Legends of Belariath

High Humans History

Few lasting legends remain to explain the oddity of Human kind; how what so clearly to some is a single race had grown so very divided. No self respecting Barbarian would readily accept they bore some ancestral relation to a limp wristed Flatlander or gypsy Tribesman, as glaring as the evidence may be. It's often assumed to simply be in their nature, to fracture and separate when groups grow too large, evidenced by the ever increasing number of separate tribes and communities amongst them, so often at each others throats. Perhaps this is the case.

It was many upon many millennia ago when Human Kind arrived on the scene, in an age long before first contact with the Dwarven kingdoms and the initial raids of the Moriel, before the appearance the Magi, Chirot and Torian in the skies and the eldest Dragons had begun to dream new life into the world.

Elves considered themselves the masters of this age, rapidly unlocking the secrets of the world and erecting a glistening civilization built on masonry and magic, all amongst the beauty of Gaea's creation and the pleasures of the Nymph, Fae, and those like them. Though certain members of their kin seemed painfully insistent on being obsessively delicate with the natural world, the Elves were nothing but confident in their inevitable dominion. The only foreseeable threat was that of the Ogres and Trolls, presumed little but savage beasts who should really be wiped out, in spite of the apparent evidence they'd been roaming Belariath for a much, MUCH longer time.

It was then that Humanity appeared, and 'appeared' was most certainly the word, for no one rightly knew how they came to be. One day the world had seen nothing of their like before, and the next there they were; a great herd of them, wandering across the countryside in awe and bewilderment as though the world were new to them, hardly able to clothe themselves.

For a time the Elven Nation simply tracked this herd of newcomers, wary of what they might represent, but as winter approached and their numbers began to dwindle, certain entrepreneurs began to adamantly insist the receding population of strange new beings should not be left to the harshness of the wilds. Masking their intentions as compassion, the Elven Nation decided to take in these wide-eyed innocents, offering food and shelter as the wealthy went about having them classified in law as Property.

No one knew from where they had come, though a popular thought began to circulate that because this strange new people so closely resembled themselves, they were a gift from their Gods; a reward for their unflinching progress in the rise of Elven kind. True or not, the Elves most all saw nothing in Humanity but opportunity; the chance to elevate their own kind from hard labor and drudgery outright, so that no Elf need be poor nor bend his back to lift another. Surely the Gods would smile on that!

And so the world took its natural course and twelve-hundred years of subjugation ensued, an entire race kept as slaves that needed no collar to identify them, known well enough by their curved ears and the smell of backbreaking work on them. The Elves thrived as never before, devoting themselves largely to intellectual advances; the study of magic and physics, of architecture and metallurgy, sending their armed forces out to hunt Ogre communities, leaving most all the grunt work to their new pets.

In exchange, and in what most Elves thought was a fair deal, they taught the humans well in all the known crafts, developed their broken language into something more functional that came to be known as 'common', even teaching a few their own tongue. Some humans were taken into noble houses as servants and were granted many rights within them. Many more were trained as soldiers, and given much better lives as a result. Those humans who showed an aptitude in magic were considered particularly novel, and were often elevated to almost equal citizens when taken as apprentice by a curious elder Mage.

Though the seemingly stoic, hardworking peoples of the lowest classes of humanity didn't often show it, all the brick layers, plow draggers, miners and shit shoveler, all the horse-shoers and keg bearers, thugs and line haulers were growing more than fed up with all the 'gifts' the Elves had given them; with watching the soft and the privileged of their kin rise up from the wallows to walk on their shoulders side by side with their slavers, who behaved as if all their wealth and plenty wasn't paid for in blood and sweat. There was no hope of rebellion, however, no chance for revolt. The Elves' magic was simply too powerful to challenge, and those of their kind who had been taught it were all in the pockets of their teachers. Still, those suffering held fast, grew strong and weathered as they waited for their chance. And finally, fate intervened.

