The Fivefold Fleets

Five and a half centuries after the founding of Vadesh, the children of the Ur-City set out to inherit the world. The great dispersal is remembered as the Fivefold Fleets, and tradition dates the sailing to 1,445 years before the close of the divine age.

The Exodus from Vadesh

A cradle could not hold a growing people. With the blessing of the Elder gods, the peoples of Vadesh built great fleets and sailed out across the seas of Kworgalya to settle its distant coasts. They went as five branches of one family, and where each came ashore, it stayed — so that the geography of that single voyage still shapes every border, war, and prejudice of the world today.

Five Peoples, Five Shores

The three great branches of humankind took the warm southern and eastern coasts, settling in proud isolation from one another. The Suvanar, the golden-haired "Men of Gold," fire-blooded and free, took the rich southeast and would in time raise the confederacy of Daskilon and the faith of the Ruby. The red-haired Lohanar, the "Men of Iron," settled the central south. The raven-haired Ashanar, the "Men of Stone," took the far southwest, a covenant-keeping and liminal people.

To the cold northeast went the Pavanar — the elves, the "Men of Wind" — long-lived, memory-keeping, and bound to the Warden's arts. To the iron mountains of the northwest went the Himanar — the dwarves, the "Men of Ice" — immortal smiths and lineage-keepers of the Hammer.

So the world was peopled: one origin, five shores, and a thousand future quarrels. For a long age the Elders walked openly among them still — and when monstrous powers older than any of them rose to contest the land, gods and mortals would march to war together in the Crusades Against the Beasts.