Summary
Countless scars mar
Veltrona, reminders of a vast history few can remember anymore. Great calamities erased entire civilizations, the memories of the oldest
immortals faded, and time ceaselessly ground away every other piece of history. Of the many quandaries that face historians and scholars, one of the greatest concerns the origins of
monsterkind. Unlike
humanity or
dragonkind, where they began is far more varied and different.
Throughout history there were distinct times in which dragons and humans existed on their own. These are, holistically, referred to as the
First Dawn and Second Dawn(s). Dragons attest only they existed as a people during the First Dawn. Humanity's arrival marked that end, and so began the Second Dawn. At some point toward the end of the Second Dawn, monsters across Veltrona 'changed'. They adopted very human-like (or dragon-like) characteristics en-masse. This marked the beginning of the Third Dawn.
It was so sudden and unexpected that surviving records largely detail how bewildered everyone was. Some dragons who yet lived during such a time affirmed these records as well. The best source of information comes from Hau-Joren herself, formerly the Principle Supreme of
the Imperium. She notates that various human-like monsters didn't appear suddenly, but over time. They were generally written off as freakish accidents, strange abominations, otherworldly visitors, and more. Eventually, a proverbial tipping point was reached, and many, many more of them appeared rapidly.
In the draconic mind, such an event didn't happen in one year or ten, but centuries. With such a framing, it wasn't an instantaneous happening but an observable phenomena. Popular
wokma thinking is that, unlike humanity who appeared virtually out of nowhere, monsters had a discernible legacy. Why they universally took on such human-like physiology remains an unanswered question.
Hau-Joren condensed these records down into a single set of documents with her vast array of scholars. Described as
the Great Convergence Theory, it tracked numerous monster lineages to rough points in history.
Something compelled otherwise disparate and wholly different creatures to 'converge' on the idea of humanity. Whether this something was a
divine power, a
goddess, or some unknown 'thing' remains a critical, unanswered problem of the theory.
Different civilizations and cultures throughout the millennia have their own mythos and ideas of how they came about. Some true, others changed to fit political schemes, a few even objectively wrong. Sifting through these stories to discern fact from fiction ultimately became an exercise in madness. Worse, some people–if not entire species, like
gehurm–perceive their own legacies with entirely unique notions. Whatever the truth is for them may literally be impossible for others to understand.
What can, if somewhat begrudgingly, be agreed upon is that some 'event' took place many thousands upon thousands of years ago. Its power was so great that the world became permanently altered by it. Numerous civilizations have arisen and fallen, disappearing throughout time since then. Scholars, however, are intrigued by the fact that no matter how far apart in location, language, or thinking, virtually every species has some recollection of the event.
If nothing else, the Great Convergence has helped to polarize long history and recording efforts. The theory itself usually enters common consensus when it's brought up. When that happens, its myriad different calendars have to be translated into a respective group's own understanding. The side-effect of this has resulted in largely similar, or at least easily translatable, calendar systems across the world.
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