Flight from the Shadow - What happened?

[Arjan]

We all know that The Flight from the Shadow was the beginning of the migration to Cerilia and was due to growing power of Azrai.

That is all there is we know, but i can imagine this has been something REALLY big at the time causing that many people to flee.

So what do you think could have happened?
how was this growing power manifested?
what made it so bad that everyone started to "run away"

was this some sort of Army of the Dead ala Game of Thrones or (a) really bad government(s) that got so widespread corrupted that people fled (like you see sometimes happening in the real world, like for example right now in a latin american country)
Or perhaps the veil with the shadow world was already starting to rip there?

i'd like to hear your thoughts and ideas on this matter.

[Fizz]

This is an interesting question. I'll have to give it some thought, but i see two possibilities. "Flight" could mean one of two things.

The flight could be the result of a single massive event: a collosal war, major famine or other natural disaster. This results in the majority of the population leaving en masse in a short period of time. But that doesn't seem very Azrai-like to me. It's too overt, too blunt.

But flight could mean a gradual migration over many of years, suggesting a slow but steady growing threat.

Perhaps regimes slowly becoming more cruel and oppressive as Azrai corrupted Aduria's leaders to his ends. So at first a few people flee to colonies, and more and more do so as things continually get worse.

Or maybe Azrai slowly broke down the walls to the Shadow World, slowly consuming regions with undead and shadow horrors. Or better yet, maybe he caused the Seeming to leak into Aduria, changing reality as he saw fit. That would certainly cause myself to up and emigrate... heh.

There is nothing canon about Aduria afaik, so if the barriers to the Shadow World did break down, did they recover when Azrai went to Cerilia, or do those cracks still exist?

Perhaps it was a precursor of what happened in Cerilia pre-Deismaar, when Azrai used his abilities to slowly corrupt the Vos and the Elves to his banner. But in Arduria, unlike Deismaar, the gods did not make a stand to repel him. Perhaps even the gods were deceived at that point.

Or maybe it was all of these and more- i would not expect Azrai to attack on only one front.


-Fizz

[AndrewTall]

But that said, given that Raesene was seduced by the shadow I would have expected something different to corruption of the leaders - particularly as if the population had run from a corrupting leadership then Deismaar should have had some southern armies involved.

So I lean more towards Azrai influencing the climate to cause corp failures, perhaps the crack in the veil between the shadow world sort of thing.

[Fizz]

But that said, given that Raesene was seduced by the shadow I would have expected something different to corruption of the leaders - particularly as if the population had run from a corrupting leadership then Deismaar should have had some southern armies involved.

So I lean more towards Azrai influencing the climate to cause corp failures, perhaps the crack in the veil between the shadow world sort of thing.

I think a key consideration to this is how many fled. Do the original tribes still have members in Aduria, or was it an emigration of the entire populous?

If the former (the old tribes still exist there), then i could see famines and the like, but with a few being able to hold out. If the latter (literally everyone fled), then i think it would take something far more unnatural.

My understanding is that there are no tribes still in Aduria, so let's say everyone migrated. What gets entire civilizations to move?

If Azrai opened connections to the Shadow World and perhaps even used the Seeming, that would surely cause a massive flight of everyone. Famines, earthquakes, war: these are all things common folk can understand, and even cope with. But when reality itself is not stable, that should send pretty much everyone running.

Of course, if that was the case, why didn't Azrai do that in Cerilia?


-Fizz

[AndrewTall]

Aduria is much more fun if it has at least some population remaining, though I wouldn't expect a lot given that Cerilia started to colonise it!

I would suspect that a fair amount of Aduria's population is monstrous, perhaps Azrai encouraged unpleasant creatures to migrate from the shadow world (there's no reason why halfllings should be the only race driven out of one world into the other) or used the shadow world to corrupt some of the tribes into monsters.

But as you say, people don't move without good reason, so to get mass migration you need a major motivator - climate change, religious drive to the holy land, driven out by war - whatever it was it was something that the tribes didn't think that they could fight.

I think that I took the view that Aduria was much more primitive than Cerilia in my homebrew, and that the tribes learned magic from the sidhe and ironworking from the karamhul after coming to cerilia which would have made a significant difference in their ability to fight the shadow come Deismaar, but I can't recall any canon that led me to that perception.

If Azrai had legions from Aduria it would explain in part why Deismaar was such a tough battle, the 'subverted rebels' approach always seemed inadequate to me.

[Magian]

I don't have it fully worked out and perhaps it is unusable, but I had ideas of a higher category of beings involved using Azrai's curiosity for more knowledge and what he awakened to lure him into what he became and the real importance of Cerilia.

