The Progenitors

Well over ten thousand years in the past, before dwarves or elves or humans, the entirety of Chimyrr was ruled by a single race. This original civilisation is now known as the Progenitors. Also known as The Ones Who Came Before, this race was highly advanced; melding magic and technology not seen since, the Progenitors spread across the globe, settling the land, the oceans and deep underground. Legends also claim that the Progenitors also reached out beyond Chimyrr - building settlements and founding colonies on other worlds and planes.





Then at the height of their culture, a great cataclysm struck the Progenitors. It is not known what this armageddon was - different legends claim it was a self-engineered destruction, or the wrath of the gods, magic or technology gone wrong or rogue, or even drawing attention from the primordial things beyond the Dark Tapestry. Whatever the cause was, the Progenitors and their society were all but wiped clean from the surface of Chimyrr.





The remnants of the Ones Who Came Before can still be found, in a way. The races of the dwarves, elves and gnomes each claim to have descended from the Progenitors who survived their apocalypse, while some theories posit the halflings were some form of servitor race. Very rarely a small piece of Progenitor treasure will surface; a coin, or engraved tablet, or similar. The most compelling are the stories of those hidden places that still harbour remnants or evidence of their culture - the Vertical Jungles of Saurago Canyon, for example, or the Cenotaphs of Tequec Desert.





Just exactly what happened to the Progenitors, however, is very difficult to ascertain. Very little in the way of physical evidence exists anymore - only just enough to show that the many legends and myths passed down over the millennia have some grain of truth to them. Likewise, magical attempts are useless as well - many deities and other planar sources refuse to discuss the topic, and those who will nevertheless refuse to answer direct question. The ultimate truth to the Progenitors is likely lost.