In this series I will look at the history of the Forgotten Realms world and publish a series of maps depicting the continent of Faerûn and the wider world of Toril at various points in its past. Like my previous series, Nations of the Forgotten Realms, this series draws on The Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas and other Dungeons & Dragons resources for the setting, particularly The Grand History of the Realms, Netheril: Empire of Magic, Cormanthyr: Empire of Elves and Lost Empires of Faerûn.
The work of Richard Baker, Ed Bonny, Eric L. Boyd, James Butler, Thomas Costa, Ed Greenwood, Dale “slade” Henson, Brian R. James, George Krashos, Steven Schend and Travis Stout was particularly useful in compiling this series, along, obviously, with the work of everyone who has ever put pen to paper for the Forgotten Realms campaign setting (officially or unofficially).
This first world map looks at Abeir-Toril, as it was then called, in the period after the Age of Creation. This is circa 40,000 BDR (Before Dalereckoning), some 41,500 years before the present day.
According to myth, the star system of Realmspace was created by the Hidden One, the entity Ao of whom little is known. Ao charged the first two gods of this realm, the twins Selûne and Shar, with nurturing life within the system. The two goddesses created a third, Chauntea, to help them in this task. Chauntea’s recommendation was to create light and warmth within the system, but the twin sisters quarrelled; Shar, Sister of Night and Darkness, hated the idea. The two sisters warred and Selûne proved victorious, creating the Sun. However, this activity attracted the attention of the primordials, powerful beings who desired dominion over all worlds in the multiverse. The goddesses united their power to defeat the primordials, driving them into hiding or imprisoned in remote corners of Realmspace. A fourth goddess, Mystryl, Lady of Magic, was created during this period. Mystryl withheld her powers from both sisters, bringing an end to their warring.
Although life flourished on all worlds in Realmspace, the most promising was Abeir-Toril, third planet from the Sun. The planet was completely covered in water, but a multitude of life grew in the deep oceans, during what became known as the Blue Age. Many other gods formed at this time, as sentient life spread through Abeir-Toril’s oceans and their need for faith and worship grew.
Alas, the primordials returned. One of the mightiest of their number, Dendar the Night Serpent, consumed the Sun to plunge Realmspace into freezing cold, an era known as the Shadow Epoch. His opposite number, the god known as Ouroboros, the World Serpent, led the gods of the system into battle. A long war resulted, but the two sides were too evenly matched. In the end, the primordials were defeated by one of their own; Ubtao swapped sides, helping the gods defeat the primordials in return for lands and worshippers of his own. The primordials were destroyed, or forced to flee across the planes.
The Sun was kindled into life once more, and Abeir-Toril again flourished. But this time the seas had retreated, much of their mass being locked away into ice. A single, enormous supercontinent was revealed: Merrouroboros. More than 10,000 miles across, the landmass contained all the lands that would later be scattered as the continents of the modern day.
For untold millennia or maybe even tens of millennia, life on Abeir-Toril developed. Then, circa 36,500 years ago, the first sentient lifeforms began to build cities, learn the ways of magic and ascend to greatness. This marked the beginning of the Days of Thunder, also known as the Age of the Creator Races.
The Creator Races, or Iquar-Tel’Quessir in the tongue of the elves, were immensely powerful, pre-human and even pre-elven species that ruled over Toril and, before it, Abeir-Toril, in the earliest of days. There are five credited Creator Races, although only three existed in this remote epoch.
The first to arise were the sarrukh. Also called the saurians or Progenitors of the Scaled Ones, the sarrukh established the first-known empires: Okoth, Mhairshaulk and Isstosseffifil. They also built the oldest-known surface cities in the Realms: Sar’Rukoth, the capital of Okoth, now believed to be buried under Azulduth, the Lake of Salt south of Mulhorand; and Oreme, long-since buried under the sands of Anauroch, the Great Desert. They worshipped the World Serpent, who first accepted their faith directly but then through vassal incarnations.
The sarrukh were also the first power – but far from the last – to suffer the depredations of the phaerimm. They encountered the phaerimm in the lands north of Oreme, where the creatures seemed to hail from caverns many miles below the surface (the ancestor tunnels of the modern Underdark). The origins of the phaerimm are unknown, but the creatures, then as now, were unrelentingly hostile. The sarrukh did successfully defeat the phaerimm and drive them back into the Underdark, but only through the unleashing of powerful magic to shift the entire course of the Narrow Sea, flooding the caverns below with millions of gallons of water.
