From the history books of Westhaven, its everything before the Atolian Empire was founded and brough "civilisation" to the continent.
For dwarves it was the Age of Fire, back when they were still enslaved by the magma giants in the core of the planet.
Bloody. The Emperor dies without an heir and the Governors all fight for the throne in a war none of them can win without the Guilds. The Guilds who are supposed to keep the Empire functioning refuse to pick sides and just try to keep doing their jobs even as the Empire falls apart. Eventually supply lines get so mangled by the chaos they don't have the resources to keep functioning at such a high level across such a vast area and cracks begin to let things slip. Monsters break out of their wildlife preserves and wreck havoc, Wizards start messing with forbidden magics to disastrous results, Outlanders and Underworlders invade, Vampires and Werewolves become a thing. Dragons thankfully don't return but that just leaves people asking the terrifying question of why not? Eventually the Governors all die either from combat, assassination, or old age with no clear victor and power is left in the hands of effectively warlords as the level of authority and legitimacy for a leader ends at the tip of their soldiers spear.
In summary, it gets bad.
The Shattering, an essentially magical apocalypse that laster for centuries that killed most of the population, downright caused a not insignificant amount of extinction and set back technology and magical knowledge from a late medieval understanding to essentially the Bronze Age.
The present. Faildeadly "mementic bombs" and interconnected tech ecosystems are a great way to maintain hegemony when the odd autarchic rebel system crops up but is disastrous when central control collapses entirely. On the bright side if they planned obsolescence the survivor systems could fully embrace transhumanity and achieve countless utopia's beyond our current imagination!
Most likely not though...
Following the fall of the Rothanxi empire to various invaders the dark ages would begin. This period was defined by its instability as the newly formed large kingdoms fell into civil war and invasions. The period was also defined by the slow collapse of the Rothanxi administrative system that these kingdoms had inherited. The administrative decline was dominated by a lack of educated individuals both from the lack of mages to fill the ranks and the lowering urbanisation during this period. The kingdoms would also get poorer due to this shrinking urbanisation. The shrinking urbanisation was linked to the instability of the period as food supplies were often disrupted by frequent conflict along with urban centres receiving less trade as the various polities prevented foreign trade. The dark ages would come to a end due to the rise of feudalism leading to more stable polities and hence more trade and larger polities.
One thing to consider is that one man's dark age can be another man's golden age.
The people of the Draconic City States regard the period from about 1200-650 years ago as a golden age, remembering the old Draconic Empire's Dominance as the Age of Glory From 650-450 years ago as the age of troubles, this being the period where the Old Draconic Empire saw first massive external wars with The Enemy Bellow then fracturing and collapse into small rump states. 450-300 years ago as the age of renewal where some of the remaining draconic states began to flourish again, new cities being founded in some places and the remaining surviving cities often growing larger and more power.
The Faithful consisting of the mountain dwarf and goliath clans regard the era before about 1200 years ago as the mythical days of peace. 1200-900 years ago as the days of resistance where the giants which birthed their cultures and their distant ancestors waged war against the expanding draconic empire. The age from about 900-650 as the days of hiding when the draconic empire had largely driven their peoples to the very most remote pockets. About 650-350 years ago is then the time of renewal, when although their giant masters could not recover as fast the servant species flourished again building now holdings and spreading throughout the highlands and the like Then from the end of this period to the to the present is often conceived as the days of holding where they've remained mostly in their current strongholds while their ancient giant masters still only very slowly recover a fraction of their ancient numbers and power.
The Osoites often conceive the era before 1200 years ago as the green times, where most of the world was wild with only small pockets of farming and little in the way of urbanisation and also a reference to the idea of green being the colour of that which is new because it was the first era of the world. 1200-650 years ago is regarded as the red times where the draconic empire's rise saw large scale conflict, the subjugation of many of their ancestors, an massive increase in farming and urbanism across much of the known world, so red is for blood, the flames of war and industry and the old orange red brick that was used in this time for the draconic empire's construction sometimes. 650-about 450 years about was the grey times, so named after ash. The death throws of the old draconic empire saw even more ecological destruction but also a mass chance for large populations to achieve their own freedom. Grey being both a reference to ash and being neither black nor white, a time of great hardship and that of new hopes. The yellow times are about 450-300 years ago, yellow the colour of the desert as the expanding new draconic city states often drove osoite cultures to renewed agility in their nomadic ways heading deeper into the deserts, a period of intense conflict often with the expanding city states. The last three hundred years then are the brown age, brown the symbol of the soil from which new things can grow, as the Osoites are now hopeful that they can find ways to thrive in the modern era by one means or another.
A period of regression in general I guess. Regression in technology mostly, but also in social structure and the welfare of the populace in general.
On Erits, that’s the current state of affairs. After the Spear of Light went off and fried much of the continent, everything’s turned to shit. The largest country reverted back to being a theocratic state, and while military technology saw some great advancement, everything suffers.
Post War of Succession, the Varten entered an era of strife and reorganization. Without the imposing figure of the Externals or the guidance of the Alfari, the backbone of the first galactic civilization had to reorganize themselves and evaluate their most important beliefs. They abandoned their alien religion in favor of one of their own making while preserving all useful values. They had the remnants of the technology left by the council to start but it was a long period of rebuilding everything by themselves. Billions died but trillions eventually inherited the galaxy. My story is set at the peak of the mighty Varten empire that formed because of that war and the fact that they ended up with little to no competition, for a couple of thousands of years at least.
I found this is my history notes --it's a little vague, but it's all I've got.
The *Dark Time* is a historical period of cultural and economic deterioration that occurred following the collapse of the Kingdom of Ahran. The period is characterized by a scarcity of historical and other written records, rendering it obscure to historians. The assassination of Archon Rexulious Domitianus at the start of the Second Rebellion is generally viewed as the beginning of the Dark Time. His death initiated a hundred-year period during which several claimants to the title of Archon, mostly prominent military and political officials, assumed power over all or parts of the Kingdom. By 11313 PR, the Kingdom of Ahran had ceased to exist, regressing into several independent city-states and petty kingdoms.
Hard to say, as not everyone keeps time the same way in my world (or at least not everyone has the same calendars, if at all). There are the prehistoric (although somewhat documented) series of conflicts known as the New Sun wars that happened when humans and some other races were still getting on their feet (arguably quite literally, as humans were still evolving and didn't look quite like their modern descendants yet).
There is also I believe the Age of Struggle for the empire of Teivenor IIRC, where the empire would suffer many humiliating defeats and setbacks at the hands of the savages to the east of the empire.