It was an imbalance of a cosmic darkness encroaching upon the mortal plane that could be felt approaching, yet diviners and word of mouth traveled giving warning as well. There were ancient empires that were very successful at magic that decided to expand after gaining new powers revealed to them by Azrai's folly and his unlocking of forbidden secrets. It was too powerful to control and mortals sensed a warp in their perceptions of reality. That motivated them to leave as the land itself became poisoned. Armies marched and expanded into their lands. Armies of monsters with darkness that followed them. And then Deismaar the great sundering happened which changed everything from what was into what never should have been.

[Sorontar]

I believe there were some "canon" references to the beast-men of Aduria (but I can't remember where the references were) as well as additional publications like the "Roof of the World" and the yakman.

You could treat it like the First, Second and Third Ages of Arda/Middle-Earth. In the First Age, Illuvatar created the world of Arda from the songs of his sub-gods, the Valar. The equivalent of heaven was part of the world and accessible. The First Children, the elves were created, and the dwarves were constructed. Most of the elves moved from Middle-earth to Heaven and some later rebelled and moved back. Humans came later into a world already populated. Once the god Melkor rebelled and was defeated by the other gods (sound familiar?), for the Second Age the land started to be reshaped with "Heaven" made less accessible and the equivalent of "Atlantis" was created for the faithful. When Sauron corrupted the faithful and they tried to reach "Heaven", for the Third Age the land was reshaped more with much of the Middle-earth land of the Elves sunk along with "Atlantis", the world of Arda was made a sphere and "Heaven" was only accessible by the elves and those judged worthy by the gods.

So Tolkien had lots of major populations moving around, often in one trip, lots of turmoil and lots of cultural adjustment. That is why there are so many elven tongues, because there was not just one group of elves.

Sorontar

[Fizz]

I believe there were some "canon" references to the beast-men of Aduria (but I can't remember where the references were) as well as additional publications like the "Roof of the World" and the yakman.

I don't know about the beast-men, but the Yak-men are originally from the Al-Qadim setting, and as far as i can tell, have nothing to do with Birthright. The reference on the Yak-man wiki page references that it is based on Dragon #241. And that Dragon article, is about Al-Qadim, not Birthright. (That issue does have a Birthright article, but is totally separate from the Yak-men article.) So i am confused as to how that came to be on the wiki or considered for Aduria.

-Fizz

[Magian]

There are the beast-men, which I prefer to imagine them as like the Greyhawk monster of that name or the character from He-man. The Monte Cook 3e books "unearthed arcana" or w/e they were had lion head people and the like, which could be used as well. I think they are in the inner part savanna which is west of the gold coast.

There was the Djinn empire likely on the gold coast or east of aduria.

The yuan-ti empires which were the south.

The celtic island in the north west.

There was a pass in the huge mountain rage or spine of the continent referencing a tribe of a similar pass of the himalyas.

There were desert tribes west of the yuan-ti empires.

There are likely remnants of the cerilian tribes that are quite different in many ways, but that is suggestion.

There is the aquataine kingdom.

The yak-men were an option to insert, just like al-qadim was an option to insert for Djafra. They yak-men I think would have been just west of Mieres in the mountains there.

However, at this point I don't think any of these matter anyway. No work has been done aside from Bjorn's campaign regarding these things that I've seen and my own terrible thread looking into the various maps that I had. Just make it up imo.

The azrai army would be like the army of winter but the storm is made of shadow and it was monstrous and beastly not only undead. It carried with it a change that all the natural beings of the world would flee. Some element more than just an army like the ice tiles of the army of the dead in the GoT intro or the plague lands of wow, or the creep of the zerg. Even a scenario of the sort of Dunkirk may be a good scene, waiting for transports and the army is the last to leave protecting the flight of their families.

[Fizz]

So, i found some more information that i think is pertinent.

From Dragon#241, article Chronicle of Cerilia by Carrie Bebris and Ed Stark (so i figure we can call this canon):

-800 HC, Brechts in Aduria begin explorations by land and sea to find a new home, hoping to flee the Shadow.

-515 HC, The Flight from the Shadow, arrival of humans.

-515 to -465 HC, Andu settle most lands now recognized as Anuire.

-400 HC, first Rjuven settlements in north Cerilia.

-20 HC to -2 HC, the third wave of Brecht colonization.


And there are a few others in there. But the point is that the migration was a very slow process over hundreds of years, and threat of Azrai went back nearly 300 years before they found Cerilia.

