History & Timelines

Series: Part 2: Crafting Lore for your Home Brew Campaign

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Welcome back to our worldbuilding series! In Part 1, we focused on the Big Picture, Myth Creation and so much more for your world; its scale, tone, central conflict, and rules of reality. Now, it’s time to give your setting depth by creating a history that feels alive.

Step 1: Think in Eras, Not Details

The easiest way to build history is to think in broad strokes:

• The Founding → How civilization began (or how your region was first settled).

  • Refugees fleeing a tyrant king built hidden settlements in the swamps, carving out survival in secret.

  •  A band of wandering druids planted a great tree whose roots became the first city.

  • The gods gifted mortals the Crown of Dawn, binding them together under one empire.

    
    

• The Golden Age → A time of prosperity, growth, or magical advancement.

  • Trade routes opened, wealth flowed, and city walls rose high; though the poor remained in the mud.

  • Magic thrived; floating lantern-festivals filled the skies, enchanted bridges stretched across seas, and fairy courts mingled with mortals.

  • The empire spanned the continent, forging alliances with dragons, elves, and giants. Legendary heroes rose, and peace lasted for centuries.

    
    

• The Fall/Disaster → A war, curse, betrayal, or catastrophe that reshaped the land.

  • A bloody civil war tore the region apart, nobles betrayed each other, and mercenary armies salted fields to starve the rebels.

  •  A magical prank gone wrong shattered the great tree, scattering its seeds into wild, unpredictable forests. Fey creatures still haunt the ruins.

  • The Crown was shattered during the War of Sundering; continents split, empires fell, and the gods themselves withdrew.

    
    

• The Recent Past → Events in the last 100 years that directly shape your campaign.

  •  A fragile truce holds, but famine, banditry, and plague plague the land. The scars of betrayal fuel endless vendettas.

  •  Small towns rebuilt around surviving seeds of the tree. Strange magical storms sweep in every spring, leaving behind bizarre creatures and mysteries.

  • Ambitious rulers now seek to reforge the Crown. Prophecies whisper that one day it will return; whether as salvation or destruction.

You don’t need to write every dynasty, king, or trade deal, just enough to give players context.

Step 2: Anchor Your Timeline with Big Events

Here are some examples of timeline anchors:

• Founding Event:

  • “The First City was built atop the ruins of a fallen god, drawing settlers to its power.”

    • Flavor: The city still hums with divine echoes: shrines, relics, and strange phenomena appear in its streets. Priests and scholars argue whether the god was slain, or merely sleeps beneath.

    • Themes: Faith versus doubt, the dangers of divine leftovers, people drawn to holy power for wealth or survival.

    • Story Hooks: Strange tremors in the ruins; rival cults claiming the god’s return; whispers that the city’s prosperity feeds on blood sacrifices.

      
      

• Golden Age:

  • “The Empire of Ashur united the continent and spread magical education, creating a century of peace.”

    • Flavor: Grand libraries and magical academies were founded; enchanted aqueducts and crystal roads linked distant provinces. For a time, commoners and nobles alike shared in prosperity.

    • Themes: Knowledge as power, the fragility of peace, hubris in believing empires last forever.

    • Story Hooks: Surviving magical artifacts are hoarded or smuggled; ruins of arcane universities promise forgotten secrets; some still dream of restoring Ashur’s glory.

      
      

• Fall/Disaster:

  • “The Sundering shattered the sky, raining shards of crystal that poisoned the land and broke the empire apart.”

    • Flavor: Blackened craters scar the earth, glassy plains still shimmer with deadly energies, and crystal shards whisper to those who touch them.

    • Themes: Catastrophe reshaping the land, power born from destruction, mortals grappling with the cost of ambition.

    • Story Hooks: Survivors of shard-corruption form cults; entire towns built from crystal glow eerily at night; rumors say the shards are fragments of the god beneath the First City.

      
      

• Recent Past:

  • “A brutal civil war ended ten years ago, leaving scars across the kingdom and power vacuums in every province.”

    • Flavor: Broken castles lie in ruin, fields are salted from scorched earth campaigns, and many villages have no leaders at all. Veterans turned mercenaries roam the countryside.

    • Themes: Post-war survival, fractured loyalties, the cost of rebuilding versus the temptation of conquest.

    • Story Hooks: A charismatic warlord seeks to restart the war; missing heirs resurface; foreign powers take advantage of the instability to meddle in local politics.

      
      

Each of these becomes a story seed your players can bump into while exploring.

Step 3: Make History Discoverable

Lore hits harder when it’s discovered in-game, not dumped in a monologue. Try delivering history through:

• Ruins → Crumbling castles, shattered cities, or cursed battlegrounds.

  • The Bloodspire Keep: Once a proud fortress, now its towers lean like broken teeth. Local farmers swear the stones “weep” red when it rains.

  • The Shattered Forum: A city square buried in glass-like crystal from the Sundering. Adventurers whisper that sometimes voices echo there, even when the square is empty.

