, under the sea and mostly forgotten.

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;aslkdfj;sldfk i got really excited talking about the growths and decays, didn’t i? there are other historical references - mostly to people like activists, scholars, warriors, etc. that are important to the characters, but i do believe those are stories for another day! thank you so much again, lila <3<3<3