The difficulties of dating the extraordinary civilisation of Edil-Amarandh, or even of pinpointing its exact geographic location, are well known. Estimates vary wildly, dating its mysterious disappearance from 10,000 to 150,000 years before the beginning of the last Ice Age. Initial theories which saw the Annar Scripts as confirmation of the persistent accounts in Plato, the Mabinogion and elsewhere of an Atlantean nation overwhelmed by flood have generally been discredited, since Edil-Amarandh appears to be far older than these texts suggest and has sharply divergent cultural differences. Some people, however, have suggested that the continent of Edil-Amarandh may be sunk beneath the Atlantic, West of the African and European coasts, as was theorised of Atlantis. 1 However, despite these arguments, the voluminous records available make it possible to elucidate a detailed history of Annar and the Seven Kingdoms. 2

The Bards used two principle calenders - the reckoning of Afinil (indicated with A) and the Annaren or Norloch Calender (indicated with N). These calenders were in general use throughout Edil-Amarandh. The events recounted in The Gift took place in the Year N945, which is to say 945 years after the Restoration of the Light under Maninaë.

The histories of Annar and the Seven Kingdoms were divided into three Ages (the Great Silence is not regarded as an Age), according to the Chronicles of Istar of Norloch (N398), from which this account is mainly taken. 3
 
 

The Age of the Elementals
 
 

The Age of the Elementals ended approximately a thousand years before the founding of Afinil, that is, about 5000 years before the time of this story. Thus by the Restoration much of its history was lost, and the little which remained was partial and fragmentary. However, after the founding of Afinil, the Elementals who remained recounted many of the events of that Age , 4 and so many stories and songs were preserved in the Bardic tradition, although again only scraps of that lore were preserved after Afinil was razed by the Nameless.

Elementals (or the Elidhu) were immortals and were so called because they bore affinities with natural forces such as fire, water, earth, air, the Sun, the Moon and the Tides. They were often associated with particular places or regions, such as rivers or mountains. After the Elemental Wars, many of the Elidhu retreated into their pure forms and were not seen again as sentient beings, although some still remained as visible spirits. They could take different forms at will, and in the days of Afinil often visited that city in the guise of humans and learned from the Dhyllin the arts of speech, song and music, in which they especially delighted. The Lady Ardina was the most celebrated of those Elidhu who became part of the human world. After the dominion of humans and the estrangement between the two races, for which the Nameless was in large part responsible, most withdrew into their elemental forms and were rarely seen. Their number was not known.

The Age of the Elementals was marked by the dominion of the Ice Witch, Arkan, who came from the North and covered Edil-Amarandh with a perpetual winter. At this time the Elementals threw up some of the mountain ranges of Edil-Amarandh, the Osidh Elanor (the Mountains of the Dawn) and the Osidh Annova, in an attempt to bar Arkan's approach. All living things at this time suffered greatly, and it was said that humans at this point almost disappeared from the face of the earth. The Ice Witch was resisted and finally overthrown by an alliance between some of the Elementals and the peoples of Edil-Amarandh, led by the Elidhu Ardina and the King Ardhor. The final war against Arkan convulsed the entire continent: "the sea poured in over what had been land, and lands rose where had before been sea" . 5 When the war ended the coastline was entirely different, and became the shape presently mapped.

Human history and songs are recorded from that time - the legend of Mercan, for example, which were preserved in the Scrolls of Lir at the Library of Lirigon - but the years were not logged. Small communities of men lived in settlements East of the Osidh Annova, and there were a strong and proud people who lived near what is now the Lir River, the descendants of whom later became the Dhyllin.
 
 

The Dawn Age
 
 

After the wars, the Dhyllin settled the areas to the North later called Lirion and Imbral, and it is said in this time the Dhillarearë first appeared in Edil-Amarandh, but little is recorded until Afinil was first founded. This time is called the pre-Dawn, or Inela.

The Dawn Age dates from the Founding of Afinil, about a thousand years after the end of the Elemental Wars. Afinil was the first city founded and settled by the Dhillarearë, although they were by no means the only peoples who lived there. The City was founded by the great Bard Nelsor, who among other things invented letters, and was the first to write down and formalise the Speech. The script he invented was still the one most commonly used by Bards more than four thousand years later. 6

Afinil was never a city of Kings, but of Bards, and it was built between Lirimal and Inchan, the major cities of the realms of Lirion and Imbral. Its site was long lost, but it was on the shores of a mere which was said to be so deep the stars were reflected there even in the daytime, the Ilimican, or Mirrormere. Afinil was reputed to be the most beautiful city ever to have been built in Edil-Amarandh and it became a centre of high learning and culture. There were established great singing halls and libraries, and it was famous for its gardens and terraces, which were said to perfume the air for miles around. 