So what drove the Flight could not have been a single cataclysmic event, but something that occurred over many generations.

I recall a reference somewhere, that the Cold Rider's influence in the Shadow World is like a drop of oil on a pond that slowly spreads and ultimately covers the entire surface. Perhaps this is something like what the Adurians experienced.

-Fizz

[Arjan]

to figure out what happened i think you have to look at the status of what and how is Aduria now.
If you take a look at recent world events and the migration of people from a country, most actual venezuela, is because of corruption, inflation, lack of food etc that people are looking for other alternatives. BUT that is only a partial flight. not a whole country.

if you look at some of the lost civilizations you will now find them in desert like areas, sumeria, egypt, peru, mexico even and all of those at one point were fertile areas.
Since wood was a main product to build and cook and the civilization increased the need for wood upped as well. in some places there wasnt a single tree left in a radius for 100 km or more.. so eventually people simple left because it became impossible to live.

in that time people also started with the offering in hope the gods would bring them food or whatever prosperous live again.

(now its hard to believe because in some places the trees grew back, but that took a couple of hundreds years..)

So if i take this information to aduria and what would have happened i would suggest a similar event as described above.
according the timeline http://www.birthright.net/forums/showwiki.php?title=Timeline_of_Cerilia
the khinasii started counting MA since the flight from the shadow. that is to the current date more then 2000 years.
I would treat it as a combination of lack of fossil fuel, climate change (failing harvests) and people turned more to religion because of all the problems.
since there was a pantheon of different gods people chose to follow different ones of course. since there was no fossil fuel, food or whatever people turned more to criminality and so praying more to Azrai (and thus corrupting leaders etc etc).
followers of azrai, or simply said, the criminals would wait and attack from the shadows and with the increasing violence and criminality eventually the people decided to flight from the shadow.

so at the end there was no one left to steal from so what do you do? you follow them and that is where it ends with the battle of mount deismaar.

- dont forget people make stories bigger then they really are..so what could have been a "simple cause", after generations it may have became a mythic story of gods and shadows (like the mythical stories we got now as well..)

this being said, how is Aduria now 2000 years later? could a similar migration have taken place from another continent to aduria? how deserted are the former clan origins? but thats another story or thread ;)

[Arjan]

Or maybe Azrai slowly broke down the walls to the Shadow World, slowly consuming regions with undead and shadow horrors. Or better yet, maybe he caused the Seeming to leak into Aduria, changing reality as he saw fit. That would certainly cause myself to up and emigrate... heh.
-Fizz

i thought about that as well, the opening of the veil letting all terror out and eventually the whole of Aduria was swallowed by the shadow. and the rifts were closed with the "Death" of azrai and the sacrifice of the old gods. azrai being "banished" to the shadowworld (hence the cold rider) and is looking for a way to come back..
but that would mean Aduria is filled with shadowworld beings there got stuck there when the rifts were closed

[Magian]

I haven't read anything about the shadow world recently. Perhaps my memory and imagination over the years have changed things. I was under the impression that before Deismaar there was no shadow world only the faerie world. It was the home of the halflings and elves had some ties to it maybe something to do with the higher magic and how time works in their realms as well as their undying nature. I like to think that it is either something they are guarding, or is coveted by some powers elsewhere. This is the motivation of the higher category of beings in my outlook to corrupt Azrai to drive the humans to the elven lands to weaken them and the hold on Cerilia. It is how I explain how history happened in a sort of secret knowledge chronicle.

So the event of Deismaar is what shattered the faerie world and opened a rift or something when the local deities were destroyed. Which is precisely what the corrupting powers wanted to happen to gain a foothold in Cerilia. Thus the faerie world became the shadow world. The source of the shadow is elsewhere and not native to the world. It is an invasion on a cosmic level like some elder of the Lovecraftian mythos farted or something and the corruption of two worlds is the result. I use that wording to try to illustrate the level of a power involved showing a scale beyond even imperial unification a grand goal of many players. But all that is meaningless to the PCs I suppose.

The point for me is that Azrai was a key to unlock this world through his pride and pursuit of knowledge as he was easily manipulated. I add a bit more to his ethos and those of his followers by giving him some secrets that he discovered that are motivations for the things they do as heroes in their own view. But that is neither here nor there. So, to me it is the secrets he found that are the key to undo much of the damage. Like maybe a shadow of his early self is somewhere out there that works fix some things, maybe bit by bit. I mean I view him as a complicated being for sure, so bits of him are everywhere. Perhaps the corrupted are trying to do something similar but to the opposite end. But, maybe that is just too much focus on Azrai.