There have been a few people to ask or question the history of Dominion so I sat down this week and formulated a historic time line with rough years and era names. I hope this helps everyone to kind of understand that Dominion is a newer city in the timeline and what led up to this point in the roleplay! [hider=CHRONICLES OF DOMINION] [b]CHRONICLES OF DOMINION[/b] [hr] [color=808080] There is no understanding of why people went underground though people can speculate that an unnatural disaster happens, and the most common thing brought up in Dominion history is nuclear warfare. However, there is emphasis that it could have been any unnatural or natural phenomenon that was threatening to end humanity and going underground was the only way to avoid extinction. [hr] In the beginning of the descent, there is no knowledge or official history of those times, and everything that is to do with the beginning is called “The Lost Age” because there is no hardcore evidence or facts. After this period everything begins to unravel the centuries of history that the people have gone through to get to where they are in modern Dominion. The only thing that Dominion society has of that day was the reliance of oral tradition and ancient scribbles on the stone of cave walls. Being able to decipher the language was difficult at first though it translates to something along the lines of “The Sky Turned,” which doesn’t give anyone much of anything to go off from. These engraves on cave walls are ancient and no one in Dominion was alive when there was access to these ancient sites. [hr] There is an assumption that there was about 150 years between coming from the surface and when records of people started living but there is no certainty. An era that lasted almost 300 years has been referenced as the “Suffering Era” because of all the evidence that shows mass death from the people that came from the surface. During these three hundred years, light sources were sacred and only leaders had access to something called glowmoss and other bioluminescent fungi. Groups were beginning to focus on the fauna and flora underground and began agricultural techniques to keep these items abundant in their supplies. However, the beginnings of fully understanding the circumstances were slow and most people seemed to die out because of famine, disease, and chaos. [hr] During the next step into history, this was when people grouped up and began to go their own ways to what they thought was best. This period is referred to as the “Fragmentation Era” because there seemed to be a lot of disputes and issues during this time that caused people to go their separate ways. Amongst the fragmentation of society in that day, there are known to be 15 official groups that spanned out underground to do their own thing with 3 major groups participating in trade with the rest. All these groups seemed to develop unique technology, techniques, and culture – from evidence it appears that some focused-on steam, others harnessed geothermal energy or went with domesticating glowing fauna and flora. What is considered a dead language today was used up until these points and there is evidence to show how language emerged today – the different groups were slowly losing the language of the surface and began to merge into a strange dialect in each ancient society. [hr] A handful of decades after the range of the Fragmentation Era the city of Stone began to be documented, and it was a subterranean city state that was ruled by dynasties. Another major point was the flourishing writings about religion that showed “The Above” which is to reference the surface became a realm of demons and angels while “The Below” was a sacred and nurturing place – something safe. During this time, ancient machinery was found amongst other things, and the referencing of “First Worlders” was used heavily and questions of people from the surface or the above started to show a twisted reality of being sky gods. Exploration was beginning a giant thing in society and people were venturing deeper into the ground where vast caverns, fossilized forests, and other findings were successful steps into the future. It is unknown how long this city lasted though it is believed that the City of Stone was functionally running for roughly 500 years before the rebellion happened. There was a 45-year rebellion that was heavily documented in a variety of perspectives and the majority of what is known is that the rebellion was called “Illumination” and the people of this group focused on bringing light to the people in the city and knowledge. Opposing the dynasties rule. Near the end of the rebellion, the City of Stone fell, and democratic communities briefly rose and a common phrase began to show up in a lot of educational documents to personal journals – [i]”We must remember forward.”[/i] [hr] Sometime after the rebellion, there wasn’t much documentation for about 60 years, and the first major documentation after this period of silence was talking about an unexplainable geological event known as the Stone-quake which caused a ton of networks to collapse and be lost forever. There was a lot of loss, knowledge, technology, people, fauna, flora, and more. This was the beginning of a second dark age referred to as the Silence Age. There is a variety of personal journal entries that can be found over the next 100 years which is believed to be how long the Silent Age lasted. [hr] A new era came to place called the “Rebirth of Below” and it showed that survivors of the Stone-quake were reclaiming lost knowledge and resources. Steam engines became a very common thing during this time. Different trade routes were discovered and created. A talk about mole caravans (gigantic digging creatures) and cave-skimmers (machines) were used to reclaim trade routes. Languages continued to morph and a main language that looks like Modern day Dominion was created and used vastly though modern-day individuals have no idea what it says unless translated. The surface began to be a large topic during this time, questions of whether it was cursed or okay to go up, and plenty of other discussions about going higher or lower for the sake of society were done during this time. During this time, a hidden library of stone which is referred to as “The Vault of Dawn” was uncovered. There were plenty of professional and private writings, packaged seeds (known and unknown), full skeletons of creatures that were unknown (some small to others being as big as whales), maps of caverns, and plenty of other resources to help society to move forward. Religion began to appear again, groups were worshiping “The Above” again. This influenced expeditions to the surface though there was never an uncovering of the surface. However, plenty of other things were found such as man-made tunnels (sewers), shafts with chains and squishy wires (elevators), and fossilized creatures. There were reports of people seeing some type of light coming from cracks in the ceiling. Others referenced this as a hallucination and a sickness called “Sky madness”. People who had seen these “lights” were being treated negatively. [hr] The period of undesirable tension began and individuals who were content with life were beginning to find tension between the cults that worshiped the surface. These individuals were called “Children of the rift” and influenced expeditions to the surface where man made home-like things (vaults) were discovered. Some of these things had writing on the wall in a variety of substances (coal, blood, ink) that said [i]”This is not a test,” and “Please help!”[/i] or plenty of other phrases that struck fear into the people of this time. This caused uproars and most of society moved deeper into the earth. Societal influence caused people to be ashamed of thinking about going to the surface. People were referencing “Sky Madness” again and institutions opened to help people with over reactive fantasies about the surface. And during this time, the first documented mention of “The Cult of Darkness” started though there is not much written except quick statements – some good, some bad, and most neutral. People referred to this cult as an “over correction” because of the surface cults. Another breakthrough was the discovery of “other humans” and how the majority of these “other humans” looked similar though they were able to do things normal humans could not. These tribes/groups were starting to be studied during this time. [hr] Dominion was a city that was created after a large population went deeper into the surface after another terrible occurrence though this was not a natural phenomenon but references of “giant” creatures that were long and terrifying began to disrupt the known cities of the time. This was about 300 years old. There aren’t any other cities that are known to be functioning though no major expeditions continued after a continuation of running into these gigantic worm-like things called “tunnelers”. People began to focus on Dominion which was called “Junction” at the time and started out as a resource harvesting establishment before growing into a foundational city which is now known as Khia. About 70 years after Khia began and it being upgraded, Qona was discovered, and with the discovery of Qona – advancements started to speed up – which is where Slia began to be established about 20 years later. All of these “cities” were being continuously upgraded and improved which allowed the creation of Esille to come into play about 50 years later. During these times, “Emperors” and “Empresses” were the leaders of Dominion. A single emperor ruled with an empress until about 100 years ago. The last to rule under this governmental foundation was Empress Heavalyn who was murdered, and nothing came out of the investigations. This caused the government of Dominion to change into a council because people feared what could happen if they stepped up to rule. Too many threats and not enough societal support allowed the council to continue into what is known today. There was about 20 years of “false leadership” that happened and once a council was officially established laws were becoming formed to protect people in society and to protect Dominion as a whole. One of the first strict laws happened about 30 years ago when Burrowers were officially not categorized as “people” and moved into a class of “subhuman” and were kicked out of society. [/color] [/hider]