It’s been pointed out to me, however, that overviews can often serve to pique a deeper interest in a subject. It’s also true that children begin their learning best from overviews. So I have bent my own rules in writing this very, very brief and general record of what I know of the Five Ages of Fae.

I hope you will not base your understanding of this history – or any history – on a single document. ‘One book is one answer.’ That’s your own proverb, so kindly be mindful of it.

- Ascalain

The Fae Age of Stone Approx. 10,000 Years Ago

In the beginning, before men tilled the earth as they do now, the age was of stone. Men did not trouble us any more than the other animals of the world. They had only their metal-blood, and even cattle have that.

Cattle is how we saw them, or worse than cattle. You cannot even milk a human. We ignored them, for the most part - until they began to come together and live together, and build houses for themselves.

There are many animals with a love of building. We, with no need of shelter, have always been intrigued by such things. Moon fae have always been the most fascinated of all - they love works and arts of all kinds, and they love to imitate them.

In the past they have dug themselves deep homes in the earth like the ants and the moles; they have lined nests in the taller trees; they have borne wood to eyries and built dam-houses like the beavers. Their curiosity is inexhaustible. What surprise, then, when some began to build houses and settle like men?

But that age - those ages - were still the ages of the year-shift fae, the winged ones. The year-shift fae were the people of the sky, strongest and most aware of the flow of the earth's power. They were the rulers. When disputes arose between sun fae and beast fae, or night fae and moon fae, or any of the magic-born, the year-shift fae had the judgement of it. We chose them as our leaders in even earlier days, days of anarchy, to spare us war.

The year-shift fae did not concern themselves with humanity in the Fae Age of Stone. Their concern was for the moon fae and that people's fascination with the dark element, iron.

It is well-known amongst my people that the moon fae were the first to work magic on iron. The year-shift fae are most aware of and sensitive to magic, but the moon fae understand it better than any of us, even now. They have always been the doers, the workers, the makers.

Iron-working was a truly formidable magic. But the year-shift fae, always the weakest and most susceptible to the dark element's influence, forbade the moon fae to experiment any further with it - the First Interdict. The moon fae were angry. There was almost war. But at the last, they agreed; in those days the year-shift fae were supreme, invincible.

Humankind, in the meantime, had begun to show a similar curiosity in works and arts; to judge the more inquiring race would be a difficult task. Part of their curiosity manifested in a fascination with the earth, with the stones and minerals and fair things below. They began to dig, then to tunnel, then to mine.

The earth's secrets are beautiful indeed. Even a sea fae can recognise that. The moon fae knew something of those secrets - neither deep-earth nor under-sea ever escaped their curiosity - but the humans became the masters of it, and the things they brought to light were wonders: the blooms of the stone that never die.

Men filled their houses with the wonders. Some of the houses were stone, now, not wood. And the moon fae were delighted. More than ever they involved themselves in the business of humans, learning their toneless language, making incredible magics for men out of the earth's treasures.

The year-shift fae thought poorly of this friendship. They did not look well upon loving animals more than one's own fellows, and above even this, they had begun to fear those strange, questioning moon fae minds more than ever. The Second Interdict was made: the moon fae must leave all beasts to the fields.

Again the moon fae were angry. They watched and loved all the earth's workings, they declared, from the wheeling, wind-light flight of birds to the earnest, inexpert songs men sang to imitate the fae. They accused the year-shift fae of self-important contempt, of arrogant malice.

The year-shift fae did not care for the moon fae's protests. They did not have to. Again the threatened war did not come to pass, for the rulers of the fae were strong and the moon fae were not. But there was more love lost between the two peoples, love that might well have turned future wars on another course.

Not long after this great schism, men 'discovered' iron.

The Fae Age of Dominion Approx. 7,000 Years Ago

The beast fae were the first to complain of the dark element's abuse. It is their custom, of course, to wear the shapes of other animals; they are extremely fragile of body. Human hunters, not knowing them from common beasts, had always shot arrows at them in error - but where fire-hardened tips and stone-headed flights had not troubled the beast fae, iron was now killing them.

Friction and bloodshed had already begun between the beast fae and the humans. The night fae, who had never had love for men and their ignorant quarrying of fae-bodied stone, added their protests to the voices of the beast fae. The year-shift fae heard them. They went to the terrified men and demanded that they cease all mining and all use of the dark element.

