Part One: The Archaic Era: The Post-Creation Age

【Overview of the Era】 The post–Realm-creation era took shape during the middle and later phases of the wave of Realm-creation. As increasing numbers of stable worlds entered periods of sustained development, remains of settlements, cities, artificial works, and long-distance activity grew markedly denser; modern historiography identifies this period chiefly by the growth in the scale of civilization, and it therefore overlaps with the wave of Realm-creation for a considerable span of time.

Before the Great Loss, mature civilizations had already arisen on multiple Stars, Realms, Lands, and Interspaces with no known connections to one another. The gaps confronting later generations stem chiefly from these civilizations’ lack of histories transmitted in an unbroken line, not from any immaturity of the civilizations themselves.

[The Expansion of Civilization and the Growth of Records] Among the large archaic civilization sites discovered to date, a substantial proportion took shape during the Post–Realm-creation Era. Settlements grew more numerous, architectural structures became more complex, and the extent of artificial alteration expanded; some remains even span entire continents. Scattered across worlds with no reliably established connections to one another, these sites show that many civilizations independently attained a considerable degree of complexity.