Pre-history
Date ? -The Elder Race known as the Sindons come out of the wastelands beyond the sea and establishes the first empire of Vohl-Uz on the continent of Theoria.
Date ? – The second empire of Vohl-Uz rises; the Sindons conquered and dying out. A cult grows up around the survivors which takes its name from the dying Elder Race and preserves its culture, sorcery, and necromantic practices.
Date ? – (PARALLEL TIME): Destruction of Hyperborea with the sudden freeze of the north pole. The rune wizard Maeol Gealdor’s desecration of the White Lodge and supplanting it with his Black Lodge brings down this divine judgement. Maeol Gealdor then disappears from history, apparently drowned by betrayed followers, but a cult later grows up around him in the Middle East and India.
c. 5000 B.C. – A group of surviving, wandering Cro-Magnons take up residence in the region of southern Norway that will become Aarastad. They conquer the Mesolithic Norwegian Kosma culture from the Arctic circle, who teach them the herding of Aurochs, sheep, and cattle in the indigenous dales. They intermarry and become the race that will be later called “the Undanuna.”
Chief among the gods of the Kosma people is Aurocheol, the drowned, lame shepherd god of the far north. His worship is gradually woven into the Cro-Magnon fertility worship.
Ancient History –Pre-Aarastadian
c. 40 A.D. – Romans under Claudius enslave the Undanuna to mine the areas’ natural ores for the iron works Rome sets up there. Roman occupation begins.
c. 100 A.D – The Cairn Rebellion. An Undanuna named Cairn, a house slave of the Roman commander Festus Agrippa, tutors the commander’s ward, Festus’ affianced royal hostage/slave named Antigone Augusta. Cairn initiates a liberation movement for his people. He leads them in an exodus into the wild nearby mountain region from which the Roman troops can never successfully extract them.
Here, the Undanuna become genetically isolated – with the exception of occasional captives taken from periodic raids of the Romans and later Germanic and Viking people.
When the captives tend not to prove robust enough for the harsh mountain conditions, and the little ice age extends a glacier across the mountains around 1500 which does not begin to withdraw until 1850, the Undanuna become genetically frozen prehistoric people.
EARLY FIFTH CENTURY A.D.- -After the fall of Rome, Germanic people begin taking over Southern Norway which the Romans abandoned as military forces were withdrawn to defend the capital against the Goths.
432 A.D. (PARALLEL TIME) – Saint Patrick evangelizes Ireland. Among his earliest converts and disciples are a young man named Crom, named after the indigenous pagan god.
543-600 A.D. – Arian Goths travel to the Isle of Brude in the Orkneys. They bear with them the Nephrite Throne that they stole from the Frankish Kings. They plan to hide it to see to it that an Arian is enthroned as the Last World King, by whom the Arian heresy can supplant the true gospel globally.
They place the throne on the island’s highlands among the standing stones of a Pict astronomical observatory where human sacrifice was made by the island’s druidesses, the Morganise.
Aarastad’s Early Period
777 A.D. – A racial mix of Jutes and Dane Vikings, led by Arastad Serapion, migrate to and conquer the tribal states of southern Norway. Arastad Serapion establishes the Serapion royal line to rule his new kingdom of Arastad (later “Aarastad”).
875 A.D. – King Harold Fairhair of Norway and King Sigmund Serapion of Aarastad conquer the Orkney Islands in a rival colonizing race. The Serapions of Aarastad learn of the Brude Island, not yet clouded in fog.
The Brude island maintains independence from Norway and Aarastad, because of the intimidating indigenous ferocious warrior race that is a mix of Goths and Picts.
995 A.D. – King Olaf Tryggyasson of Norway forces Christianity on the Orkneys by threat of violence. Olaf gives the Brude Isle a pass because of the previous treaty with Fairhair.
1397 A.D. – Kalmar Union Established. Aarastad will become a member when the Serapions become vassals to Denmark approximately 125 years later.
1472 A.D. – Scotland annexes the Orkney Islands, except for the Brude Isle when a cloud bank, allegedly the work of the Morganise, forms a perpetual wall around it.
1523 – 1814 A.D. – Denmark rule over Aarastad
1523 A.D. – The Serapions become vassal rulers of Denmark. Contemporary Denmark’s Dano-Norwegian takes the place of the version that has developed in Aarastad over the centuries since the Danes and Jutes conquered the southern Norwegian people.