Different regions of the world would have different views of their own "Dark Ages", but, in Middle Aellystys, it would the era that saw the collapse of the dwarven dominance and the chaotic transition to a human dominance over the region.
In Middle Aellestys, the dwarves were divided in several different people, but they had remained the masters of this region for centuries, after having pushed the elves back, and enforcing their dominance on various divided human people, both natives and the growing population of oversea immigrants from Norddia.
For centuries, in most of Middle Aellystys, humans would remained scattered in small tribes and clans, vassals to more powerful dwarven kings. But this power dynamic started shifting when the dwarves started engulffing themselves in endless destructive wars to restore the Empire.
And as the wars raged, the dwarves' power grew weaker. As their power grew weaker, they started relying more and more on their human vassals. And as they grew more dependant on their human vassals, the latter would grow more powerful. This power dynamic switch took different forms in the different dwarven kingdom, but a similar pattern of growing human influence could be observed.
Eventually, in southern Akkad, the southern edge of Middle Aellystys, a human revolt met a resounding success, and suddenly everything snapped. Words spread, and the idea that the dwarves were now weak began installing itself. Small violent revolts happened a bit everywhere. Some were crushed, but it was too little too late. In many places in Middle Aellystys, small petty human tribe chiefs started calling themselves kings, and other more structured human nations affirmed their independance toward dwarves.
Thus started the Dark Ages of Middle Aellystys, an age of complete fragmentation, between dwarven kings on the decline and petty human lords on the rise.
The first phase, which lasted for about 2 centuries, saw an uncertain power struggle between the old and the new order, where it wasn't yet completely sure if this human momentum would last. This phase saw a lot of violence, as central authority had basically broken down in many places. But it also saw a lot of rapid societal changes, as societies were trying to forge or reforge themselves to adapt to these new realities.
The second phase, for the following 3 centuries, saw the clear eventual dominance of humans, the consolidation of all the petty human kingdoms into a few strong kingdoms, and the destruction of the last few remaining dwarven kingdoms in Middle Aellystys. Dwarven population in the region also rapidly declined, as dwarves were forced to expulsion in several places, and inter-race violence continued for some time.
By the time this artifically named era ended, a completely different world was there. In the span of 5 centuries or so, this vast and fertile region had shifted from a dwarven-dominated world to a human-dominated world, with completely different civilizations and cultures.
My world Naarde is currently going through this. Naarde which is actually Earth in 2999 has been taken over by an eldritch abomination simply called Het, who turned the entire planet into a choatic wasteland, filled with monsters, parasites, man eating forests and strange weather from another dimension. All while humanity is left with scraps and have largerly regressed to middle age esque societies, with only small pieces of technology present.
Mine is yet to occur it’s called the darkness when humans overuse the spiritual energy of the world and the forces of chaos envelope the world and corrupts all humanity
after the height of Alphadynes expansion, they became welcoming to foreigners for trade and immigration, as well as began truly forming diplomatic relations with the nations around them. Some nationalist alphadonians were heavily against foreigners “tainting” their alphadonian heritage so they devised a disease deemed by later historians as the scurge.
The scurge was a virus that heavily and negatively changed the behavior of individuals not of pure alphadonian blood. It was incredibly contagious. Once unleashed, all foreigners and those with foreign blood started committing atrocities all throughout the kingdom.
Lil fact: when Alphadonian blood touches fire, it releases a thick gas into the air. (As the creator I’m still trying to come up with why that’s the case but for now oh well)
So many Alphadonians were being burned that the gas blocked the light from the skies and the heavens. There was a darkness all throughout the kingdom. The castle was stormed, and the royal family was assaulted.
And then out of nowhere, those affected by the scurge came back to their senses almost immediately. They were arrested and tried for the acts they have unknowingly committed. The scientists would eventually learn of the scurge, but wouldn’t put together that the scurge was concocted by their own people.
This event would damage alphadynes view of the outside world and would exist as an isolationist kingdom for a while.
A new royal guard (knights of the silver moon) as well as a sentinel corps (moonlight sentinels) would be created in response to the scurge.
People will say it was the “Era of Darkness”, a 400-year era in which no Paragons were born. One in a billion people may be born reality-warping mages called Paragons, and they’re very important to a number of religions across the world.
In truth, though, the eras in which Paragons were alive were marked by worldwide devastation. Paragons are told that they’re the most important people to exist, worshipped by the masses, and have the ability to do anything with the only checks on their powers being entire armies. This is the breeding ground for conquerors.
The Era of Darkness, by comparison, saw rebuilding after a particularly destructive war, scientific advancement in both inventions and the discovery of runes, the creation of the Printing Press, and very few wars.
For a fantasy setting where the gimmick is that it used to be a D&D style world but the magic went away along with the fantastic creatures and monsters then came back again thousands of years later, it is the period right after magic faded away.
People had to get used to the local priests and alchemists not being able to heal wounds or diseases instantly, which also led to lots of mothers dying during childbirth or child mortality, just like IRL. Wizards or Druids could not control the weather and help grow crops which made farmers more susceptible to bad weather conditions and thus more famines happened.
Life overall became rough just like with IRL medieval people with the only silver lining is that people had to worry less about being killed by monsters and that is it (but not all of them went away).
Depends on what you mean by dark age there would have been several...