In the pre-dawn haze of one early mid-spring morning, while Elves slept soundly in their beds and humans busied the streets in small numbers to prepare for mornings light and the inevitable bustle of their masters, a red point of light crept its way slow over the horizon, tugging along behind it a crimson trail like the angry-red path of a claw dragging its way over the skies tender dark blue flesh. The moment its light had touched the air all had felt the change, the sudden absence of all but the most mundane... of Magic simply ending, as if it had never been. By the time dawn had cracked, the fires had started. By noon, there was not an Elven city that wasn't wholly lost to chaos.

Without spells and enchantments, it was a great deal of rather lean and delicate Elves making a desperate but less than impressive effort to contain every mean, large, and considerably pissed off human in their community... a great deal more of them than anyone could have thought. Palaces and temples were battered and smashed to near rubble, great libraries, the fruits of a millennial pursuit of knowledge, gone up in fearsome flames.

In spite of the panic, the staggered Elven Authorities tried to assure their people that the strange heavenly body would pass and when it did Magic would return to the world, and the barbarians who'd been living amongst them would be punished for their actions. The label stuck, and those Barbarians left the shattered cities for the mountains, intent on escaping the inevitable wrath of the Elves. Others still had avoided the fighting entirely, many commandeering ships and heading off to sea or slipping away on stolen horses for desert country, groups that would later form what is known now as the Tribe.

When the crimson scar faded from the skies and magic returned to the land, the Elves assembled a small army of Mages and sent them into the mountains, intent on utterly removing the threat. Not one returned. For a man who had led his fellows in the fighting and high into the neighboring mountains, one of these 'Barbarians' for whom the Elves hunted, had found in a snow-rimmed crater a fragment of that very heavenly body, still warm to the touch... a small crimson shard around which magic simply did not exist.

The man took on a name, 'Fate Breaker', and led an army back to the Elven nation; armored giants wielding swords of iron led by a savage bearing that crimson talisman against which simple Elven militias could not stand. Towns were sacked, then a city, and it was only by the valiant efforts of the Humans who'd stayed on in the Elves service in spite of sudden distrust that their civilization didn't crumble and fall then and there. In the years after this conflict, those who had defended the Elven Nation were labeled 'High Humans', and in time were granted their own lands and lordships, eventually earning Independence.

It was just as grim discussions of surrender began to circulate amongst the Elven leaders that they were called to a meeting with this 'Fate Breaker', who agreed against all sense to parley with them unguarded and alone, bringing with him the nullifying shard right into their capitol. The first impulse was to slay the man as soon as he crossed their gates, but they were baffled when he placed that shard at their feet, offering it and his life up as coins to buy a truce, on the condition the shard be either destroyed or hidden where none would ever find it. He promised them that if they did not do this, the infectiously mundane piece of the heavens would destroy their world outright. They believed him... and shortly after executing him did just as he asked, sending that shard to a place so cold and distant that they believed no one would ever again come upon it.

Though the Elves agreed that the Barbarians would be left to make a life for themselves and a new culture was left to flourish, the Barbarian's didn't understand the choice 'Fate Breaker' had made, and a man who'd for a time been a hero was soon forgotten. The old and watchful knew however, why he had done what he did. Knew that in his roaming he had come upon a nature spirit who's beauty had made his lust its prisoner, who's eyes had captured his heart. Knew that she'd grown pale and sickly in the presence of the stone, but had braved all to stay close to the man who bore it. Knew that, drunk on blood and victory, he had not noticed how much she had suffered, before she finally died outright; flesh made too mundane to contain her sweet spirit.

Many thousands of years have passed since that time, and too many wars have been fought, too many books have been burned for any to truly look back on them with insight. The Barbarians have flourished since, populating the worlds high, rugged places with the strong and the skilled, and the days of any Elven Empire seem long since numbered. The High Humans on the other hand have rapidly expanded ever since, their kingdoms growing wealthy, luring the interest and attention of those great bringers of wealth and change one calls an Empire, and unquestionably assuming the role of the most populous race on the planet.