On the Cold Age

The Cold Age is simultaneously one of the most significant events in the history of Homesdomh (the planet on which Homestria resides) and one of the most mysterious, most of our accounts of the era taking the form of myths or folklore. However, the prevalence of these myths across the world - the Siege of Storm's Deep in Cloudsdale, the attack of the King of Blizzards in Mount Aris, the Darkening of the Sun in Farasi, even in the distant, fabled Middle Kingdom, in the form of the Breaking of the World-Pillars - combined with those few pieces of evidence which we have managed to collect indicate that, while the Cold Age was the subject of much myth-making, it itself was no myth.

While our lack of solid evidence limits our knowledge of this myth-inspiring time, we do have enough evidence to make a few generalizations about it:

1. The Cold Age, as its name indicates, was a time of intense global cooling.

While the exact cause is the subject of debate, the scientific community is in agreement that, during the Cold Age, Homesdomh went through a sharp period of cooling, one that, in simple terms, transformed Mount Aris' climate into one like Griffonstone's and Griffonstone's into one like Yakyakistan's.

2. The Cold Age was a time of mass mortality for many species.

Due to the decrease in global temperature, many species found themselves thrust into environments for which they were unsuited, the most famous example being the fields of dead wheat that scarred Farasi. This damage to the food supply also explains the anecdotal rise in tensions during this period, with previously peaceful neighbors being forced to compete for suddenly-scarce resources. Combined with the colder temperatures, this increase in threats and decrease in resources available to respond to those threats led to the death of what the leading experts estimate to be 30-40% of the pre-Cold Age population of Men. Presumably, this horrifying number would have been even higher if not for the relatively short duration of the Cold Age.

3. The Cold Age lasted between 100 and 150 years.

Just as the exact cause of the start of the Cold Age remains a mystery, so does the cause of its end. Many cultures use a hero myth to explain the Cold Age's end; Tristan the Tragic's sacrifice in Homestria, Grover's defeat of Leviathan in Griffonstone, the Helix Empress' reforging of the World-Pillars in the Middle Kingdom, but whether half of the figures named even existed in the first place, let alone managed to stop a global meteorological event, is dubious. Whatever brought the Cold Age about and to an end is still a mystery, and will stay one for the foreseeable future; for now, its secrets remain buried under ice, snow, and time.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Fascinating stuff, though the contrast between expectation and reality keeps hitting me with this setting. By the time there's an Internet in place, it doesn't seem to me like anywhere should still qualify as distant and fabled. Still a lovely and intriguing piece of worldbuilding.

[RangerOfRhudaur]

5629906
The main reason that the Internet hasn't demystified everywhere (aside from plot convenience) is that, at this point in time, it's primarily concentrated in Homestria, Oddo, Mount Aris, the Draconic Islands, and Griffonstone, and in the latter two its very spotty. It's not merely technological problems that are stalling adoption of it, political problems (like the situation in Griffonstone and the even-worse chaos in Midland) are disrupting the stability needed to create the infrastructure the internet requires to function. (Assume that rockets and space travel haven't been invented, and aren't on the map to be any time soon.) Lack of capital is another hindering factor, part of the reason why Cloudsdale's a fantasy world so technologically behind; the state lacks the capital required to build the infrastructure the internet requires, partially because of the difficulty transitioning from chivalrism to a market economy.

Basically, the internet exists as several bubbles clustered in the wealthier, more developed areas of the world (Farasi's developing its own variant, the Great Web, and a national computer network has been in the works for the Middle Kingdom for a few years) as opposed to the globe-connecting, distance-shredding World Wide Web we know today.

[Pete100]

Good to know