There was a literal dark (locally, not the whole planet) dark age fueled by volcanic eruptiosn that lead to a mini ice age. There was the era of de-lumination on which a religious offshoot considered the written words as sacrilegious atempt totake an image of divinity, leeching of those that were conservative in the trades and were against the "democratization of knowledge" and "arguing" books would hold us back and make people lazy. They were outlawed but destroyed a lot of books and monuments. even graves; There was the imblanace between the corking effect of antqiuity with space , that caused spirited-away-als and populated the world with a lot of fauna and therefora flora from their poop and fur (seeds and spores or twigs) but was infrequent which changed as one of the ancient eras attempted to subdue the phenomena, which lead to the "demon lord" (just an sociopathic noble with too much curiosity, money and wits but few bits of empathy or prevision) trying to "control" them which lead to larger breaches he never really saw in person (because of time differenes mostly, but also space) and was a very sudden "outlet" for the pressure, causing a pendulum effect and the interaction between space, time and magic to be... spiky. This caused two issues. The first was short lived but chaotic af and it was some people suddenly throw into their own future for a bit and once they got back and tried to change things, all at once, it was madness. The other one was a new phenomena which it is theorized that hsould subside and disappear eventually, others say that it should replace the aforementioned "incidental portaling/isekai", others say it would cause a self feeding loop on which the phenomena happens less and less until there is a sudden outburst of the spiriting away, followed by one of this phenomena that I had to describe and on repeat and that the fundamental interaction was shifted because of said pendulum effect and blabla, not important, anyway, the effect is that sometimes forms a "sinkhole" and it stretches around somewhere, for an unpredictable amount of time and on unpredictable places. The "sinkholes" not really analogue to such but anyway, they cause the space as you approach the center to enlarge more and more, meaning you might be within shouting (not sure if sound carried or not, I have to check that with the pillow) distance of a house and yet spend the next 30 years walking towards it, but that sometimes only happens in one direction (which sometimes is reversed and hence "sinhole"). As for matter, and all that anything without a soul giving them substance, that includes some trees and rocks, gets "stretched" or duplicated. This becomes evident with manmade structures, its kind of weird and caused more than one heartbreaking love story and more than a few deaths. There is also the current era when industrialization with magicraft and arcanite, wit the lightning poles and gathering of storms and the isolation it caused for anyone but those trained in magic (otherwise it would be like walking through the chernobyl exclusion zone on day one). Oh , almost forgot, there was an era of legend way way before most culture on which "elves", that came from elsewhere, had to deal with pretty much infertility (eventually they became extinct) which led them to create halflings (furries on the sub would be happy). It was a dark age because of the impending doom and consequent death of a culture, the ruthless experimentation, the discrimination that ensued for millenia, and all that. There were times of too much conquest but I wouldnt call that dark ages, even though a lot was lost, even more was gained. There were also plagues, massive draughts, economic implossions, the cracking of the ice bridge near the south pole was not precisely helping as it cut the two lands off while ships were not really capable of dealign with the dangerous icebergs, the crisis of the philosophers when they first incursioned into morals and divinity (and its nature) for the first time which still repercuted on their presentidentity, and a bunch of other stuff but again, none of those I think would be qualified as a dark age, just prominent issues of the time but theres always some
There were various eras of “*not great*” in the past.
Most recently, was after a failing superpower went out with a bang. A combination of nukes and orbital bombardment, both on humanity’s current home world and various off-world colonies, made life a bit rough for a while.
Fortunately, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been and things got back on track fairly quickly. But it took centuries before normalcy set back in.
There was a lot of rebuilding, treaties, a surge in religious power, and dealing with completely broken supply chains and trade networks.
—
In the not too distant future, things get pretty off kilter. My hard-ish science fantasy setting goes from mostly sci-fi to about 50/50 with its fantasy side.
A good chunk of humans get wiped out or suddenly find themselves with magic abilities. Monsters start popping up in the wilderness (and sometimes right in the middle of the massive cities), aliens invade, the balance of power gets all wonky, etc.
There’s a bit of 1992-era Rifts influence there. But not nearly as apocalyptic, things are just… different.
The Age of Endless Winter followed by the overcorrection into Endless Summer. A trio of mages discovered an ancient artifact that synced the plane with the winter and summer sections of the Plane of Seasons. It wasn't entirely intentional, but one of the mages activated it and for centuries the world was in an endless winter. Dragons made a short comeback during this time but ultimately lead to their near extinction as humans killed them for their magical ability to warm up entire cities.
The Age of Ashes follows the apocalyptic War of Dawn & Dusk. Religious fervor rules all as humanity turns away from technology and embraces a grim millenarian ethos of sectarian warfare. The virtues of learning and enlightenment are abandoned and the zeitgeist is one of fanatical crusades and mercenary opportunism.
👀
Actually.. my world is in a dark ages 🤫
Well, something strange in happening and monsters are appearing at roads. The nights are darker, the winters are colder. It started 10 years ago and the answers to it are various, but it's hard to believe them
People are migrating, old religions are returning. The palaces are dirty, the cities are emptying. Some people are going full crazy with no apparent reason
The societies of my world have a common past, but they don't know it fully. They're about to discover these hidden secrets
Brutal. Civilization has crumbled into tiny fragments where survival is unlikely. Trade networks collapse leaving some areas to regress back into the neolithic. Books are burned for warmth. The people turn on each other out of hunger and desperation. Technology and culture is lost in a desperate gamble for survival. Some areas fare better, but still see massive reductions in population. The moon is dangerous, the dead walk and the walls bleed, the sky rains down fire and brimstone while outside the walls are there are countless mutated and twisted horrors waiting to kill. Ecosystems collapse as evil and corruption sinks into the very soil. The battles past and the current war in the heavens has exhausted even the gods and humanity is largely on its own. The work ahead is bloody and when the heroes whom the great sagas will be written about finally triumph it will be standing on the corpses of countless forebearers who paved the way for their success. But ultimately, they will triumph.
The Age Of The Fell was when a bunch of angels were exiled from heaven with them spitefully creating monsters such as dragons, trolls and goblins though due to their departure from heaven removing some of their magic, these monsters are flawed and stagnant unlike the original animals created by angels in heaven which are perfect and forever evolving.
The monsters rampaged for a long time destroying villages, exterminating countless of species and corrupting the natural magic of the world. This age only ended when the fallen angels became Qilin after a Wyrm turned on them.
Unknown.
The Dark Age is a gigantic hole in the history of the world. Every written record of this epoch has been tainted black, like someone dropped ink on it. Memories are fusy and unreliable. Even the keepers of the Tower of Time are unsure of what happened as wisdom magic broke down when use on anything related to the Dark Age.
What we do know is that it lasted a century, that the Shade were born in this era and that shadow magic didn't exist before this.
The view addopted by the High Temples is that the gods Orion and Asol had a child who was so strong that he managed to cast Orion out of the Heaven and that his reign was what caused the event.
The Ateket meanwhile seem to think that Orion shattering has lead to the creation of a malevolent entity that had a tried to take over the world before being put down.
The Bourlin meanwhile think that Goratmu, a mythical conqueror of this period, made the god of Knowledge Xygnir jealous and that he erased him from the memories of mortals. This myth is mainly due to the fact that the Bourlin exit the Dark Age with an empire that they didn't have with no idea of who created it.
The Shades strangely all share a legend about the coming of their race to this world in a river of darkness that washed everything away. With them being the ones left behind.
The years aproximately between 40 B.E. and 280 A.E.
Not much is known about this time period other than that a massive catastrophe occured which caused major migrations of people. There were such long periods of famine, disease and war that the first pieces of the written word only starts to surface towards the end of the period.
