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Time of the Green Paths (before Nakreha)
This knowledge is considered RARE or even HIDDEN. It is not referenced by available texts of the Modern Age of the Steel Realms.
The Druunad refer to this as the “Age of Grass” and their enemies, the Amenti-Epyp, refer to as “The Sun’s Eye”. The Druunad used a form of record keeping that is lost, once once they had a recorded history, created what is commonly referred to now as ‘Dragon Year’. After this time was The Nakrehan Age.
Ages of Skies and Mountain
For perhaps a billion years the planet developed and evolved. Species came and went, climates changed, a few terra-norm catastrophes and ice ages happened and the usual mass extinctions went with it. Carbon life thrived though, and soon mammals began to ascend. The Druunad were one of them that eventually adapted (from 4 legged to 2 legged with hands) to the lands that jutted above the seas. As the water receded and polar caps became bigger, they eventually moved into the grasslands as hunter-gatherers and soon began to domesticate animals and plants. The Druunad had discovered a few great spirits that could be communicated with, empowered by the Equitus and dragon dreams. Elemental powers that gave them insight into the world around them and accelerated their own scientific understanding.
The Age of Grass
The Druunad estimate that it took them only 100,000 years to achieve a high civilization once they had finally evolved into the modern Drunnae-Gaet form. They were the first sentient race of Helca, though their adversaries were close behind them. They eventually would come to understand that their trajectory was short, and that the Equitus crystals had something to do with it. Despite their eventual ascendancy of intellect, they could not discover how (if at all) the influence of the dreams of dragons fell upon them – only that once discovered, the Druunad never felt afraid of them or viewed them as threatening.
Dragon Discovery
The Druunad eventually discovered many of the dragons sleeping and growing on Helca. This was a stone age culture. Once they woke the first few dragons and interacted with them, their cultural advancement accelerated. To the dragons, the Druunad had been evolved to wake them and perhaps slowly take their place as guardians.
Time Reckoning: Dragon Year the (initially “Dracnois Bh’lain”) was named for their discovery of the dragons sleeping inside of Helca and their gift of of reckoning by ‘solar time’.
Sensed by the Olde Ones
Once the dragons dreams were interrupted, the Olde Ones eventually sensed the vortex of order. The dragons were too young (in unnatural dream stasis for too long) to be able to sense this until it was too late. Their powers have developed through dreams, but their senses were too bound to the planet because of their long sleep. This binding would cause the dragons not to be able to remains truly awake for long, it would take many millennium to shake off the dream-fog.
Rise of the Druunad
Shepherded Humans: The Faelen of Helca were behind the other races, developing as a modern homo-sapiens Nakrehan. For hundreds of thousands of years the Druunad do their best to protect them – at least those on the plateau itself as their magics are amplified by the awakened Helca there. It is easy, because they were isolated to the high Na’chraen Plateau. The Druunad had kept a close eye on the plateau and stayed away from direct interaction, hoping that they would develop safely on their own and become partners in shepherding the world. They would often create confusing mists or used other means to lead those that came off the plateau, back to it.
The Golden Age: The Druunad watch as the Nakrehan people rise. They are spark-powerful and once they come into conflict with the Amenti-Epyp, the Druunad enables them to survive their wrath. With the combined might of the Druunad and Faelen Nakrehan peoples, there is a relative peace with their enemies and a long age of stability reigned. The Druunad began their secretive habits as they went into an industrial age in the northern reaches. They kept borderlands and trade to the level of technology the Nakrehan peoples were at. Their civilization evolved swiftly and iteratively, with their emotional and cultural sensibilities keeping up with their technological capability – there was no deep gulfs between their cultures or warfare on any large level.
Into the Beyond: They became a space faring species at one point, it altered their DNA. They settled a few distant planets, but eventually came to believe that there was no biological drive worth disrupting the evolution of other systems. At one point in their history, they were master gene manipulators. They encountered the Imperium in early days, saw the havoc wrought by orks. They knew that they would come, or some other race would. The chaos of the clash of species was another reason they retreated back to Helca. It was too late though, their rise and retreat had been finally directly observed by the Olde Ones.
A Message Sent: A massive comet is hurled from the depths of the galaxy at Helca. There is nothing that can be done, it is imbued with the chaos of The Olde Ones to counter the Equitus order of Helca.
