Barking Alien Challenge day17: Wars & Battles?

So what famous battles or wars happened?

The world is shaped by great wars and apocalypse.
These great ages were ended by war and they are featured in myths and the arts.

In the timeless dawn age where gods and their servants walked the world, there were battles but the dead returned to life and were restored. That age ended by a unity of evil gods tempted by the older gods of the outer darkness. They used the weapon death to kill beings, by trapping their spirits in the underworld or using them to fuel magic. This weapon was a modification to the world and with it came time, disease, hunger and more.

The age of darkness lasted thousands of years. Various abhuman species serving demons and evil gods formed a pact and ruled the monster empire, which covered most of the worlds surface. The monster kings did fight and the worm and bug lords were enslaved by others for food and new monster kings. They admited birds and bats into their hierachy to replace the old ones. At the end of this age the 7 monster kings were reliant on orc and human abhumans who revolted. Demihumans who hid joined them and the gods returned. After this war humans shunned all the arts and sciences and magic and lived as beasts in caves for thousands of years. Some areas the gods dropped mountains on became seeds of an underground civilisation where the failed evil god cults could survive.

Necromancers studied the occult secrets of monster kings and built stone cities and called armies of the dead to conquer the central continant. Many fled but eventually the barbarian orcs, humans and abhumans came from the wastes and killed the wizards and destroyed their writings. A few death templar cities survived ruled by death templars and undead wizards.

The world went back to the age of stone and bone

Elementalists united many gods and magical traditions claiming the elemental unity could rule the universe in harmony forever. They copied many ideas of necromancers and did rule the central continant and spread beyond to the other four directions. The unity collapsed over time as tricksters turned the elemental temples against each other. Many elemental cults to this day prefer one element and shun the unity. Barbarian humans, orcs and beast folk abhumans again destroyed this civilisation.

The elementalists had spread religion and technology over the continant and people did not forget arts and writing this time. People built city states dedicated to the gods. Many barbarians were assimilated or when they vonquered a city were assimilated in a few generations. Cities unified and kept barbarians at bay. Elemental and nature gods thrived and it was the Age of Exilon. At the peak of this age many great and terrible empires emerged from unified city states and warred with each other. The last necromancer cities were conquered. The Arcane Empire emerged as the leader ruled by wizard-priest kings. Fringe civilisations developed demon cults to resist and so the gods acted. A great apocalypse occured and vast areas were flooded. Peoples fleeing this spread civilisation to lands untouched for millenia including the north. This disaster caused wars and conflict that wrecked most vivilisations. Barbarians survived intact and finished off the rest but acepted they had failed to stop literacy, wizards and metal in the world. Some gave up this task.

In the ruins of the old world Lamnutainia survived conquest from other new kingdoms and barbarians and developed a fearsome discilpined millitary culture allied with the new gods of civilisation and the older nature gods. After a southern empire tried to invade the continant Lamnutainia faught back, stole secrets of sailing and used it to conquere the entire coast of the continant. This was the first Empire refered to as the ancients by modern people unaware of history before then. They fell to civil war over a bad succession which caused individual nations to revolt. The barbarians of the wastes came again to help finish this age and Demihumans all helped. The Great north woodlands had expanded and species unseen since the dawn age returned. During these wars human civilisation shrunk back to the oldest cities.

After centuries of peace the Second Empire began now embracing the civilised gods emerged to conquer the coastal kingdoms of the continant. Also a gnome cult began a surface construction project. This was Chagrinspire and its purpose was to unmake everything to bring peace and end suffering. At first nobody was concerned. But gnome trade was insidious and their technology adopted in many lands. While the empire was content and expanding by sea to the four directions, the gnomes flew airships around the world to plunder simpler peoples. Once people could see the construction from leagues away the empire began to have more friction with the gnomes. As the tower reached higher and higher a crusade was called by the second empire. The barbarians came and helped. Demi humans helped even other gnomes. Peoples from distant lands unheard of came warned by the gods of their need. So millions died in the centureis of war while Chagrinspire still plundered the world with airships and employed golems and synthetic soldiers to fight. Gods came to intervene with avatars and they were killed and captured for fuel. Cults of outer darkness helping the gnomes were duped and their gods were summoned turned into fuel.No avatars came to the mortal world since then. Petty godlings left behind fled the continant. Much of the world had become advanced like chagrinspire rapidly and as the tower was compledted millions died in a final battle. A great elemental flood was summponed ruining the tower defences and frog and fish folk infiltrated the towere vast water system, The defencive trenches and hill fort lines were overwhenlmed and the lower floors of the tower were ransacked. This final battle depleted many of the worlds human adults and the arcane technologies failed and were lost plunging all into barbarism including the second empire. Many say that it was all an acto of human and god sacrifice to fuel the anihilation engines of the gnomes.

In the last thousand years a Third empire dedicated to the church of light, an amalgam of old nature gods and modern civilisation gods but picking those connected with the sun, light and heavens. Auldwood and the wasteland had grown. Chagrinspire seemed dormant and inacesable. The empire ended when the Emperor was part of a heretical dark templar sect whos power specialised in hiding from the sun god and corrupting them from within. His madness caused a 30 year civil war. Recently he was killed by adventurers and the Templar of Light kingdom conquered Lamnutainia. All the coastal kindoms free of war are consolodating their domain of control and reclaiming lost frontier lands. Chagrinspire seems to have awakened and more people are living in the wates. Ancoent reptilian civilisations have been rebuilding and Auldwood keeps growing and resisiting resetlement. The collapse of the continant slave trade was also instigated by adventurers around Chagrinspire. Its a strange new age of exploration, prosperity and uncertainty.  

Worth a not that the Warring Colonies of the East are the biggest users of gunpowder and they export mercenaries. Tiny city states and kingdoms battle constantly producing the most advanced and brutal fighting people of the age. If anone manages to unify the kingdoms they could be a world threat. The indiginous armies uniting against them might cause this or perhaps a new dynamic leader.