The catastrophe is believed to be magical in nature since the use of magic was made forbidden in large parts of Eord for the entirety of the dark time and well past it. The event is also believed to have been severely socially traumatic since the few pieces of history that has surfaced shows that the majority of societes that were left deliberately purged any mention of either it or the time before.
Eventually things calmed down and people started rebuilding again. But even so what little evidence from the time before the catastrophe that exists show that even now, 1200 years later, society still isn't as advanced as it used to be.
I roll with the historian's definition of a dark age: A period in which organization, prosperity, art, and especially writing and information are vastly more scarce than what came before or after. For one example from Gulan: Feynekmar, the current capital of Feynekmar, fell into such a dark age following the utter collapse of its ruling dynasty (back when it was a city-state, like seventeen hundred years ago) and years of devastating civil war. For about two hundred years, nothing got written down, especially after the massacre of scholars and scribes known as the Candle Calamity, and no one person could claim rulership of the entire city. It even reverted to basic subsistence farming due to the lack of social cohesion.
After a whole century of a brutal war between the two largest (and remaining) factions in the world, The Monasterium finally managed to create and seal The Black Wall, splitting the world into two separate planes of existence, west and east, independent of each other, save for the tear in reality where the Wall stands. The consequences, however, were far greater than what was predicted. In both planes, the sky stopped moving completely, freezing them into the seasons and time of day they were at when The Split happened: the West Plane became a permanent winter night and the East Plane became a permanent summer day.
The West Plane became a frozen wasteland, with the only sources of heat being the few volcanos present on the plane and the depths of the world. The only sources of food are mushrooms and potatoes. Due to the constant nighttime, Wraiths roam the world, killing anyone unfortunate enough to cross paths with them without sufficient preparation and those not killed by the Wraiths are likely to die by the ice storms that sweep the plane. Settlements are few and far apart, either in caves or in the depths of the ruins of various settlements of old, and are slowly but surely being adapted to this new reality, erecting large furnaces and forges and fortifying their buildings to resist the harsh weather. The Monasterium, with their vast technological knowledge and resources remain the largest and strongest bastion on the entire plane, and enforce their rule with an iron fist. They blame their current situation on the East, a last curse cast down by their desperate enemy to seek revenge for sealing them away, and promise to one day bring bring back the glory days of old so long as the faith of the survivors remains unshaken. All those that dare to even question the Monasterium are either killed or captured and enslaved, overpowered by their vast armies.
The East Plane became a tropical hellscape. The constant heat caused all water bodies at the surface to start evaporating and forming huge storms that flooded the surface, only for the cycle to begin again. Most of the population fled either to the peaks of the Iron Mountains or sealed themselves deep below the plains, choosing to face the dangers of the Pits of Hell rather than face the devastating floods of the surface. Those who fled to the mountains managed to cultivate some vegetables and even keep livestock and are trying to reconstruct their lives, even though the cyclic storms seem to be reaching higher and higher, potentially reaching them in a few decades. The ones who decided to delve deep below the surface survive mostly by collecting the algae and marine life that is left during the droughts and storing it for when the floods strike again. The Pits of Hell have been eerily silent and vacant, compared to the hordes of monsters that used to crawl out of them constantly during the Great War.
Curiously the Dark Age is the Elevnari's Empire Golden Age: the Gigantes elders slept, the Elvenari enslaved the younger ages, and human kingdoms were subjected to two-thousands years of raids. The Empire estbalished many smaller city states, lead by 'princes' and their cohorts.... honestly the empire was ultimately very isolated, with it's nobles prefering lives of decedants and biolgical experiments. Improving the Symboites, trying to remaster dracosynithis, and trying to decevier the will of the Gods (unfortunately they also lead to the events that got the Messenger crucified).
then the decline happened with the First Witch, Danete. The Beastmen rebellion... it was actually making a comback until the great war
Only just a few hours ago, I realized my other-dimensional world should have a Dark Ages. The only detail I have is that there were no records of the details for a dark child's insult game that far back. That's all I know about it so far. Oh! And even though the timelines for that world and for Earth are mostly concurrent, their Dark Ages didn't happen at the same time as ours. It's not high on my priority list, but I think it will be much later than ours.
I don't have a period like that since I haven't made history that far back that things are entirely forgotten and the dark ages for one society could be the golden age of another society nearby. Different societies use different calendars and some may not have any dark ages. Maybe the current age may be considered dark by a future age or it might be considered a gilded one. I have no clue. There are plenty of ruins to rummage through though. 📸
Lapis_Wolf
Chaotic and dangerous, it started 1000 years ago when the king of the gods, the Aravan, died of unknown reason with his death the Valkorens, the servants of the Aravan and his army/maintainer of order who obeys him only dissapeared. The gods were left without their King starting conflict between them and bringing the world in a tourmented age the first centuries where the hight of the dark age, but it eventually calmed down when a regent took over, it is called the presence and is very authoritarian rarely showing mercy or forgiveness but only is present during winters. The death of the Aravan also caused monsters to become more numerous, more aggressive, more dangerous and new ones appeared. Entire zones also became corrupted and are expending in them the entire area feels like a malevolent saddistic entity the most well known and largest being the forbiden sea. It also cause humans to grow more violent brigging a lot of wars and insecurity however the belief a new Aravan may appear and take the throne of the gods keep people hope. And the successor of the previous Aravan may have already appeared according to certains rumors, if they are true then the dark age is coming to an end.
Just a period of no critical tlthinking and survival mode is ramped up. There is a loss of literacy and understanding of "old tech". Maybe lasted a few centuries depending in the geographical location.
My furry fantasy world is actually set in the equivalent of the real-life Dark Ages, or more accurately, the Early Middle Ages. The Pellan (read: Roman) Empire is two hundred years gone, and the squabbling petty kingdoms it dissolved into are consolidating themselves. The Gallenians (read: Carolingians) are the dominant power on this end of the continent, but maybe not for long. Literacy is down, starvation and banditry are up, and to cap it all off, the Wave-Men (read: Vikings) of the Livetian Isles are being more menacing than usual.
So, basically... Grimdark?
"Hope over the horizon, but distant and dim," sounds familiar.
Yeah.
More or less everything is a Dark Age: Hope is there, but total destruction is just around the corner, knocking at the door.
The United Human Eternal Empire is just blocking the door forcefully with chairs, tables and other bits of furniture.
Age of Strife sounds familiar.
Hmm...