The Diaspora and Safekeeping
The diaspora was a moment in time when a massive comet strike threatened the entire planet with extinction. At this point, it was a golden age of collaboration, with populations not warring or growing too swiftly. The “Look Away” is what it was called, because it was as if the cosmic justice had looked away and were no longer protecting them. A group of each species was gathered, all of them younglings with the strongest of Merovin sparks, and sent out into the cosmos with the Druunad as a means of the species surviving .
The Olde Ones Strike: The comet struck and Helca was nearly ruined. All three species survived, but it became survival battle of competition. Recorded history was gone. Civilizations were gone. Helca Was left alone for billions or more years, as the Greate Ones, ashamed of failing in their vigil, made sure no such event ever took place again. The Amenti Epyp crawled into the bowels of the earth and survived there barely, their civilization declining and becoming primitive once again. The dragons, wrapped in their bubbles of dreams and mostly immune to the physical affects of such calamities at this point, slept blissfully through what appeared to be a natural phenomenon to their dreaming brains.
The Return
The spaceships returned without any hand, after they sensed the worst had been repaired. The order of Helca itself assisted in speeding this up – only a hundred thousand years in stasis for the survivors. The ships returned, as planned, and deposited their “seeds” back upon the the world to restart their efforts. The ships themselves were “purged” as a means forcing the races to have an even footing and be cooperative.
Flare among the Stars: The strike had been seen in many directions. An Aelfpath had begun for form in the chaos and dreams of the dragons. Other species began to attend to investigating in very, very small numbers.
The heart of their culture was the hills of the headwaters of the Nanford River in the Vale of Dunstrand (before it was named that). Their population spread beyond that, but that was its center. They cultivate craggy gardens and live in high valleys, gully’s, shallow caves and overhangs – places where it is cooler and even temperature. They had records of their species and some let over technology that began to fail over time. The records were recorded in more permanent mediums, but the Druunad truly sought to distance themselves from their past and whatever had caused their first decline from a space faring species. However, this returned them to their secretive ways, and they became insular (though not xenophobic), maintaining a population at slow growth. The Nakrehan peoples swiftly forgot the past and began fresh, rapidly populating the south.
The Olde Ones Come: In their apathy, the Druunad missed it; It was the dragons that finally spotted the Efyori Gas Cloud as it drew closer through space hundreds of light years away. A few awoke to consult with the Druunad to protect. They explained the Olde Ones to the Druunad. Those few aged, and flew to the stars to ascertain the power of the entity and were killed. This sent shockwaves through the Druunad and they began to look for ways to protect Helca.
The Opening of the Eye
World Waking The Druunad, using their own unnatural insight and knowledge from the dragons of Helca, tapped into the massive deposits of Equitus and “woke” the world. Helca is based on a sound the world gives to itself. The planet has intellect and self-awareness. It manifests in different ways, but commoners swear that the northern lights have a shimmering woman’s face in them, and that whispers of the bounty of the coming year can be heard in her voice on the winds. Helca woken, altered the Equitus, like changing its own DNA, and the entire planet has achieved a level of consciousness that extends beyond the solar system. It sensed the Olde One bent on destroying it, and sent a cosmic wind from the sun to keep back the massive gas cloud in which it manifested, that approached. It locked down itself, preventing other races from coming and stirred the spirits that the Druunad had venerated, amplifying them in its own image.
The Second Decline
Now, they are surviving on the fringes of the surface with their natural camouflage skills and simplistic lifestyles and needs.
The Green Empty (The end of Green Paths)
So horrific was the event that ended the age of the Green Paths that is was carved out from all records and removed from the collective consciousness of every species. So calamitous all records of this time were lost. So great was the devastation that it blighted the entire planet. All races, lead by the Aelves, gave of their life Essence in order to save it. This gap in memory is referred to as “The Green Empty”. The spirits of the dead do not even remember it, such was it’s cosmic malevolence.
Barule: There is only one whispered name associated with this time – “Barule”. Enough has been reconstructed over time to gather Barule is part of the Baru Lille Gofna – ‘Exiled of the Betrayers’. Other than this, nothing else is known to be associated with this tragic ending. This is known to be mention in Keys to the Outer Doors of the famed Rastillion’s Diabolique.
Eye of Horus/Eye of Helca
The Celestials of Earth would find Helca through their powers. Though distant, it became a goal of those in control of their vision to leave the coming anarchy they sensed on earth. They knew if their legacy and plan were to see fruition, there was a means to make it happen in another place and time – to raise up their brethren as they had discovered the way in themselves.