But afraid as they were, the men would not do it. Their labours had become light; their fields produced food in plenty for their children.

The year-shift fae sent to the moon fae, telling them to enforce the ban on iron. Perhaps the moon fae might have done so in a more temperate way than that which was to come; perhaps not. But they refused, reminding the year-shift fae of the interdict that still forbade them human contact.

And so the year-shift fae ordered the beast fae and night fae to stop the mining of iron.

All the enmity and ill feeling of centuries was unleashed with that order. Beast fae and night fae enforced the edict harshly and without compromise, slaughtering the livestock and spoiling the fields of any towns and cities which refused to obey. Starving and suffering, the towns and cities fought back with iron arrows and iron swords, going into battle drenched in cattle-blood as a small defence against magic. And eventually, the beast fae and night fae abandoned the livestock and began to kill the men themselves.

The deaths on both sides were considerable, though men had the worst of it in those days. The beast fae and night fae, not yet accustomed to working magic where iron was present, begged the year-shift fae to help them. The moon fae, appalled by all that had happened, demanded that the year-shift fae settle the dreadful dispute calmly.

At last, the year-shift fae did settle matters; they entered the battle themselves. Their coldsingers pulled down lightning from the sky, impossible to fight, shattering the iron-bearers in the fields. The men were defeated. They submitted to the rulership of the fae without condition, helpless.

But how do you stop a landslide once it has broken away from the mountain? A dark age for men followed, the first of many dark ages, in which they lived at the whim of the fae who watched over them - night fae, beast fae, sun fae, moon fae - and paid tribute to their masters.

In time the year-shift fae relented a little and permitted men to work very limited quantities of iron ... not weapons, which earned all wrights and possessors an instant death, but the tools that had once eased their lives, ploughshares and iron picks. Men continued to work beneath the earth, bringing forth the earth-bloom treasures that fascinated so many of the fae, but this time they could keep little of it for themselves.

The Fae Age of War Approx. 4,200 Years Ago

The night fae and beast fae ruled heavy where the moon fae ruled light. No longer forbidden to associate with humankind, the moon fae built their curious mock-cities of magic and enjoyed men's company. Playing again with the treasures of the deep earth, they shaped new and clever magics - magical constructs, imitations of animals, men and plants, strange things and new things wrought of anything the humans brought them.

Once again their studies and inquiries aroused the mistrust of the year-shift fae; century after century saw the moon fae's too-clever minds snatch at more and more of the mysteries. The year-shift fae issued another edict, the Third Interdict: no fae must ever share magic with humankind, and no fae must practise any magics that the year-shift fae deemed improper.

The moon fae were kindled to fury. In reality, the first stricture of that final edict very likely preserved the fae from a swift extinction, but perhaps conflict with humanity would have been lessened in any case by the rule of a gentler hand. Who can say?

Despite their wrath, the moon fae were swayed by calming counsel not to challenge the authority of the year-shift fae. War amongst the fae was averted for a third time, but that was the last time.

The suppression of humankind continued. But although the fae can survive in places where humankind cannot, so too can humankind survive in places the fae cannot. In the east of this broad country that the moon fae later called Inyaron, there is a mountainous area. All fae and all men know it now. There are the Dark Peaks, the Iron Lands, the place where the dark element lives so strong in the rock and earth that magic is scarce and fae go hungry.

That place is called Ferrean today, and its city is the city of Talton.

When men first settled there we do not know, but we know that many more fled to the mountains' protection in the years after the Third Interdict. There were other places like the Iron Lands, but none quite so conducive to a prospering society; the Dark Peaks were a wall few fae could cross even with the will to do so, and the valleys beyond were rich and arable, but thin in magic. Societies of men can feed there; societies of fae cannot. The only fae the men of Ferrean had contact with were the sea fae, and in those times the sea fae were indifferent to their presence.

The men of Ferrean did prosper. They had no fae to suppress them; the ban on iron could not touch them. They mined as they pleased, they built as they pleased, and they multiplied. They learned. They became masters of iron - they had it in plenty - and then of steel. They forged armour. They trained horses. They developed bows and missiles that shot further and faster. But of all the things they cultivated there, nothing was greater than their hatred of the fae.

