: I'm trying to make a scenario which dates back to Connaht
: fighting "Moagim Reborn" I tried looking up
: the timeline but it seemed a bit jumbled. Can anyway
: give me a straight forward timeline from Connaht to
: Balor? Thanks.
1431 AE - A great comet takes up residence in the western skies, and the volcano Tharsis erupts for the first time in a thousand years. Connacht appears near Gower, and begins fighting Myrkridia who have ruled the world since Moagim brought them to power at the dawn of the last Era, the Wind Age. He comissions the Tain from the Smiths of Muirthemne and imprisons them (the Myrkridia, not the Smiths) within it. The nations of the world fall behind him for this great act, and then he turns his attention on the Trow.
He destroys their cities, imprisons them beneath Rhi'anon, and melts their entire civilization into the surrounding ice. (Presumably he melted both the iron cities and the ice, but the ice reformed around the molten ruins).
While he's been battling these great enemies in the East, a new Leveller called by some "Moagim Reborn" - who is, by all our best guesses, a reincarnation of the "A" spirit of Tireces, Moagim, and Alric, being a chaos-lover who prefers all his minions be more or less equal to eachother while he alone is more powerfull - takes the opportunity to strike at the West, thinking that not even the greatest hero could battle the Myrkridia, the Trow, AND the Leveller all in a row.
But Connacht does it. With the Myrkridia and Trow out of the way, he leads the armies of the Cath Bruig, including the Heron Guard and the Emperor himself, into battle against the Leveller, curbing his forces and killing him on one final confrontation. Unfortunately the Emperor of the Cath Bruig died in that battle, but by popular acclaim the great hero Connacht was appointed the new Emperor. Connacht earns the title of "the Wolf" for all his ferocity, and this era is called by some "the Wolf Age", though its more common name is "the Age of Light".
Other enemies were defeated by Connacht. With the aid of an avatara named Myrdred, he imprisoned the ancient evil sorceror Bahl'al, the Watcher, in a prison of solid rock beneath the Cloudspine. The forces of the Dark were mopped up off the face of the land or hidden away beneath it, and centuries of peace seemed the immediate prospect.
By this time the cyclic nature of light and dark - and, some though, the heroes and Levellers as well - had become abundantly clear. Connacht sought to break the cycle, and had his lieutenant Damas round up and destroy what magical artifacts he could find, while secreting away the west. But Connacht did not believe this was enough, and went into self-imposed exile. He was presumed dead thereafter.
But around between 2100 and 2200 AE, he showed up again, this time going by the name Balor and leading the forces of the Dark. The Myrmidons, a race of warriors akin to the Berserks, were at that time feared by all Dark lords in the East, for they were nearly unstoppable in battle. But Balor subborned them with the promise of eternal life, and they threw in with his cause.
In the three hundred years that followed he continued to build his forces. Damas, his greatest lieutenant, now Soulblighter after learning the dark arts of ritual self-mutilation in the east, threw in with his master's cause. An ancient sorceress called Ravanna, The Voiceless One, was awakened from her "eternal sleep". In an odd twist, Culwyeh, the reincarnation of the Voiceless One, who had sprung up during her Eternal Sleep, was also recruited and took up the name Shiver. The Avatara Myrdred was also brought to his side somehow, and with his help the evil Watcher, Bahl'al, was freed again.
From Bahl'al was learned the long-lost secret of necromancy, and an army of undead was raised. The Trow were freed from their prisons beneath Rhi'anon, and owing a debt to Connacht/Balor for not killing them when he probably should have, threw in with his cause. And the Ghols were recruited with the promise of vengance against their hated enemies, the Dwarves.
In 2431 AE, Balor announced his presense in style. As the sun rose in the east, the lookouts on the walls of Muirthemne saw an army of walking corpses, dotted with towering stone giants and drooling evil beasts of all sorts, stretching endlessly to the very horizon. The city quickly fell, and in the aftermath the entire empire of the Cath Bruig was razed in a massive continent-spanning storm of fire, leaving nothing but dirt and sand in its wake.
Oddly enough, the light managed to put up a decent resistance for over fifty years afterwards; and even more strange, the comet from the east, due in 2431, did not show up until 2481. Nor did the subsequent eruption of Tharsis. This has lead some to believe that perhaps Balor was NOT the Leveller after all, but I dismiss such theories as nonsense.
Either the timing of such cosmic events is not done to quite perfect precision, or Balor himself was fifty years early and the faulty calendars just don't reflect it. I find the second theory rather satisfying, because it means that somewhere inside there, a little bit of Connacht survived within Balor, and intentionally screwed up the timing of his arrival. After all, it was due in large part to that off timing that the Light won when it was supposed to have lost, and Connacht WAS trying to break the cycle. Managing to get himself and his forces killed right when they should have been rising to prominance looks like a work of mad genius to me. :-)