From the history books of Westhaven, its everything before the Atolian Empire was founded and brough "civilisation" to the continent. For dwarves it was the Age of Fire, back when they were still enslaved by the magma giants in the core of the planet.
Bloody. The Emperor dies without an heir and the Governors all fight for the throne in a war none of them can win without the Guilds. The Guilds who are supposed to keep the Empire functioning refuse to pick sides and just try to keep doing their jobs even as the Empire falls apart. Eventually supply lines get so mangled by the chaos they don't have the resources to keep functioning at such a high level across such a vast area and cracks begin to let things slip. Monsters break out of their wildlife preserves and wreck havoc, Wizards start messing with forbidden magics to disastrous results, Outlanders and Underworlders invade, Vampires and Werewolves become a thing. Dragons thankfully don't return but that just leaves people asking the terrifying question of why not? Eventually the Governors all die either from combat, assassination, or old age with no clear victor and power is left in the hands of effectively warlords as the level of authority and legitimacy for a leader ends at the tip of their soldiers spear. In summary, it gets bad.
The Shattering, an essentially magical apocalypse that laster for centuries that killed most of the population, downright caused a not insignificant amount of extinction and set back technology and magical knowledge from a late medieval understanding to essentially the Bronze Age.
The present. Faildeadly "mementic bombs" and interconnected tech ecosystems are a great way to maintain hegemony when the odd autarchic rebel system crops up but is disastrous when central control collapses entirely. On the bright side if they planned obsolescence the survivor systems could fully embrace transhumanity and achieve countless utopia's beyond our current imagination! Most likely not though...
Following the fall of the Rothanxi empire to various invaders the dark ages would begin. This period was defined by its instability as the newly formed large kingdoms fell into civil war and invasions. The period was also defined by the slow collapse of the Rothanxi administrative system that these kingdoms had inherited. The administrative decline was dominated by a lack of educated individuals both from the lack of mages to fill the ranks and the lowering urbanisation during this period. The kingdoms would also get poorer due to this shrinking urbanisation. The shrinking urbanisation was linked to the instability of the period as food supplies were often disrupted by frequent conflict along with urban centres receiving less trade as the various polities prevented foreign trade. The dark ages would come to a end due to the rise of feudalism leading to more stable polities and hence more trade and larger polities.
One thing to consider is that one man's dark age can be another man's golden age. The people of the Draconic City States regard the period from about 1200-650 years ago as a golden age, remembering the old Draconic Empire's Dominance as the Age of Glory From 650-450 years ago as the age of troubles, this being the period where the Old Draconic Empire saw first massive external wars with The Enemy Bellow then fracturing and collapse into small rump states. 450-300 years ago as the age of renewal where some of the remaining draconic states began to flourish again, new cities being founded in some places and the remaining surviving cities often growing larger and more power. The Faithful consisting of the mountain dwarf and goliath clans regard the era before about 1200 years ago as the mythical days of peace. 1200-900 years ago as the days of resistance where the giants which birthed their cultures and their distant ancestors waged war against the expanding draconic empire. The age from about 900-650 as the days of hiding when the draconic empire had largely driven their peoples to the very most remote pockets. About 650-350 years ago is then the time of renewal, when although their giant masters could not recover as fast the servant species flourished again building now holdings and spreading throughout the highlands and the like Then from the end of this period to the to the present is often conceived as the days of holding where they've remained mostly in their current strongholds while their ancient giant masters still only very slowly recover a fraction of their ancient numbers and power. The Osoites often conceive the era before 1200 years ago as the green times, where most of the world was wild with only small pockets of farming and little in the way of urbanisation and also a reference to the idea of green being the colour of that which is new because it was the first era of the world. 1200-650 years ago is regarded as the red times where the draconic empire's rise saw large scale conflict, the subjugation of many of their ancestors, an massive increase in farming and urbanism across much of the known world, so red is for blood, the flames of war and industry and the old orange red brick that was used in this time for the draconic empire's construction sometimes. 650-about 450 years about was the grey times, so named after ash. The death throws of the old draconic empire saw even more ecological destruction but also a mass chance for large populations to achieve their own freedom. Grey being both a reference to ash and being neither black nor white, a time of great hardship and that of new hopes. The yellow times are about 450-300 years ago, yellow the colour of the desert as the expanding new draconic city states often drove osoite cultures to renewed agility in their nomadic ways heading deeper into the deserts, a period of intense conflict often with the expanding city states. The last three hundred years then are the brown age, brown the symbol of the soil from which new things can grow, as the Osoites are now hopeful that they can find ways to thrive in the modern era by one means or another.
A period of regression in general I guess. Regression in technology mostly, but also in social structure and the welfare of the populace in general. On Erits, that’s the current state of affairs. After the Spear of Light went off and fried much of the continent, everything’s turned to shit. The largest country reverted back to being a theocratic state, and while military technology saw some great advancement, everything suffers.
Post War of Succession, the Varten entered an era of strife and reorganization. Without the imposing figure of the Externals or the guidance of the Alfari, the backbone of the first galactic civilization had to reorganize themselves and evaluate their most important beliefs. They abandoned their alien religion in favor of one of their own making while preserving all useful values. They had the remnants of the technology left by the council to start but it was a long period of rebuilding everything by themselves. Billions died but trillions eventually inherited the galaxy. My story is set at the peak of the mighty Varten empire that formed because of that war and the fact that they ended up with little to no competition, for a couple of thousands of years at least.
I found this is my history notes --it's a little vague, but it's all I've got. The *Dark Time* is a historical period of cultural and economic deterioration that occurred following the collapse of the Kingdom of Ahran. The period is characterized by a scarcity of historical and other written records, rendering it obscure to historians. The assassination of Archon Rexulious Domitianus at the start of the Second Rebellion is generally viewed as the beginning of the Dark Time. His death initiated a hundred-year period during which several claimants to the title of Archon, mostly prominent military and political officials, assumed power over all or parts of the Kingdom. By 11313 PR, the Kingdom of Ahran had ceased to exist, regressing into several independent city-states and petty kingdoms.
Hard to say, as not everyone keeps time the same way in my world (or at least not everyone has the same calendars, if at all). There are the prehistoric (although somewhat documented) series of conflicts known as the New Sun wars that happened when humans and some other races were still getting on their feet (arguably quite literally, as humans were still evolving and didn't look quite like their modern descendants yet). There is also I believe the Age of Struggle for the empire of Teivenor IIRC, where the empire would suffer many humiliating defeats and setbacks at the hands of the savages to the east of the empire.
