The Grain Age | Aavana Lore (Patreon)

Decades passed. 

A century passed. Children would be born, grow, raise their own younguns, and die of old age before the dust of the world-ending hour had settled. For a hundred years the people of Aavana coaxed the soil of a scarred world to yield and nurture once more, but the harvests remained unreliable. Large populations were wholly unsustainable, and most of the living undertook nomadic lifestyles in order to better manage their resources. Tracts were worn into the ground by the feet and wagons of these first refugees, connecting old city ruins to teeming hunting grounds and clean watering holes. These old footpaths are still traveled in the modern-day as holy roads where one is supposed to find peace and enlightenment.

When the land finally softened enough to provide stable crops, new nations arose - built by the linked arms of sister-towns and the farming villages that fed them. As agriculture regained its strength, communities grew, cobble-roads were laid, other trades found roots in the spaces between grain storehouses and draft stables. Small centers of civilization grew like beds of moss in the cracks of tree bark. Grain became more valuable than gold. Prosperity spread.

Banditry became the second most lucrative profession in the land. All roads, old and new, were haunted by roving bands of Aavans all-too-eager to relieve the merchant of whatever they might be carrying. At each end of the trade roads, it seemed a new king or mayor had risen to power on promises to alleviate this scourge of robbery. Some followed through. Others cut deals and made profits of their own. So much had changed, yet so much remained the same.

Decades passed.