The Long Decline and the Chaos
What the empire called order, the peoples it built called slavery. The Chaos Event The Chaos The Chaos was a continent-wide civilisation-collapse spanning approximately ninety-eight years, beginning around year 1700 of the Inarin Calendar when the Iru Parliament of the... was not a sudden collapse but a generational war: ninety-eight years from the first outbreak to the last retreating Iru People Iru The progenitors, and the only naturally evolved people of Elshore. army, from the Senate's catastrophic decree to the hibernation of the last Serton of Inarin. When it ended, a world that had been ruled by its own creators for nearly two thousand years was ruled by the people those creators had made.
Key traits
- Year IR 1700: the Inarin Parliament strips all rights from the servant races; Vaparium Place Vaparium The Sovereign Arcology of Vaparium, the Meir homeland in the south and the most technologically advanced structure on Elshore. opens as sanctuary; the Chaos begins.
- Chaos Year 12: Inarin recalls eighty thousand BAWSent Sentinels from the Traveller; the BAWSent hive-mind declines to annihilate a sentient species and remains on the Traveller; the servant races led by the Maan People Maan The most numerous people of Elshore and the baseline cultural reference of the age. rise in open rebellion.
- Chaos Year 21: servant-race militias capture key southern territories; the Meir People Meir The only people of Elshore not born of it. halt attacks and withdraw to Vaparium, remaining neutral but extending sanctuary.
- Chaos Year 35: Inarin's armies are reduced to mercenaries and desperate levies; the Hall of Knowledge in Udhafa Place Udhafa The old capital of the Maan empire and one of the great inhabited ruins of the world, an ancient Iru-founded city in eastern Tarkdaara, carved into the bedrock below the Claw Pe... is sealed and its archives smuggled or destroyed to prevent capture.
- Chaos Year 47: internal Iru rebellion against the noble houses; the Maan Council Faction The Maan Council The founding war council established in AC 1 by Rokhir Savil after the servant-race rebellion overthrew the Inarin Empire. proposes a New Confederation; the Meir formally recognise the Maan Council.
- Chaos Year 94: the last united Iru army is defeated at the Battle of Irmashor Fields; servant-race councils govern three-quarters of Elshore; the decision is taken, the Iru will retreat from a world they can no longer rule.