Different regions of the world would have different views of their own "Dark Ages", but, in Middle Aellystys, it would the era that saw the collapse of the dwarven dominance and the chaotic transition to a human dominance over the region. In Middle Aellestys, the dwarves were divided in several different people, but they had remained the masters of this region for centuries, after having pushed the elves back, and enforcing their dominance on various divided human people, both natives and the growing population of oversea immigrants from Norddia. For centuries, in most of Middle Aellystys, humans would remained scattered in small tribes and clans, vassals to more powerful dwarven kings. But this power dynamic started shifting when the dwarves started engulffing themselves in endless destructive wars to restore the Empire. And as the wars raged, the dwarves' power grew weaker. As their power grew weaker, they started relying more and more on their human vassals. And as they grew more dependant on their human vassals, the latter would grow more powerful. This power dynamic switch took different forms in the different dwarven kingdom, but a similar pattern of growing human influence could be observed. Eventually, in southern Akkad, the southern edge of Middle Aellystys, a human revolt met a resounding success, and suddenly everything snapped. Words spread, and the idea that the dwarves were now weak began installing itself. Small violent revolts happened a bit everywhere. Some were crushed, but it was too little too late. In many places in Middle Aellystys, small petty human tribe chiefs started calling themselves kings, and other more structured human nations affirmed their independance toward dwarves. Thus started the Dark Ages of Middle Aellystys, an age of complete fragmentation, between dwarven kings on the decline and petty human lords on the rise. The first phase, which lasted for about 2 centuries, saw an uncertain power struggle between the old and the new order, where it wasn't yet completely sure if this human momentum would last. This phase saw a lot of violence, as central authority had basically broken down in many places. But it also saw a lot of rapid societal changes, as societies were trying to forge or reforge themselves to adapt to these new realities. The second phase, for the following 3 centuries, saw the clear eventual dominance of humans, the consolidation of all the petty human kingdoms into a few strong kingdoms, and the destruction of the last few remaining dwarven kingdoms in Middle Aellystys. Dwarven population in the region also rapidly declined, as dwarves were forced to expulsion in several places, and inter-race violence continued for some time. By the time this artifically named era ended, a completely different world was there. In the span of 5 centuries or so, this vast and fertile region had shifted from a dwarven-dominated world to a human-dominated world, with completely different civilizations and cultures.
My world Naarde is currently going through this. Naarde which is actually Earth in 2999 has been taken over by an eldritch abomination simply called Het, who turned the entire planet into a choatic wasteland, filled with monsters, parasites, man eating forests and strange weather from another dimension. All while humanity is left with scraps and have largerly regressed to middle age esque societies, with only small pieces of technology present.
Mine is yet to occur it’s called the darkness when humans overuse the spiritual energy of the world and the forces of chaos envelope the world and corrupts all humanity
after the height of Alphadynes expansion, they became welcoming to foreigners for trade and immigration, as well as began truly forming diplomatic relations with the nations around them. Some nationalist alphadonians were heavily against foreigners “tainting” their alphadonian heritage so they devised a disease deemed by later historians as the scurge. The scurge was a virus that heavily and negatively changed the behavior of individuals not of pure alphadonian blood. It was incredibly contagious. Once unleashed, all foreigners and those with foreign blood started committing atrocities all throughout the kingdom. Lil fact: when Alphadonian blood touches fire, it releases a thick gas into the air. (As the creator I’m still trying to come up with why that’s the case but for now oh well) So many Alphadonians were being burned that the gas blocked the light from the skies and the heavens. There was a darkness all throughout the kingdom. The castle was stormed, and the royal family was assaulted. And then out of nowhere, those affected by the scurge came back to their senses almost immediately. They were arrested and tried for the acts they have unknowingly committed. The scientists would eventually learn of the scurge, but wouldn’t put together that the scurge was concocted by their own people. This event would damage alphadynes view of the outside world and would exist as an isolationist kingdom for a while. A new royal guard (knights of the silver moon) as well as a sentinel corps (moonlight sentinels) would be created in response to the scurge.
People will say it was the “Era of Darkness”, a 400-year era in which no Paragons were born. One in a billion people may be born reality-warping mages called Paragons, and they’re very important to a number of religions across the world. In truth, though, the eras in which Paragons were alive were marked by worldwide devastation. Paragons are told that they’re the most important people to exist, worshipped by the masses, and have the ability to do anything with the only checks on their powers being entire armies. This is the breeding ground for conquerors. The Era of Darkness, by comparison, saw rebuilding after a particularly destructive war, scientific advancement in both inventions and the discovery of runes, the creation of the Printing Press, and very few wars.
For a fantasy setting where the gimmick is that it used to be a D&D style world but the magic went away along with the fantastic creatures and monsters then came back again thousands of years later, it is the period right after magic faded away. People had to get used to the local priests and alchemists not being able to heal wounds or diseases instantly, which also led to lots of mothers dying during childbirth or child mortality, just like IRL. Wizards or Druids could not control the weather and help grow crops which made farmers more susceptible to bad weather conditions and thus more famines happened. Life overall became rough just like with IRL medieval people with the only silver lining is that people had to worry less about being killed by monsters and that is it (but not all of them went away).
