Ages of Ymir
The world known as Ymir has gone through many different changes over its several thousand years of history. Some parts of that history have been lost entirely, and some have become legend. Because the false gods of Empyrean have wiped the slate clean multiple times, periods of thousands of years between each Apocalypse are referred to as “Ages.”
The Vernert Age:
Before Empyrean discovered the planet of Ymir, a species of arthropods dominated the world. These creatures came to be known as the “vernert.” It’s unknown how long these creatures reigned over Ymir, or if they actually came from the planet or from some other place. Their constant contact with the raw, unrefined adonium of Ymir gave them all manner of strange abilities, including teleportation, time travel, and self-duplication. When Empyrean first decided to take the adonium for themselves, Admiral Montu wiped most of them out, driving the survivors deep underground and even across time itself.
The Robot Age:
Before the Genesis II Project and the official “First Age” of Ymir, Empyrean tried to employ robotic workers to mine adonium for them. This age was fairly short, as contact with raw adonium caused the robots to gain sapience, and they decided to keep the precious resource for themselves. Like the vernert before them, they were exterminated. Unlike the vernert, as far as Empyrean knows, there were no survivors. This age lasted only fifty years.
The First Age:
The Genesis II Project started the official First Age of the history of Ymir. At that time, Seth had not yet started the rebellion, and the fiends were divided up into several savage clans, which fought amongst themselves as much as with humans and archons. While the false gods oversaw the world overall, they appointed a king to rule the world on their behalf, an archon named Lugal. Lugal was a special kind of archon that has not been recreated since: a Titan. Through him, all the false gods spoke to the other archons, and through them they spoke to the common people.
It was in this time that the mysterious Cult of the One was formed, the true history of which has been lost to time.
During this first age, a man named Rossum created the first automatons, as well as a language by which he could communicate with them. There were also some fiends who gained masses of human followers, starting cults of their own. Eventually, Lugal himself decided he could do the same, and called upon those under his command to treat him as another member of the pantheon, before eventually declaring himself Enlil’s Heir. As the people of Ymir paid their tithes to him instead of to the gods of Empyrean, this led to the end of the First Age in another Apocalypse. The First Age lasted roughly 3,000 years.
The Second Age:
The first century of the Second Age saw the birth of Seth’s Rebellion. Disgusted by everything he saw at the end of the First Age, Seth decided that he could no longer take part in Empyrean’s wickedness. He gave sigils of power to six worthy fiend warlords, who became the kings and queens of fiendkind. It was during this age that he built Prometheus City in a secret location. Even those living there do not truly know where the city is, only how to get there.
The false gods of Emyprean decided that the best way to respond to this threat was to get the people of Ymir more personally invested in the conflict. They learned of a young man named Will who’d grown up in a farming village and had lost his family in a fiend attack. They sent an archon named Samesh to tell him that the gods had anointed him for the purpose of destroying all evil and bringing about an age of peace. For this purpose, Will took his plowshare to a smith to be turned into a sword, and Samesh imbued the blade with powerful enchantments. Little did Will know, he was not, in fact, to be the hero that Samesh told him he would be. Once he’d gained a great enough following, the Samesh delivered Will to the fiends to be killed.
With their hopes for a peaceful future dashed, the people of Ymir rose up in a holy war greater than anything the world had seen before. Millions of fiends, humans, and automatons fell in the battles that followed. This was when the Crusader, Ghaji, and Pandava orders began. For proving his loyalty through this plot, Samesh became known as Helios, and was appointed as Nyx’s Grand Archon.
A thousand years after the death of the first Anointed One, political turmoil swept the lands of Ymir. Nations and tribes fought each other over land and wealth. To unite the people and put a stop to these wars, the archons selected a young woman named Odelle as their “Scion.” They raised her up from the surface world to live in the heavenly cities for a time, before returning her to the surface with a promise that they would support her in a bid to become empress of all Ymir. With their help, she united Ymir for a time, but when this once lowly peasant woman gained a taste for power she became a tyrant.
By the time Empress Odelle saw her first gray hair, countless citizens of her empire had turned to the Rebellion. Within a few years, her empire crumbled, and the false gods of Ymir initiated another Apocalypse. The Second Age lasted around 4,000 years.
The Third Age:
Despite the false gods’ best efforts to destroy the Rebellion, Prometheus City and the six fiend kingdoms survived. The mere fact of the previous Apocalypse emboldened the Rebellion’s forces, but they knew they had to lay low until they had the best opportunity to strike. Most of their efforts to defeat the false gods were conducted in secret. They recruited whomever they could, rescuing people from Inquisition dungeons or slaver prisons.
In time, Seth revealed to those in the Rebellion a device called The Aegis: an invention he’d created which would protect the skies over Ymir and prevent the false gods from bombarding the planet from space. The problem was that the Aegis’ reach was relatively local. It could not protect the whole planet at once but could only shield certain areas. Thus, it became the mission of the Rebellion to convince the nations of Ymir to accept having an Aegis built in their lands to protect them from another Apocalypse.
A young king named Sulaiman, who frequently prayed to Anu for wisdom, worked with gifted enchanters to invent new ways to combat evil. In time, they created rings which could capture fiends within a red gemstone, allowing them to later be called out from those stones and forced to do the wearer’s bidding. With these enchanted rings, King Sulaiman’s armies conquered all of Ymir and destroyed the Aegis that had been erected in various nations. At the height of his power, the Rebellion forces rarely left their homes, and King Sulaiman was the richest king who ever lived. In time, the people of Ymir began to give all the adonium they mined to this new protector rather than to the temples.
All this wealth and power caused hubris to grow in Sulaiman’s heart, and he declared himself the Son of Anu, a demi-god. The Grand Archon of Anu went to confront him about this lie, and Sulaiman responded, “I have brought peace and prosperity to all of Ymir. Through my wit and wisdom, I have defeated all evil. Not even the gods have managed that. If I am not a demi-god, then I am something more.”
As they had done many times before, the false gods caused another Apocalypse. Legions of archons waged war on King Sulaiman’s kingdom. Seth managed to protect a few regions with the Aegis, but everything else was destroyed when the false gods bombarded the planet from space. The Third Age lasted for 1,000 years.
The Fourth Age:
The events of the book “Apostate Prophecy” take place in the Fourth Age of Ymir. In this age, there have been many people gifted with the ability to see the future. These seers are hunted as blasphemers and heretics, but many have found refuge among the Rebellion. Seth has improved the Aegis, causing it to shield more area from bombardment, and the Rebellion has been growing once again. The gods have once again chosen an Anointed One, as they did with Will so long ago.