  • The Hollow Fields: A cursed battlefield where no crops will grow; peasants leave offerings of bread and salt to keep the dead quiet.

    
    

• Legends & Songs → Tavern ballads, children’s rhymes, or whispered folktales.

  • Tavern Ballad: “The Ashur King with silver eyes, / Who ruled the land but told no lies, / They say his crown was forged of flame, / And burned his children just the same.”

  • Children’s Rhyme: “Step on a shard, cut your heart. / Touch the sky, fall and die. / Don’t you go where the crystals glow, / Or the god below will know.”

  • Folktale: Villagers whisper about the “Shard Wolves”; phantom beasts with glowing maws that roam the countryside on moonless nights.

    
    

• Artifacts → A cracked crown, a cursed blade, or an ancient journal.

  • The Ashur Crown (cracked): Said to have bound the empire together; now split into seven pieces, each whispering to its bearer.

  • The Blade of Dust: A sword that kills not with steel, but by turning foes to ash with each strike. Its wielder always wastes away alongside their victims.

  • The Journal of Serah Vael: A scholar’s account of the Sundering, the last entries are scrawled in a frantic, near-illegible hand. Some pages have been deliberately burned away.

    
    

• NPC Perspectives → Peasants, nobles, and scholars may all tell the same story differently.

  • Peasant: “Golden age? Don’t know it. My grandfather says the empire bled him dry with taxes, same as the lords now.”

  • Noble: “Without the Sundering, we’d all be united still! The peasants should be grateful my house guards what little order remains.”

  • Scholar: “History bends to those who write it. The truth is buried beneath ruins and bones; we must dig deeper.”

    
    

This keeps history immersive and interactive.

Step 4: Decide What Still Matters

Not every event in your world’s past needs to matter today. Focus on the ones that echo into the present. Ask:

• Who still benefits or suffers because of this history?

  • Benefiting:

    • Shard Barons: wealthy nobles who hoard crystal fragments from the Sundering, selling their power to the highest bidder.

    • Priests of the First City: their temples draw pilgrims and coin, claiming to guard the “sleeping god” beneath the ruins.

      
      

  • Suffering:

    • Farmers in the Hollow Fields: still unable to grow crops on cursed soil, relying on charity or banditry.

    • War Orphans: entire generations left without families after the civil war, now grown into mercenaries, thieves, or zealots.

      
      

• Are there unresolved conflicts, like lost heirs, broken treaties, or lingering curses?

  • Lost Heirs: A rumored descendant of the Ashur emperors hides among common folk; some want to restore them, others to erase them forever.

  • Broken Treaties: The northern clans still claim the empire cheated them of their lands. Raids flare up each spring, keeping border villages in fear.

  • Lingering Curses: The Sundering left crystal scars across the land; in some towns, children are still born with luminous eyes and strange powers.

    
    

• Does the past repeat itself, warning of future danger?

  • The civil war ended only a decade ago, yet lords and mercenaries are already rearming; history may spiral back into bloodshed.

  • The “Empire of Ashur” once claimed peace through magical supremacy; modern factions try to rebuild that empire with similar arrogance.

  • Every generation, a cult promises the return of the fallen god beneath the First City. Each time, the people dismiss it as nonsense; until it isn’t.

    
    

Players should feel that the past still shapes their present-day choices.

Step 5: Keep It Flexible

Don’t lock everything down. Leave mysteries and contradictions in your history—different groups can disagree on what really happened. That way, you have room to adapt as the campaign grows.

Contradicting Accounts

• The Fall of the Empire:

  • Scholars say the Sundering was caused by overuse of magical energy.

  • Priests insist it was divine punishment for arrogance.

  • Peasants whisper it was the sleeping god beneath the First City stirring in its grave.(All three could be partly true, or none at all.)

• The Ashur Crown:

  • Nobles claim it was destroyed.

  • Treasure hunters insist it was broken into pieces and scattered.

  • A cult believes it was never a crown at all, but a living being.

    
    

Unreliable Narrators

• An old soldier “remembers” the war but mixes his trauma with actual fact; half his stories are hallucinations, half are real.

• A bard’s ballad turns a tragic failure into a heroic victory, reshaping how common folk view the past.

• The last emperor’s journals survive, but some pages were clearly altered, or perhaps forged.

  
  

Mysteries Left Intact

• Why do the crystal shards still whisper in dreams? Nobody has a full answer.

• The First City’s foundations go deeper than anyone has mapped; Catacombs, temples, or something stranger?

• Each spring, a ghostly army marches across the Hollow Fields. No one knows who they fight, or why they never stop.

  
  

How This Helps You as DM

• You can drop hints and “evidence” during play but decide later what’s true.

• Players get to form their own theories, and you can reward their curiosity.

• You keep flexibility: if you need a plot twist later, you already have a cloud of uncertainty to pull from.