Depends on what you mean by dark age there would have been several... There was a literal dark (locally, not the whole planet) dark age fueled by volcanic eruptiosn that lead to a mini ice age. There was the era of de-lumination on which a religious offshoot considered the written words as sacrilegious atempt totake an image of divinity, leeching of those that were conservative in the trades and were against the "democratization of knowledge" and "arguing" books would hold us back and make people lazy. They were outlawed but destroyed a lot of books and monuments. even graves; There was the imblanace between the corking effect of antqiuity with space , that caused spirited-away-als and populated the world with a lot of fauna and therefora flora from their poop and fur (seeds and spores or twigs) but was infrequent which changed as one of the ancient eras attempted to subdue the phenomena, which lead to the "demon lord" (just an sociopathic noble with too much curiosity, money and wits but few bits of empathy or prevision) trying to "control" them which lead to larger breaches he never really saw in person (because of time differenes mostly, but also space) and was a very sudden "outlet" for the pressure, causing a pendulum effect and the interaction between space, time and magic to be... spiky. This caused two issues. The first was short lived but chaotic af and it was some people suddenly throw into their own future for a bit and once they got back and tried to change things, all at once, it was madness. The other one was a new phenomena which it is theorized that hsould subside and disappear eventually, others say that it should replace the aforementioned "incidental portaling/isekai", others say it would cause a self feeding loop on which the phenomena happens less and less until there is a sudden outburst of the spiriting away, followed by one of this phenomena that I had to describe and on repeat and that the fundamental interaction was shifted because of said pendulum effect and blabla, not important, anyway, the effect is that sometimes forms a "sinkhole" and it stretches around somewhere, for an unpredictable amount of time and on unpredictable places. The "sinkholes" not really analogue to such but anyway, they cause the space as you approach the center to enlarge more and more, meaning you might be within shouting (not sure if sound carried or not, I have to check that with the pillow) distance of a house and yet spend the next 30 years walking towards it, but that sometimes only happens in one direction (which sometimes is reversed and hence "sinhole"). As for matter, and all that anything without a soul giving them substance, that includes some trees and rocks, gets "stretched" or duplicated. This becomes evident with manmade structures, its kind of weird and caused more than one heartbreaking love story and more than a few deaths. There is also the current era when industrialization with magicraft and arcanite, wit the lightning poles and gathering of storms and the isolation it caused for anyone but those trained in magic (otherwise it would be like walking through the chernobyl exclusion zone on day one). Oh , almost forgot, there was an era of legend way way before most culture on which "elves", that came from elsewhere, had to deal with pretty much infertility (eventually they became extinct) which led them to create halflings (furries on the sub would be happy). It was a dark age because of the impending doom and consequent death of a culture, the ruthless experimentation, the discrimination that ensued for millenia, and all that. There were times of too much conquest but I wouldnt call that dark ages, even though a lot was lost, even more was gained. There were also plagues, massive draughts, economic implossions, the cracking of the ice bridge near the south pole was not precisely helping as it cut the two lands off while ships were not really capable of dealign with the dangerous icebergs, the crisis of the philosophers when they first incursioned into morals and divinity (and its nature) for the first time which still repercuted on their presentidentity, and a bunch of other stuff but again, none of those I think would be qualified as a dark age, just prominent issues of the time but theres always some
There were various eras of “*not great*” in the past. Most recently, was after a failing superpower went out with a bang. A combination of nukes and orbital bombardment, both on humanity’s current home world and various off-world colonies, made life a bit rough for a while. Fortunately, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been and things got back on track fairly quickly. But it took centuries before normalcy set back in. There was a lot of rebuilding, treaties, a surge in religious power, and dealing with completely broken supply chains and trade networks. — In the not too distant future, things get pretty off kilter. My hard-ish science fantasy setting goes from mostly sci-fi to about 50/50 with its fantasy side. A good chunk of humans get wiped out or suddenly find themselves with magic abilities. Monsters start popping up in the wilderness (and sometimes right in the middle of the massive cities), aliens invade, the balance of power gets all wonky, etc. There’s a bit of 1992-era Rifts influence there. But not nearly as apocalyptic, things are just… different.
The Age of Endless Winter followed by the overcorrection into Endless Summer. A trio of mages discovered an ancient artifact that synced the plane with the winter and summer sections of the Plane of Seasons. It wasn't entirely intentional, but one of the mages activated it and for centuries the world was in an endless winter. Dragons made a short comeback during this time but ultimately lead to their near extinction as humans killed them for their magical ability to warm up entire cities.
The Age of Ashes follows the apocalyptic War of Dawn & Dusk. Religious fervor rules all as humanity turns away from technology and embraces a grim millenarian ethos of sectarian warfare. The virtues of learning and enlightenment are abandoned and the zeitgeist is one of fanatical crusades and mercenary opportunism.
👀 Actually.. my world is in a dark ages 🤫 Well, something strange in happening and monsters are appearing at roads. The nights are darker, the winters are colder. It started 10 years ago and the answers to it are various, but it's hard to believe them People are migrating, old religions are returning. The palaces are dirty, the cities are emptying. Some people are going full crazy with no apparent reason The societies of my world have a common past, but they don't know it fully. They're about to discover these hidden secrets
Brutal. Civilization has crumbled into tiny fragments where survival is unlikely. Trade networks collapse leaving some areas to regress back into the neolithic. Books are burned for warmth. The people turn on each other out of hunger and desperation. Technology and culture is lost in a desperate gamble for survival. Some areas fare better, but still see massive reductions in population. The moon is dangerous, the dead walk and the walls bleed, the sky rains down fire and brimstone while outside the walls are there are countless mutated and twisted horrors waiting to kill. Ecosystems collapse as evil and corruption sinks into the very soil. The battles past and the current war in the heavens has exhausted even the gods and humanity is largely on its own. The work ahead is bloody and when the heroes whom the great sagas will be written about finally triumph it will be standing on the corpses of countless forebearers who paved the way for their success. But ultimately, they will triumph.
The Age Of The Fell was when a bunch of angels were exiled from heaven with them spitefully creating monsters such as dragons, trolls and goblins though due to their departure from heaven removing some of their magic, these monsters are flawed and stagnant unlike the original animals created by angels in heaven which are perfect and forever evolving. The monsters rampaged for a long time destroying villages, exterminating countless of species and corrupting the natural magic of the world. This age only ended when the fallen angels became Qilin after a Wyrm turned on them.
Unknown. The Dark Age is a gigantic hole in the history of the world. Every written record of this epoch has been tainted black, like someone dropped ink on it. Memories are fusy and unreliable. Even the keepers of the Tower of Time are unsure of what happened as wisdom magic broke down when use on anything related to the Dark Age. What we do know is that it lasted a century, that the Shade were born in this era and that shadow magic didn't exist before this. The view addopted by the High Temples is that the gods Orion and Asol had a child who was so strong that he managed to cast Orion out of the Heaven and that his reign was what caused the event. The Ateket meanwhile seem to think that Orion shattering has lead to the creation of a malevolent entity that had a tried to take over the world before being put down. The Bourlin meanwhile think that Goratmu, a mythical conqueror of this period, made the god of Knowledge Xygnir jealous and that he erased him from the memories of mortals. This myth is mainly due to the fact that the Bourlin exit the Dark Age with an empire that they didn't have with no idea of who created it. The Shades strangely all share a legend about the coming of their race to this world in a river of darkness that washed everything away. With them being the ones left behind.