Ferrean is a large area, but the civilisation of its people did spread beyond the lands that iron protected and into lands where there were fae to fight them. Many battles followed. There was no mercy on either side; the fae of Corruth were frightened by each new technology that the men of Ferrean developed over time, bitter-wrought iron and battle-fearless horses and long-biting bows, and their fear made them desperate to destroy its source. The humans of Ferrean, descended of and surrounded by the lands of bloodily oppressed men, were made just as cruel by old revenge and inherited anger.

They were given many names by the Corruthian fae - the bloody-hearted, the iron-skinned, the dark men. But the name that survives best, and is remembered best, is that simple moniker which the future Talton Army bore much later with such pride: the men of iron.

At first, little attention was paid by the year-shift fae to the battles in the east. The east had always been wild and desolate, the outer Corruthian fae little involved with the rest of their folk. As the men of iron swept out from their mountain lands and spread further and further throughout the east, however - through much of Corruth, through modern-day Camwell, through Alennan (Alenyan) and Scantless - their numbers swelled.

More and more settlements joined the Ferreans in a general uprising. The fighting spread like fire. Fae of all kinds died: beast fae, night fae, even moon fae. This new breed of man made no distinctions besides that simple line which divided iron-wielders from magic-singers.

As soon as it became clear how grave the threat truly was, the year-shift fae rose up and went to war - not in great numbers, for even in their age they were never numerous, but with all the terrible power that they held over magic and sky.

But this was not as simple a matter as it had been centuries on centuries before. Out in the fields of further Corruth and Camwell, the men did die, thrown down by the coldsung lightning. Yet they had a place of safety to retreat to. The Dark Peaks were a place that mazed and bewildered the rulers of the fae, even from the sky; the churning flow of iron subverting magic rendered their power unpredictable, wearying, paining and sickening them. The Ferreans had only to retreat to their iron home and the year-shift fae could not follow.

The Ferreans did retreat. But whenever the year-shift fae withdrew, the men of iron came out from their mountains again and laid bloody waste to any fae peoples who dared live nearby, and now the human settlements outside the Iron Lands were murmuring, angry, eager with the promise of a liberating war.

It was a stalemate, and a brutal one. Even year-shift fae were dying along with the other races; the bows of men had become far-reaching indeed. The Ferreans could not win, but nor could the fae of the surrounding lands stay in safety.

In Camwell, north of the Dark Peaks - that land was called Lucalyon then - the moon fae were suffering heavily. They began to study and practise the iron-magics again, looking for defences against the Ferreans. But fear of iron was a plague amongst all the other fae races, and not only the year-shift fae but all the fae races clamoured angrily about the First Interdict against iron-magics.

It was war at last. The moon fae already blamed the year-shift fae for turning humankind against them, and they refused to pay the price for what they saw as the year-shifters' fault. They practised the iron-magics more assiduously than ever, and the other works of making at which they had become so proficient, creating huge, mystic beasts to fight against the seemingly numberless humans.

Certainly even the year-shift fae did not realise how powerful the moon fae had become. The great makers of Lucalyon made harpies to spit poison from the skies, huge wolf-men to run down the able Ferrean horses, centaurs to counter the mounted knights ... warrior-beasts and monsters beyond number. But the greatest of all their creations was the Blue Wyrm, the huge dragon Ticamanon, iron-warded and knife-jawed.

The men of Ferrean were defeated and kept at bay ... for the time being, at least. But this war was not over. The moon fae, still angry, demanded an end to the failed, impotent rulership of year-shifters who could not defend their own. The other races of fae, awed and frightened by the moon fae's tremendous display of power, did not speak in support of the year-shift fae. And so another bitter battle began, moon fae against year-shift fae.

Monsters without number were created in those wars - most have been destroyed by the Talton Army in the 'civilised' lands by now, but their remnants and their offspring will never be wholly absent from the earth. Nor were magical constructs the moon fae's only recourse; their iron-magic strove directly with the deep flow-magic of the year-shift fae, and both did each other terrible harm. But it was the year-shift fae who suffered worst.

At last, the year-shift fae yielded to the moon fae. They refused, however, to live as subjects in a land where they had been lords. In anger and bitterness they exiled themselves from Inyaron, withdrawing back across the seas to the lands where leaves fall in autumn. That is where they were born, and that is where they still remain, at least until the inexorable creep of iron someday finds them.

The moon fae assumed the rulership of the magic-born, which they would hold throughout the last Ages of Fae, battle-weary and drained after the long conflict. They sought out the humans of Ferrean and sued for peace, swearing the Truce-By-Wattle rather than risking another damaging war.

