The Taming

If the previous ages had been like a raging storm at sea, then the early years of the Taming were more like an ebb tide. Attacks by the maleficent creatures that still roamed the land continued, but the developing islands of civilization began to find themselves able to withstand them. Travel beyond their defended boundaries, however, still remained dangerous. It was a hazard undertaken only by the boldest of adventurers, and inter-city trade continued to be uncommon. As a result civilization was reborn in Kalara in a fragmented and isolated form, and it remained so for many centuries.

A kind of archipalego of city-states eventually emerged. In each a single large city served as the nucleus around which a collection of smaller towns and villages organized. The city and its larger towns were walled, and the surrounding villages and farms densely packed to minimize the area requiring defense. These early centers of civilization were often widely scattered, developing in locations with particular advantages, such as naturally defensible terrain or highly fertile soil to support their high population densities. There tended to be few inter-city roads, and little contact between them. By thus taming their local environments, they created stable pockets of civilization from which larger societies were gradually able to emerge.

The social isolation of the early Taming led to the emergence and perpetuation of several distinctive aspects of Kalaran culture. One of these was a trenchant conservatism that came to be known as the Way of the Homeland. It was characterized by an intense loyalty to the land and local community of one’s birth. Traditions developed according to which travel beyond the safety of the well-defined borders of one’s home city-state was subject to significant social disapproval. Those who attempted it — assuming they survived the still dangerous lands of the outside world — often came to be shunned as outsiders themselves.

This in turn led to the development of one of the most unusual of Kalara’s traditional professions: the ages-old Path of the Adventurer. Despite the conservative traditions promoting the safety and security of devoting one’s life to one’s local community and city-state — or the honor of defending it — there were still tremendous rewards to be gained from risking the dangers of travel and trade with other peoples. The Age of Lost Empires, in particular, had left the remains of advanced civilizations — both light and dark — lying scattered across the continent and ripe for plunder. A handful of the strongest and boldest chose to leave the protection of their Homelands, as they came to be called, to escort caravans of trade goods, or to find and brave the ruins of Kalara in search of treasure. Although many did not survive, the goods and spoils brought home by these adventurers became a significant driver of the renaissance of Kalara during the Taming.

Civilizations preceding the Grim Times had only flourished, despite the endless wars between light and dark, because of the great knowledge and magic handed down from the Age of Legends. The slow rediscovery of even some of these ancient secrets, and their dissemination throughout the lands, helped to finally reverse the millenia-long decline of the Children — and gave them a growing and decisive advantage against their enemies.

The steady progression of these developments constitute the central history of the Taming. The realms of the Children gradually grew in strength and size, their city-states merging into larger nations as the dark forces were driven relentlessly from the lands between them. Gradually, over the course of centuries, a robust civilization emerged in a patchwork of flourishing realms connected by newly founded routes of burgeoning trade.