The Age of Shadows is the long night that follows the ruin of the Age of Magic. It begins with the betrayal of Sorcerer-King Virulan and the collapse of Lavellor, and stretches across roughly two thousand years of war, infiltration and slow recovery. It is better documented than the Age of Magic, but most sources are partisan, damaged or written centuries after the events they describe. What follows is the shape most scholars in the Age of Cyrathis agree on, with many details still under dispute.
The Last Battle
The conventional starting point of the Age of Shadows is the Last Battle at Lavellor. By this stage Virulan has already taken the Dark Oaths of the Endless Night, drawn on the Black Current, and turned his power against the other Sorcerer-Kings. The exact sequence of events is uncertain. Most accounts agree that he leads an army including mortal forces and the creatures called Ulthrak into the heart of Lavellor, breaching wards that were thought unassailable.
The battle itself is only partly described. Later chroniclers speak of a sky blackened at noon, spells that tore streets open, and gods that refused to answer. At its climax, Virulan reaches the inner defenses of the Shardspire and performs rites now lost to any living tradition. The result is clear enough. The Shardspire explodes. Lavellor is destroyed. Most of the Twelve Sorcerer-Kings die in the blast or in the chaos that follows. With the shattering of the Shardspire and the fall of the Luminarchate’s capital, the Age of Magic ends and the Age of Shadows begins.
War in the Dark
What follows is not a single continuous war, but a patchwork of conflicts, coups and collapses now gathered under the label the War in the Dark. Virulan’s open attack on Lavellor is only the most visible expression of a deeper strategy. The Darksworn do not rely on armies alone. They infiltrate courts, guilds, temples and magical colleges, turning existing institutions to the service of the Endless Night.
Records from this period show the same pattern repeating across Rhaedwyn. City-states that survived the fall of Lavellor begin to fracture from within. Trusted advisors are revealed as Darksworn, laws are altered by small degrees, archives and relic-vaults vanish in convenient fires. Some realms collapse into civil war when Darksworn and loyalists accuse each other. Others submit almost willingly, worn down by fear and exhaustion and seduced by the offer of easy power.
The term “War in the Dark” is a later scholarly construction, but it fits. Much of the Age of Shadows is fought in the shadows of courts and alleyways rather than on open fields. For every named battle, there are a dozen assassinations, quiet purges and vanishing bloodlines. It is during this era that trust in centralised magical authority breaks almost completely, and the old Luminarchate structures become either hollow names or targets of suspicion.
The Orcish Invasion
One of the few events of the Age with a clear external shape is the Orcish Invasion of Rhaedwyn. A little over two thousand years before the current Age of Cyrathis, the three Kuhans of the Great Western Steppe: Alostor, Kiraven and Venocht, take the Dark Oath and turn their riders east. Whether they sought only plunder, a new homeland, or some promised reward from the Endless Night is not recorded.
The Orcish Invasion is eventually turned back, but it leaves marks that persist into the Age of Cyrathis: fortified Taurus passes, a Dragonborn culture built around eternal watch, and a lingering fear of both the Steppe and any alliance between nomadic hosts and the Endless Night.
Disappearance of Virulan and the long dusk
The disappearance of Virulan himself is one of the most contested points in the period. No source from within his inner circle survives. External accounts offer three main possibilities:
- That he was destroyed in the Shardspire’s explosion at Lavellor and that later appearances are impostures or misread omens.
- That he withdrew beyond ordinary reach, into the Endless Night or some liminal state between life and unlife, becoming more a conduit than a man.
- That he was finally overthrown by his own Darksworn followers in an internal struggle we no longer have records for.
None of these can be proven. What is clear is that, after a certain point, the Darksworn act increasingly through fractured regional cabals rather than under a single guiding figure. The War in the Dark continues, but without the same central focus. Some realms manage to purge Darksworn influence through brutal counter-measures. Others are simply exhausted into a standstill where no side has the strength to fully dominate.
Over the next many centuries, the Age of Shadows becomes a slow, grinding dusk rather than a single dramatic collapse. The old Luminarchate is gone as a political entity. High Sorcery is either broken, hoarded or reduced to half-understood traditions. Local cults of the gods survive in altered form, often stripped of their earlier Luminarchate theology. The Darksworn lose their most obvious thrones, but do not vanish. They linger in bloodlines, secret societies and isolated strongholds.