By that treaty, no fae or work of the fae could ever enter the home of a human uninvited. The punitive snatchings of human children from their beds and the vicious slaughters of men in their sleep were over; many hoped the removal of this old fear would mean that the long wars were over as well.

But the words and sounds that mystically bind fae do not bind humankind in a similar way, and the hate and hurt that had been done went very, very deep.

The Fae Age of Peace 2,214 Years Ago

It seemed incredible, but for a time there was peace. Even the bloodthirsty eventually tire of war - and make no mistake, there was a deep and starving blood-thirst on both sides. Deep suffering is quick to rob the incautious of logic and understanding.

Peace without reconciliation is always temporary. No full-scale wars were fought for two to three centuries, but nor was there any traffic between men and fae besides an occasional skirmish; instead they each kept to their own, nursing old wounds and old hatreds, trying to imagine what the other side was planning. In spite of our very variant lifespans, men are the equals of fae in retaining a grudge.

Never imagine that I speak in absolutes when I say these things. Do not trust any ignorant fools who speak in absolutes. There were, are and always will be those on both sides whose thoughts are free of the mindless cycle of revenge. But they are never the generals.

Men and fae both rebuilt over time. The Tall Town earned its namesake, though men pronounce it differently now. The arts flourished - human art and fae art both. The study of making was also refined and shared amongst the fae races by the moon fae, though they remained superior in its use.

Other arts flourished in this early time: the arts of war. Not war in practice, yet, but war in theory - forging, smelting, refining on the side of men, and iron-shaping, iron-breaking, monster-making on the part of the fae. This was also the time that Reshaping came to have the evil name it still has today. In the older days it was a study of healing and rebuilding broken bodies, not a monstrous torture of the living.

There was one other great technology developed in this time, a human technology, with far more implications than all the others.

The gun.

It is impossible to know who created the first gun. There are so many conflicting stories and glory-claimers in Talton's history that the truth of it is simply gone, if in fact it was ever known at all. Some even say it was a technology from overseas, carried to Talton by foreigners who dared to sail where the ill-wishing sea fae ruled. Whoever the inventor was, that one individual transformed an age.

The first record of guns being used in a battle was not until the year 2410, when a large settlement of Alennan moon fae was raided in a reprisal for a plague of centaurs. Survivors took away horrendous tales of the lethal, iron-spitting weapons, still not quite a match in speed and efficiency for Talton's fine bows, but far more effective in smashing through iron-magic.

From that time on, the technology of firearms became the primary focus of the Talton military. The moon fae, for their part, studied making in all its forms - including Reshaping - more assiduously than ever. This was an age of famous monsters, still hugely popular in human literature, of course; among many other works, the great makers of Lucalyon created the other four Five Wyrms of Wrath to join blue Ticamanon, including the two that helped Arathalian devastate Talton in years to come - fire-spitting Spathcora and magic-wielding Tostamach, both capable of flight.

The Fae Age of Peace is so named more for the existence of the Truce-By-Wattle than for any long-term cessation of conflict. There were in fact ten major wars, three of them protracted for fifty years or more: the Alennan War of 2414-2419, the Two Hundred Miseries of 2687-2790, the First Camwell Border Siege of 3004-3006, the Second Camwell Border Siege of 3011-3020, the Rettan Revolution of 3070-3077, the Great Iron War of 3197-3231, the Great Mellenine War of 3292-3355, the Corruthian Revolution of 3480-3485, the Last Bloodletting of 3501-3553 and of course the Second Iron War from 3595 to 3639, where the Age of Peace ends.

I consider it necessary when looking at this age to consider concurrent events unrelated to the fae-human hostilities. Talton was not simply fighting the fae; it was also fighting certain of its neighbours, notably Axton in the years 2818-2842, and there were additionally four civil wars in the capital as the government and the style of government changed. The moon fae rulership was similarly preoccupied, not only militarily but politically, with all the factions that were forming around the issues of humanity and iron. A powerful religious movement was formulated around the idea that iron-magic was unholy, quite similar (though clearly with an inverted belief) to the Cult of Iron that sprang up in Talton around 3500.

In fine, then, very few of the wars of the Age of Peace were full-scale and broadly damaging to Talton or Inyaron as a whole, with the possible exceptions of the Two Hundred Miseries and both of the Iron Wars. Low-key hostilities and human guerilla activity in countryside still controlled by fae defined most of the conflicts. Both sides were still more or less evenly matched and unwilling to risk the destruction and catastrophe of full and open war, particularly in the period following the Two Hundred Miseries.