1677 A.D. – King Doran Serapion II takes the beautiful-as-she-is-evil Coralinze Gruszka, a Sindon witch, as his mistress. She introduces the cult into the palace and earns the name spoken only in whispers, “Mother of Tears.”
1698 A.D. – Sweden learns of a secret coalition of Denmark-Norway-Aarastad, the Polish-Lithuania Commonwealth, and Russia against it. Sweden secretly appeals to Great Britain for aid. An English colony, Stuttesgarden, is quickly established within Sweden covering approximately 100 miles in width, and 580 miles in length. It borders Norway to the north and runs the length of Aarastad’s mountain range to the west.
Since an attack on Sweden will now draw in Great Britain, the coalition withdraws after initial hostilities, Sweden ceding only control of the Baltic Islands.
1780 A.D. – Birth of Olaf Ifguter, son of Serapion majordomo Asger Ifguter.
1787 A.D. – Birth of Princess Edina Crovan of the Isle of Man. At age sixteen she is presented at court and her impression is such that her name is changed to “Ealathoune,” after the legendary Norman beauty of Man, destined to a premature death at the hands of her royal husband, Elleàlathoune (“she like unto a strong city/fortress”).
1790 A.D. – Arrival of Russian Pomors in Aarastad. They are granted sanctuary on the western islands and fjords by the efforts of the current Serapion major domo, Asger Ifguter.
1806 A.D. – Princess Ealathoune the Fair of Man comes to Aarastad as a royal hostage.
1806 A.D.– Aarastad’s glacier shifts. Two strangers appear upon it: one frozen in ice, the other wandering it dazed and erratic. He claims to have come from another world, to possess the secret of Saint Patrick, and to be able to move through time.
He identifies himself as one “Crom Bromwell,” a warrior monk of the Bearded Order of the Quintessence, a knight of the 5th element, a soldier of Elyon and a servant of Aslem-Beth. He quickly becomes an ally of Ealathoune, who has discovered the Sindon infestation of the royal house.
1808 A.D. – Wedding of Edina, Princess Ealathoune Crovan to King Lothar Serapion. A month later she is officially enthroned as Queen of Aarastad.
1812 A.D. – Queen Ealathoune the Fair dies mysteriously.
1813 A.D. – The Serapions deposed and the Sindons purged from Aarastad. The House of Asger, who have been serving as house major domos and actually running the country while the Serapions indulged themselves, are now official governors of Denmark but not royalty.
1814 A.D. – Riding the Romantic era enthusiasm for change, on the heels of both the deportation of the Serapions and the defeat of Napoleon and Denmark’s consequent loss of possession of Norway and Aarastad, the Aarastad independence movement begins. Newly appointed governor Olaf Iguter leads a resistance movement against cession to Sweden.
1814 A.D. – Wars of Independence against Sweden. Knowing Aarastad’s fleet (ironically preserved by the British blockade they had suffered due to Denmark’s alliance with Napoleon) has blocked them from a coastal invasion, Sweden decides to seize Aarastad by land.
Already weakened by losses from fighting Napoleon, Sweden’s forces try to cross the mountain range with its glacier that spans the range’s length after entering Aarastad through Stuttesgarden. The latter is now abandoned by England in the wake of the Napoleonic wars.
Ifguter’s men have been equipped for glacial warfare by the Undanuna, who are long familiar with the environment and teach the people of Aarastad how to navigate the ice field. The Undanuna join in the battle that slaughters the Swedes, who, still limping from wartime losses, withdraw their claim to Aarastad.
Aarastad Modern Period
1814 A.D. – Establishment of the House of Asger on the restored independent throne of Aarastad. Olaf Ifguter becomes king.
1815 A.D. – King Ifguter turns back an attempted Gormr expansion into Stuttesgarden. Stuttesgarden becomes a territory of Aarastad, and a military base is established at the Stuttesgarden/Gormr border, Ifguter effectively expands the Kingdom of Aarastad a hundred miles east within a year of establishing his royal line.
1817 A.D. – Sixteen year old orphan and intellectual prodigy Emily Crouan arrives at Elfarborg to complete her education under the sponsorship of the main palace Castellan, Ninnum Zanao.
