XIMENES HISTORY

XIMENES HISTORY



THE ANCIENT XIMENIANS

In the distant past, Ximenes was once a thriving part of a community of worlds connected by magical Gates, but known details of that civilizations is scanty at best due to the dearth of surviving records. Most civilization on Zimenes back then was concentrated on the Western Continent, with sparsely-populated colonies on the other continents and spread among the many islands of the Sundering Sea

THE GREAT SUNDERING

Approximately 1200 years ago, a cataclysm called the Great Sundering devastated the entire world and every known world beyond.  No one currently alive knows what it entailed exactly or what caused it.  It completely destroyed all civilization on the Western Continent, leaving only the scattered and scantily-populated colonies on the Sundering Sea and the Northern and Southern Continents more or less intact.

Any records containing the nature of the Sundering were destroyed in the wake of the disaster.  Those in the know at the time--including wizards, kings, elves, and others swore a sacred pact never to reveal what happened and killed themselves in a wave of suicides rather than let the truth be known about the Great Sundering.  No one knows why.

COLONIES BECOME KINGDOMS

In the centuries since, the surviving colonies adopted, expanded, and thrived in their new homes, becoming nations states of their own until they and their own daughter nations loosely filled the Northern and Southern Continents.  Even though most of the land is at least formally claimed, there are still huge swaths of unsettled wilderness on both continents, and hundreds of unsettled--and even undiscovered--islands in the Sundering Sea.

In the early centuries post-Sundering, race wars rocked the Northern Continent.  The human-dominated kingdoms forced many of the other races out of the central portions of the continent.  Elves mostly retreated north, while Halflings, Dwarves, and Gnomes retreated to the Southern Continent, in turn conquering the weaker and more sparsely-settled human kingdoms there at the time.  Orcs and Goblins and more minor races walled themselves up in many various wilderness enclaves, scattering very wildly.

In the centuries since, however, tensions between the races eased and eventually became much friendlier, as trade blossomed between the ever-more prosperous kingdoms.  Tensions still rise between racial groups occasionally, but are from the near genocidal levels of a thousand years ago.

THE GATES

About 500 years ago, a critical part of the ancient Ximenian culture was rediscovered--how to create large, stable, magical Gates to other worlds.  These are not other dimensional planes that wizards and such access, but rather seem to be other inhabited planets in the same universe as Ximenes.  The Guild of the Gates was formed to create and maintain these gates, and they very jealously guard their secrets.  The Gates take a vast amounts of time and magical resources to create.  Over the centuries only Eleven Worlds have been opened up and are currently part of the new fledgling community of kingdoms and cultures created by the Gates.

THE NEW WESTERN COLONIES

In just the last century, the more prosperous kingdoms of Ximenes have defied the long-held taboo against travelling to the Western Continent, and have established fledgling colonies there which they intend on slowly expanding.  They have discovered many mysterious ruins, some with powerful magic, from before the Great Sundering.  But rumors also abound of hideous horrors also lurking in the deepest depths of the continent.  Explorers and adventurers travel there in great number, hopeful to find great fortune, but many are simply swallowed up (some say literally) by the vast unknowns and are never seen again.

Some scattered communities of survivors have also been found there, many fairly primitive, but are very stand-offish toward the newcomers.  Some political and merchant interests from the other worlds, such as Tao and Animis, have also leased colonies on the Western Continent.