Their reticence was given meaning in the Second Iron War. Loss of life on both sides was unprecedented, as were the war cruelties perpetrated. The Talton Army, the true men of iron, had already formed the entity that we would recognise today, and the advent of the bayonet had made them deadlier than ever. The Quicksilvers, the shock troops of the fae's forces, were armed and armoured by the legendary Iron-Makers of Lucalyon, whose magic had reached the peak of its power and efficacy against iron.

The Second Iron War lasted forty-four years and took three hundred thousand human lives. The fae dead were not recorded, but the proportion was surely the same. Two of the Five Wyrms perished, including ancient Ticamanon; so too did the then-Queen and King of the moon fae, Menelhaira and Ulyatar; so too did all twenty members of the Talton Senate; so too did the Iron General, Tancress Marcalley, the human hero of the Last Bloodletting.

There are two reasons that the Fae Age of Evening begins with the final truce in 3639. For one, it is the year that the moon fae Queen and King, rulers of Inyaron, both died. The Queen who succeeded, the famous Yurahaina, was related only by marriage to their son, who also died in the war.

But the second reason for this reckoning, and certainly the main reason, is that by the end of the Second Iron War, the greatest power of the moon fae and the fae as a whole was finally spent. Many wilder regions of the country were still theirs, particularly in the borderlands, where men still lived under nominal fae rule. But many more regions were lost, and the hold of the moon fae over Inyaron was slipping quickly.

Then there was the fall of Lucalyon. The Iron-Makers of Lucalyon were killed in their dozens during their fae-city's famous siege, taking with them much of the knowledge and power they had accumulated over the centuries. There would be other magics, other war-monsters created, and the workings of magic to counter iron had certainly not been lost, but they would not be further developed and strengthened by expert minds. The sun was finally setting on the Ages of Fae.

The Fae Age of Evening 861 Years Ago

Queen Yurahaina inherited a shaky throne and a broken-spirited people. Factions and tensions amongst the moon fae were stronger than ever - particularly the tensions between Yurahaina and the great Makers of Loria, who refused to take any further part in events on the mainland. Some historians seem fond of calling it 'a decision they lived to regret', but I cannot comment on that. They enjoyed a hundred and fifty years of final peace before the end, which is more than can be said for the harried souls of Inyaron. 'A decision others lived to regret' seems more to the point.

In the years immediately following the end of the Second Iron War, truces were sought on both sides and foiled on both sides. A vote in the Senate Reborn in Talton for another lasting treaty with the fae was narrowly defeated. Yurahaina had no support even within her own family for a similar offer on the part of her people. There was a de facto truce for around seventy years while both sides rebuilt and recovered as they could, but it could only be temporary.

The fragile truce eventually broke in 3711 when Marias Tennet, an entrepreneur, discovered gold in Liari lands (approximately 50km from the modern Ferrean border to the west). The Liari moon fae and night fae, fearful that the humans were mining iron in their lands or planning to settle there, attacked and destroyed the mining outpost. Marias Tennet petitioned the Talton government for Army assistance, and received it.

When a strong detachment of the Talton Army gathered in Liari, sent by a overnment desperate for this chance to refill its coffers, Yurahaina and her generals saw an opportunity to attack. Liari was and is an area with large reserves of magic and very little iron to disrupt it. The Queen directed the local Liari fae to engage in occasional skirmishes with the Army, as before, while she assembled an army of her own to engage them.

Messengers were sent throughout Inyaron and to lands outside Inyaron. Loria did not answer Yurahaina's summons, but many others did, including the worried sea fae of the Iron Shores. Yurahaina also took the unprecedented action of sending messengers to the King of the distantly exiled year-shift fae, Pindranain, asking him to set aside old enmities and come to Inyaron's aid.

The Host of Yurahaina was the last full army ever raised by the fae; the other, lesser forces raised in later years would not come close to matching it, even under Arathalian. Fae of all races answered her call - even certain of the year-shift fae would answer it eventually - and gathered in the wild places of Liari.

In 3716, the Talton Army in Liari was attacked by Yurahaina's night forces: the night fae, the beast fae, the invisible sun fae and the gigantic vanguard of the Iron Shore sea fae, swelled by the time of high tide. Darkness was an enemy that iron still had little power over, and although the Talton Army forces were vastly superior in numbers, Yurahaina's army carried the day.