Roughly 2,500 years after their first rise to power, the sarrukh peaked as a civilisation. Isstosseffifil collapsed as a result of the war with the phaerimm, although its capital Oreme endured as a multi-species library city for the study of magic. Mhairshaulk endured under the rule of the yuan-ti, but its sarrukh rulers left to explore other planes. Okoth continued to endure until around 31,000 BDR, when it abruptly vanished. Sages assumed it had declined and faded away, but some evidence suggests that the realm was transferred to the shadow-world of Abeir instead. The truth of the matter remains unclear.
Next to emerge were the batrachi, an amphibian species originating in the seas around Merrouroboros. With the sarrukh in decline, the batrachi were able to emerge onto the dry land and forge their own empires: Nadezhda, Boitumelo, Kolophoon and, greatest of them all, Zhoukoudien, the domain of the High One. These empires flourished for two thousand years before they came into contact with the Jotunbrud, a towering race originating from the freezing lands in the north-east. This race, whom history would recall as the first titans, were formidable but appeared slow and ungainly. Bazim-Gorad, ruler of Nadezhda, urged caution in dealing with the creatures, but the High One Zhoukoudien scoffed at such an idea and treated them with disdain. This led Omo, the titan thane, to slay Zhoukoudien in battle. This sparked a bloody war between the two species.
The titans proved the batrachi’s match and more, driving them back in defeat. In desperation, the batrachi sought magical allies and and found them in powerful spirits imprisoned in various parts of the world. Unfortunately, these were not allies at all, but some of the imprisoned primordials from the most ancient times. The primordials renewed their war against not just the titans, but also the gods of the Realms, who were taken by surprise by the return of their foe. Despite this, the gods were more numerous and more powerful, and quickly gained the upper hand.
In apparent desperation, the primordial Asgorath, the World-Shaper, also known as Io, hurled a moon of ice at Abeir-Toril, intending to destroy that which the primordials could not conquer. The moon was destroyed before it could hit the planet, but the resulting inundation of meteorites, rocky fragments and ice caused widespread destruction. The centre of the continent, between four great lakes or small seas, collapsed, resulting in the creation of the Sea of Falling Stars, also called the Inner Sea. Many of the smaller fragments of the moon which missed the planet looped back around it in a never-ending orbit, becoming known as the Tears of Selûne. Batrachi civilisation collapsed and the titans beat a hasty retreat into the lands of the uttermost north. This apocalyptic event became known in history as the Tearfall, and took place circa, 31,000 BDR.
Ao intervened, furious that, one again, the Balance that was in his care had been endangered. He split Abeir-Toril into two worlds, identical but separated by a whisper of a thought. He gave Abeir to the primordials and Toril to the gods, and split them apart so the two worlds could not meet or be travelled between, thus ending the great war.
But the Tearfall had an unexpected consequence: many of the rocks and stones that had poured out of the shattered moon were actually eggs. And, soon after the Tearfall, they began to hatch.
The third Creator Race to emerge were the aearee, an avian species originating on a large island in the Silver Sea. Some of the aearee had been enslaved by the batrachi, so the rest of the species kept a low profile until the destruction of the batrachi in the Tearfall. The aearee then moved to the mainland, establishing mighty holds at Viakoo (on Mount Havraquoar, in the lands north of what is now Maztica), Phwiukree (on the Star Mounts of the High Forest) and Shara (in the Orsraun Mountains of modern Turmish.
The rule of the aearee was rather brief. Having established three great holds, the aearee were hard-pressed fighting against enemies such as the lammasu (who assailed Viakoo but were driven back by vast numbers of wyverns) and the gnolls of Urgnarash, who sought to destroy Shara using a plague. The desperation of the times saw the aearee reluctantly join forces with their old enemies, the few surviving batrachi and sarrukh at Oreme, where they undertook great magical feats together. There, the magic of the three races united to create the greatest repositories of magical knowledge in the history of the world. Later history would call them “the Nether Scrolls.”
But word was already spreading from the east of a ferocious new threat, winged and fanged creatures of immense strength and cunning, not to mention magical power. The dragons born of the Tearfall had, after a thousand years, come of age. Led by Nagamat, a draconic general and worshipper of the goddess Tiamat, the first great Flight of Dragons seen on the face of Toril scoured the three aearee holds from the face of the world. The surviving aearee, sarrukh and batrachi were destroyed or forced to flee across the planes. Some believe that some aearee survived on Toril by returning to their original homeland in the uttermost west, but the truth of the matter remained unclear.
The Days of Thunder had ended and the Dawn Age, the Time of Dragons, had begun.
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Atlas of Ice and Fire 
Very cool article. Interesting history of the world. Thanks!
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