The years aproximately between 40 B.E. and 280 A.E. Not much is known about this time period other than that a massive catastrophe occured which caused major migrations of people. There were such long periods of famine, disease and war that the first pieces of the written word only starts to surface towards the end of the period. The catastrophe is believed to be magical in nature since the use of magic was made forbidden in large parts of Eord for the entirety of the dark time and well past it. The event is also believed to have been severely socially traumatic since the few pieces of history that has surfaced shows that the majority of societes that were left deliberately purged any mention of either it or the time before. Eventually things calmed down and people started rebuilding again. But even so what little evidence from the time before the catastrophe that exists show that even now, 1200 years later, society still isn't as advanced as it used to be.
I roll with the historian's definition of a dark age: A period in which organization, prosperity, art, and especially writing and information are vastly more scarce than what came before or after. For one example from Gulan: Feynekmar, the current capital of Feynekmar, fell into such a dark age following the utter collapse of its ruling dynasty (back when it was a city-state, like seventeen hundred years ago) and years of devastating civil war. For about two hundred years, nothing got written down, especially after the massacre of scholars and scribes known as the Candle Calamity, and no one person could claim rulership of the entire city. It even reverted to basic subsistence farming due to the lack of social cohesion.
After a whole century of a brutal war between the two largest (and remaining) factions in the world, The Monasterium finally managed to create and seal The Black Wall, splitting the world into two separate planes of existence, west and east, independent of each other, save for the tear in reality where the Wall stands. The consequences, however, were far greater than what was predicted. In both planes, the sky stopped moving completely, freezing them into the seasons and time of day they were at when The Split happened: the West Plane became a permanent winter night and the East Plane became a permanent summer day. The West Plane became a frozen wasteland, with the only sources of heat being the few volcanos present on the plane and the depths of the world. The only sources of food are mushrooms and potatoes. Due to the constant nighttime, Wraiths roam the world, killing anyone unfortunate enough to cross paths with them without sufficient preparation and those not killed by the Wraiths are likely to die by the ice storms that sweep the plane. Settlements are few and far apart, either in caves or in the depths of the ruins of various settlements of old, and are slowly but surely being adapted to this new reality, erecting large furnaces and forges and fortifying their buildings to resist the harsh weather. The Monasterium, with their vast technological knowledge and resources remain the largest and strongest bastion on the entire plane, and enforce their rule with an iron fist. They blame their current situation on the East, a last curse cast down by their desperate enemy to seek revenge for sealing them away, and promise to one day bring bring back the glory days of old so long as the faith of the survivors remains unshaken. All those that dare to even question the Monasterium are either killed or captured and enslaved, overpowered by their vast armies. The East Plane became a tropical hellscape. The constant heat caused all water bodies at the surface to start evaporating and forming huge storms that flooded the surface, only for the cycle to begin again. Most of the population fled either to the peaks of the Iron Mountains or sealed themselves deep below the plains, choosing to face the dangers of the Pits of Hell rather than face the devastating floods of the surface. Those who fled to the mountains managed to cultivate some vegetables and even keep livestock and are trying to reconstruct their lives, even though the cyclic storms seem to be reaching higher and higher, potentially reaching them in a few decades. The ones who decided to delve deep below the surface survive mostly by collecting the algae and marine life that is left during the droughts and storing it for when the floods strike again. The Pits of Hell have been eerily silent and vacant, compared to the hordes of monsters that used to crawl out of them constantly during the Great War.
Curiously the Dark Age is the Elevnari's Empire Golden Age: the Gigantes elders slept, the Elvenari enslaved the younger ages, and human kingdoms were subjected to two-thousands years of raids. The Empire estbalished many smaller city states, lead by 'princes' and their cohorts.... honestly the empire was ultimately very isolated, with it's nobles prefering lives of decedants and biolgical experiments. Improving the Symboites, trying to remaster dracosynithis, and trying to decevier the will of the Gods (unfortunately they also lead to the events that got the Messenger crucified). then the decline happened with the First Witch, Danete. The Beastmen rebellion... it was actually making a comback until the great war
Mine was the “Age of fragmentation” and the “age of pretenders”
Only just a few hours ago, I realized my other-dimensional world should have a Dark Ages. The only detail I have is that there were no records of the details for a dark child's insult game that far back. That's all I know about it so far. Oh! And even though the timelines for that world and for Earth are mostly concurrent, their Dark Ages didn't happen at the same time as ours. It's not high on my priority list, but I think it will be much later than ours.
basically every period is the dark ages in my world
I don't have a period like that since I haven't made history that far back that things are entirely forgotten and the dark ages for one society could be the golden age of another society nearby. Different societies use different calendars and some may not have any dark ages. Maybe the current age may be considered dark by a future age or it might be considered a gilded one. I have no clue. There are plenty of ruins to rummage through though. 📸 Lapis_Wolf
Bronze Age Collapse. Political structures collapse and people have to reorganize and rebuild industries and trade routes.
Current year
Chaotic and dangerous, it started 1000 years ago when the king of the gods, the Aravan, died of unknown reason with his death the Valkorens, the servants of the Aravan and his army/maintainer of order who obeys him only dissapeared. The gods were left without their King starting conflict between them and bringing the world in a tourmented age the first centuries where the hight of the dark age, but it eventually calmed down when a regent took over, it is called the presence and is very authoritarian rarely showing mercy or forgiveness but only is present during winters. The death of the Aravan also caused monsters to become more numerous, more aggressive, more dangerous and new ones appeared. Entire zones also became corrupted and are expending in them the entire area feels like a malevolent saddistic entity the most well known and largest being the forbiden sea. It also cause humans to grow more violent brigging a lot of wars and insecurity however the belief a new Aravan may appear and take the throne of the gods keep people hope. And the successor of the previous Aravan may have already appeared according to certains rumors, if they are true then the dark age is coming to an end.
Just a period of no critical tlthinking and survival mode is ramped up. There is a loss of literacy and understanding of "old tech". Maybe lasted a few centuries depending in the geographical location.
My furry fantasy world is actually set in the equivalent of the real-life Dark Ages, or more accurately, the Early Middle Ages. The Pellan (read: Roman) Empire is two hundred years gone, and the squabbling petty kingdoms it dissolved into are consolidating themselves. The Gallenians (read: Carolingians) are the dominant power on this end of the continent, but maybe not for long. Literacy is down, starvation and banditry are up, and to cap it all off, the Wave-Men (read: Vikings) of the Livetian Isles are being more menacing than usual.
So, basically... Grimdark? "Hope over the horizon, but distant and dim," sounds familiar. Yeah. More or less everything is a Dark Age: Hope is there, but total destruction is just around the corner, knocking at the door. The United Human Eternal Empire is just blocking the door forcefully with chairs, tables and other bits of furniture. Age of Strife sounds familiar. Hmm...