The Forgetting

The Forgetting is the conventional name for the broad period from approximately 200 to 500 AFK in which magic, cosmology and knowledge of several peoples disappeared from mainstream human society. It coincided with industrialisation and the normalisation of the Forever War.

Causes

The Exodus destroyed schools, monasteries, archives and apprenticeship lines. Centuries of mobilisation redirected education toward artillery, engineering, logistics and administration. Knowledge that could not be standardised or reproduced at state scale became local folklore or vanished.

Peoples forgotten

Dvergr became mythical or supposedly extinct after sealing their halls. Drywid survived mainly in enemy-held forests and fragmentary rural traditions. Dires were increasingly treated as isolated tribal minorities. Aelven ceased to be remembered as neighbours and became simply the enemy.

Magic and religion

Practical household magic persisted unevenly, but urban institutions lost the conceptual language needed to understand souls, currents and Lodestone. Religious terms survived after their literal meaning disappeared, allowing later discoveries to appear supernatural even where ancient records had once treated them as technical.

Industrial replacement

Steam, railways, modern medicine and later combustion technology offered effects that were more scalable and repeatable than surviving spellcraft. Technology did not disprove magic; it displaced the social systems that reproduced it.