When news arrived in Talton of the disaster, the people were outraged. In greater force - a true army, this time - Talton marched to protect its interests in Liari, armed with its finest weaponry.

The battle that ensued, the Battle for Westrock, was vicious, but it was the moon fae who carried the day, if at cost - another of the Five Wyrms died, Tashapan, and so did one of the Queen's two daughters. It was a triumph for the flagging fae, and it brought more flocking to Yurahaina's standard. An emissary from the year-shift fae arrived as well, one of the King's own sons - but he brought no army with him. He had come to see the war for himself, gauge the threat and carry news of it back to his father. His name, as history records so clearly, was Cochalyon.

The implications of Yurahaina's victory were not lost on either side. The Talton Army was reeling, spread too thin - it now had only a skeleton force in the capital to defend itself. This was a chance that could not come again. Yurahaina commanded her army to make possibly the most famous march in any fae war: the March on Talton.

Panic was a fever in Talton as Yurahaina's army set out for the Dark Peaks and the unthinkable road to the Ferrean capital. Nearby Army detachments in Corruth and Melassa were sent frantic messages, most of which the fae intercepted. The fae army itself proceeded steadily, warded by those famous moon fae iron-workings, determined to take the war where it had never been before.

History is full of junctions. Who can say whether I would be sitting in an iron-clad prison now if just a few twists of fate had twisted the other way? If the year-shift fae had sent their army - even just to support the moon fae outside the unbearable Dark Peaks - would Yurahaina have prevailed? If Loria had joined the fight, would the Queen have asked them to bar any human attack from Camwell? Would she have cheated death at Camwellian hands?

They are meaningless questions. As every schoolchild knows, Yurahaina marched to Salyacar - you call it Queensridge - and watched as her army crushed the defenders in the first slope of the valley. But while she watched, the force from Camwell which had destroyed her too-slender rearguard of sea fae arrived at last. Her vanguard and bodyguard were overcome, three of her four surviving children were slain, and she herself died with two dozen bullets in her flesh.

Her army had prevailed in the valley; when the Camwellians charged down upon them, they narrowly prevailed again. But the discovery of the Queen's death threw them into disarray. Her surviving daughter, Lacrellame, was an Iron-Maker rather than a warrior; the death of her mother and siblings left her stricken with grief and panic. Rather than march on Talton - where, it must be said, there could only have been a fifty-percent chance of victory, or less - called a full retreat and withdrew to Liari.

Following the death of the Queen and the retreat from the Dark Peaks, the fae went into their final decline. The Talton Army regrouped and swept through Corruth, Liari and Scantless, growing stronger and stronger. All fae and all their creatures were killed as the Army or the increasingly armed settlements caught them; active hunts went on for centuries afterwards. Loria fell some eighty years after Yurahaina's death, enriching Talton further in resources and support from the human islanders.

The final act of resistance fell not to Yurahaina's daughter but to that most famous of the moon fae, Arathalian. Arathalian was only a distant relation of the Queen's, a second cousin, but he had fought with Yurahaina and was a fierce opponent of all humankind, a grandson of one of the great Iron-Makers who had died in Lucalyon.

When Queen Lacrallame suicided in 4005, almost three hundred years after her mother's death, Arathalian was next in line to take a throne that no longer exerted any real power over its former subjects. Many of the fae of Inyaron were in full flight from the Talton Army - to wilder areas still untouched or even across the seas, particularly to the lands of the year-shifters.

In many ways, Arathalian was the most able of the moon fae's rulers. It is fortunate for humankind, I think, that he appeared so late in our history. He was an able general and very powerful in his magic, but he nevertheless recognised the futility of purely military action for his weakened nation; political and environmental damage were his favoured methods. The most startling of his tactics - and one which still has repercussions for Talton today - was his use of subtly Reshaped humans as spies, kidnappers and assassins in their own capital. The modern term 'Faeborn' has its roots in Arathalian's time.

Under Arathalian, the moon fae returned to the diligent practice and research of iron-worked magics and Reshaping. This time, many of the powerful Makers of Loria aided him in this, aggrieved by the human invasion of their land. The moon fae's last, concerted creation of monsters and war-beasts of all kinds began early in the 4100s, but they were not released immediately - the time was not yet right.