1818 A.D. – Emily Crouan becomes the royal tutor.
1820 A.D. – A brief attempt by Denmark to reclaim Aarastad to somewhat recoup the loss of Norway to Sweden. King Ifguter and naval commander Lars Wodinstone quickly barricade the North Sea from all ship trade and turns back an attempted land invasion. Peace treaty signed within two months with no cession of lands on either side.
1820 A.D. – Birth of Ambrose Gaius Aurelianus in Caerleon in Wales.
1823 A.D.- Birth of Prince Fafnir Crovan of Man, nephew of Ealathoune.
1825. A.D. – A young man named Bärt Melchior arrives in Aarastad on a world tour and makes it his home.
1826 A.D. – Ifguter defeats the Ice Maiden; Melchior saves his life during this encounter and is awarded a peerage. He marries a beloved household servant of noble birth and takes up residence in the palace among the royals.
1826 A.D. – Birth of Princess Freyja Ithunea Ifguter Edelle Weiss.
1828 A.D. – Reverend Munnin Woanaz becomes the summer palace parson.
1830 A.D. – Wedding of Reverend Munnin Woanaz and Emily Crouan.
1831 A.D. – Birth of Princess Asa Elaine Isolde Weiss.
1831 A.D. – A young man from the Brude Isle named Thule is exiled to Aarastad.
1833 A.D. – Death of King Ifguter after a lingering illness of a few years that has left him bedridden.
1833 A.D. – Ascension to the throne by King Caius Ifguter. His wife Lady Gerda Johanson becomes queen.
1834 A.D. – Freyja and her sister cursed by the Snow Queen.
1841 A.D. – Ifguter’s son King Cai, Queen Gerda, and the young prince die along with Princess Freyja’s and her sister’s parents, Rudolph and Isolde, on the mountains’ glacier. Lord Melchior becomes the Regent-Guardian, and Princess Freyja the queen apparent.
1844 A.D. –The events of Portrait of a Snow Queen begin mid-June with Ambrose Aurelianus’ arrival at the Summer Palace to serve as Princess Freyja’s tutor.
1845 C. E. – The glacier shifts again, creating a catastrophe for the mountain Undanuna people. In the wake of this disaster there are three related palace disappearances on the other side of the kingdom: Princess Freyja’s tutor, her Pict bodyguard, and the summer palace parson, Reverend Munnin Woanaz.
1847 A.D. – Freyja takes the throne immediately after her birthday in late December. Prince Fafnir of the Isle of Man among those present at the coronation.
1848 A.D. – “The Year of the Queen. ” Some historians consider Aarastad’s Age of the Pearl as beginning here; others with the birth of the heir to the throne.
1848 A.D. – Mid-spring: Aarastad begins to be sensationalized by activities of the vigilante “the Wurger Mendicant.” The 9th Marquis of Cawthorne arrives at Aarastad Court during the summer solstice festival.
1848 A.D. –With a foreign legion of mercenaries, the small but wealthy nation of Gormr attempts to wrest Aarastad from the young queen they believe will be vulnerable.
1848 A.D. – Gormr conquered and incorporated, along with its wealth, into Aarastad. Gormr’s spectacular defeat commands the respect, and awe, of the surrounding nations. An unprecedented era of prosperity, never to be equaled in the small kingdom of Aarastad, commences.
Aarastad’s Age of the Pearl
1849 A.D. – Late Winter – Queen Freyja takes a royal consort.
1850 A.D. – Birth of Princess Muriel, future queen of Aarastad.
1862 A.D. – The 9th Marquis of Cawthorne begins writing his memoirs.
1880 A.D. – Abdication of the throne by Queen Freyja Ifguter Edelle Weiss.
1880 A.D. – Queen Muriel ascends the throne of Aarastad.
1892 A.D. – Birth of Princess Ealathoune “Lidy” Ithunea, future and final queen of Aarastad.
1901 A.D. -Death of Queen Muriel.
1913 A.D. – Ascent to the throne by Queen Ealathoune Ithunea.
End of the Age and The War For The Last World King
1914 A.D.– Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Beginning of the Great War.
1916 A.D. –Although officially neutral in the Great War, Aarastad’s involvement in the secret “War for the Last World King” draws the wrath of its enemies, and it suffers a devastating military strike in retaliation. When the smoke clears, the kingdom is literally no longer to be found.