The Ankeshelians flourished for thousands of years as the first human civilization. In those ancient days, humans mastered magic and alchemy, engineering, navigation, and many other useful arts. They were citizens of Ankesh, an island in the Western Ocean blessed with rich deposits of copper, iron, and orichalcum. Gifted this progress by their strange masters, the aboleths, the Ankeshelians also inherited an unearthly and primitive science-magic known as vril and became talented in the ways of glyph magic. These humans built great cities, slew creatures with vril rifles and lightning spears, traveled in flying carriages, and built orichalcum temples of shining gold. It was a golden age that lasted long centuries, perhaps a thousand years. Some believe the aboleths destroyed the island nation in the end. Others believe it was different horrors—krakespawn, the shining children of Caelmarath, the titanic servants of the sea god Nethus, or the arrival of the sea-devil sahuagin—that overran the walls of Ankesh and drove its people into the sea. Some blame the monstrous leviathan called the Isonade, which rose to destroy the western lands in a later age.
When Ankesh fell 3,000 years ago, all contact with the island was lost. The world sank into barbarism for centuries; the coasts were places of terror and avoided by the wise. The dwarves ruled in the North, humans and others struggled on the mainland, and goblins, gnolls, ghouls, ogres, centaurs, and other brutal races thrived. Nuria Natal remained as the only human kingdom of any size and power, its dynasties threatened but unbroken.
Elsewhere, chieftains and petty kings held power for a generation, then fell back into chaos and struggle against the darkness. The light and knowledge of the world glimmered and went out.