In 4174, when war broke out between Talton and their old enemies in Axton - whether Arathalian had any hand in this is impossible to determine, contrary to claims you may read in the histories - the lord of the moon fae finally acted. His army was ready and waiting in outer Corruth; it had been for some years.

The winter of 4174 is still referred to as the Sunless Winter by men of Corruth. A plague of war-beasts and monsters of all kinds - centaurs, harpies, dryads, naiads, wolf-men, spider-children, behemoths, the two of the Five Wyrms that still survived and their lesser progeny, other black things never given a name - all spilled from the wilds and swarmed throughout Corruth, laying waste to the countryside and killing its people.

The north-east of Corruth was overwhelmed far too swiftly for the Talton Army to take any decisive action. Arathalian pressed on to Camwell, former Lucalyon, and razed every city and township in his path. There he established the fortress of New Lucalyon, perched on the northern borders of the Dark Peaks, not two days' march from the place where Yurahaina had made her legendary stand.

More than four hundred years have passed since Arathalian's grey citadel stood in Camwell; it remained there for only a little more than twenty years before it was torn down. But even today, even from the mouths of researchers, I hear men and women telling each other to 'rot in Lucalyon', and it means exactly the same as 'go to hell'.

I would tell you what Lucalyon means, and why that is such a sad irony, but I would rather not share the language. Suffice to say that something very bright was made very black.

Arathalian's reign was short and dark near the Dark Peaks. When strong men hate they are the hardest of all to dissuade from revenge, and Arathalian had lost many companions to the iron-clad prisons that were becoming so popular in Ferrean. The Talton Army fought him there on their doorstep for two decades, battling their way through all the hordes of monsters he and his allies had made and continued to make, trying to break his spellwrought walls with their iron.

The two sides exhausted and weakened each other, as has happened so often in our shared history. Arathalian began to see that he could not keep his seat as matters were - but he could also see how bitterly he was making the men of iron pay. Talton was weak. It was near. And if he could only reach that city, where no fae had ever fought, he knew he could break it.

That was the year 4203. This is tired, old ground, and all you children of men know it, but I will tread it again for completion's sake.

In 4203, on the grandly chosen first day of spring, the ruler of the fae marched out from his citadel, clad in the ironwings his makers had wrought for him, shielded by the greatest and most powerful - and the last - of their magics. With him went as many of his people as his armour-makers could craft strong wings for, and the final and fullest force of the winged war-beasts, and those two famous Wyrms, fiery Spathcora and wily Tostamach.

Thus armoured, Arathalian's small army did not march - it flew on Talton, passing over the iron-thick Dark Peaks and into lands where only fae prisoners had trodden, and never willingly. You can imagine the people's terror for yourself, or borrow one of those multitudinous books about it. I do not indulge in morbid detail.

Arathalian and his army fell like year-shifter thunderbolts upon the city, smashing, breaking and burning, dodging the Truce-By-Wattle by hurling boulders or globes of fire at the human homes. Most of the city was ruined; the Senate House and the other Houses of Parliament were broken into pieces that Arathalian hurled into the River Averne.

He did not prevail in the end - though he very well could have. The Second Brigade managed to shoot him down over Cripley's Hill, as the song goes, and took him captive while the bullets in his flesh stripped him of power. Spathcora and Tostamach, the last two Wyrms of Wrath, were killed; the last moon fae fled on their iron-made wings. The war-beasts lasted longer, particularly the poisonous harpies, but eventually the Talton Army did drive them out or kill them.

The Queen's line was gone, even the remotest relations, and no-one else had any heart left for the fight. Some fae withdrew to the wilds again, hoping iron would not reach them there, and more fled Inyaron altogether. There were other battles in later years as the Talton Army stamped out the last and nearest traces of the fae - small battles, isolate battles - but the real conflict was over.

The official date for the beginning of the Age of Iron is the year 4209, Second Zero, the year that the lands of Ferrean, Corruth, Camwell, Alennan, Melassa, Loria, Trettan and Hainmarra came together as a Federation. But the Ages of the Fae certainly ended with the capture and defeat of the last ruler of the moon fae, Arathalian.

There; over ten thousand years of history in a few pages. Remember what I’ve said about a single book versus many, and look elsewhere for clearer knowledge. Look elsewhere for later knowledge, too. I have spanned only the Five Ages of Fae; you know the Age of Iron that follows far better than I do.