One thousand years ago ...

Nomads from the Great Eastern desert brought spices and slaves to the Thalos Market. Dwarven miners, rough and rude, sold precious stones and drank the town dry of firebreathers. Stone golems, created by mages from the Tower of High Sorcery, stood sentry duty in the watch towers day and night.

It was the morning of the 3rd day of Thunder in the Month of Shadows. The Mayor of Midgaard (an ancestor of today's Mayor?) arrived at Thalos early in the morning to pay tribute at Thalos City Hall. When he entered the Grand Gate, no guards challenged him. He found the streets and market places empty. Spotting a nearby lamia, he asked her about the residents. Was there a festival today? Perhaps a grand religious ceremony in the Temple of Thalos?

The lamia didn't behave like a lamia. Instead of answering him in the helpful but stupid lamia manner, she produced a long, slim dagger and stabbed the Mayor. Other lamias, hearing the tumult, quickly arrived and attacked the Mayor as well. The Mayor was killed.

Now Thalos is an abandoned city. Wild lamias roam the streets, killing trespassers and sacrificing their bodies at the Temple of Thalos. The golems have lost their responsiveness to command and watch eternally from their ruined towers, as they have for fifty thousand nights since the mysterious demolition of Thalos.

Midgaard was rumored to be next.

Five hundred years ago....

The remaining descendants of the Thalosians returned to the Eastern Desert and built a sparkling new city. This time, they surrounded it with walls and the gates are manned by well trained guards. They eschewed the golems of the High Tower. Again the splendor of what Old Thalos once was, was alive once more in the city of New Thalos.

During this time of rebirth, Midgaard was attacked, most aptly, on the Day of the Deception, in the month of the Great Struggle. Legions of Romans, bent on conquering Midgaard swarmed down from the mountains, but were stalled by the cityguards and the great walls. It was a stalemate, and Midgaard was under siege for almost twenty years. Over the course of this long siege, many Midgaardians starved to death and still more were killed in the fighting. Finally, through the combined work of nine powerful leaders, each an acknowledged master of his art, the Romans were driven off. But Midgaard lay in ruins.... her population decimated, scattered by the fighting. Those who had fled were never seen again. Battered, but unbeaten, those who remained began to rebuild....

One hundred years ago....

By this time, Midgaard had been rebuilt. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the New Midgaard stood proudly in the sun on that Day of the Winter Wolf. The day when history was made. At just after sunrise, a large caravan arrived outside of the West Gate. Never people to forget the past, the cityguards swarmed over the caravan, but to no avail. These visitors were peaceful. They carried no weapons and no implements of destruction. After much debate, some centered upon the question of turning these strange people from a far away land into slaves, it was decided to allow them into the city and to listen to their tale... and what a tale it was.

The visitors began their story some five hundred years before, during the time of the great siege. Those who had fled Midgaard, had wandered over the mountains and found an ocean and kingdom of elves. Neither the wary travelers nor the surprised elves had ever seen one another before, but they became fast friends. The elves loved the firebreathers and other drink that the strangers brought with them, and the fugitives needed the elves' help in order to survive. Over the next 200 years, they built a thriving new city.... Skara Brae.

Today....

The ensuing years have brought progress, hereto unseen in all time. When the people of Skara Brae arrived, Midgaard was still in isolation, shunning all newcomers for fear of suffering the same tragedy that had befallen them once before. Now, it is an open community with routes to almost everywhere. The Romans have been driven back to their city and there are easy and quickly traveled routes between Midgaard and her sister cities of New Thalos and Skara Brae.

While there is prosperity in the three major cities, the wilderness of the mountains, forest and desert still exists, waiting to be conquered.......