This was the first great flowering of the Light. Afinil prospered for many years, and as it prospered, so did its surrounding lands. Bards began to travel widely, and found their kin in many places: most notably in Turbansk to the South, an ancient city founded before the end of the Age of Elementals, and also in the lands to the East, along the coast of Edil-Amarandh. People also moved East over the Osidh Annova and established the Kingdom of Indurain in the fertile lands they found there. 

The first sign of trouble occurred in A1567, when Sharma, the King of Dén Raven, a small mountainous realm to the South, travelled to Afinil and demanded tuition, offering gifts of gold and jewels. The Bards, who valued such things only for what beauty they found in them, laughed and gave him tuition for nothing. "What is the cold light of a gem next to the living Light?" asked Gel-Idhor, First Bard of Afinil, when Sharma approached him. "Nay, keep thy jewels." Sharma, who was proud and quick tempered, was deeply offended by the Bards' gentle mockery; but he concealed his anger and bent his mind to study. 7

Very soon it was apparent that Sharma was the most precociously talented Bard seen in Afinil since the days of Nelsor. He studied in particular the making of things of power, and also the mysteries of binding, and he was very curious about Arkan, the Ice Witch, and spent much time speaking with the Elidhu who came to Afinil of the history of those wars; but he concealed his intent. It only became clear later that Sharma was interested in making himself immortal and powerful as the Elidhu, who could not be killed. There were those in Afinil, including the Lady Ardina, who were disturbed by Sharma's questionings, and did not trust his ambition, and who counselled against his education; but the Bards did not see why their Lore should be kept from such an apt pupil, and such disquiet was brushed aside.

When Sharma had made himself the most powerful Bard in Edil-Amarandh, he returned to his own kingdom; and it was then he made the Spell of Binding which cast aside his Name and ensured that he would never pass through the Gates to the Uncircled Open of Death. 8 This was a great blasphemy: for a Bard to so challenge the Laws of Balance was unprecedented. The casting away of his name and his abjuration of Death signalled the beginning of the grievous wars which ended, five hundred years later, in the overthrow of Afinil and the utter defeat and destruction of Lirion and Imbral and all the Lore and beauty that had been made there.

After he cast out his Secret Name, Sharma was called the Nameless One. He attracted followers, to whom he promised unending life and absolute power, and many Bards went to his side, betraying the Light; and these became black sorcerers, and were known as Hulls, for they were but the shells of Bards. The Nameless also made alliances with the remnants of the Elidhu who hated and feared the Light, most notably the Elidhu Karak, who held dominion over the realm of Indurain, east of the Osidh Annova, after the armies of the Nameless had destroyed it and slaughtered or enslaved those of the Dhyllin who had lived there.

The campaign of the Nameless One to overthrow the Light in Annar succeeded in A2041, when his forces overwhelmed the last desperate alliance of Lirion and Imbral on the Firman Plains near the Findol River. That defeat was the end of the Dawn Age, and the beginning of the Great Silence.
 
 

The Great Silence
 
 

The Great Silence lasted from A2041 to A3234. At this time the Light retreated in hiding to the areas which later became known as the Seven Kingdoms: along the coast of Edil Amarandh, and to the South. The Bards did not build cities or towns, and lived in great hardship, working always against the Dark; but they did not succeed in overthrowing the Nameless until the coming of Maninaë, heir of Laurelin, in A3157. Maninaë, a Bard, united the resistance in the Seven Kingdoms and after many years - a story too complex to even begin to relate here - he succeeded in casting the Nameless off his throne and restoring the Light to Annar. He then became the first King in Norloch, and the first to rule over all Annar.

A new yearcount, the Annaren Calender, was then introduced. It was also called the Norloch Reckoning.
 
 

The Restoration
 
 

When peace was restored, Maninaë founded the citadel of Norloch and the system of Schools. Twenty five Schools were founded across Annar and the Seven Kingdoms, and roads were built across the country to allow free movement between all of them. At this time more areas of Annar were settled, although there were large regions of wilderness in the centre of the land, and Edil-Amarandh was always a continent more thickly populated about its coast than at its centre.

Once again there was a great flowering of Bardic culture, and the tenets of Afinil were restored. But Maninaë also gave thought to martial strategies, and the culture of Norloch was warlike, unlike that of Afinil. For Afinil had never been a city of Kings, and although all Bards were routinely trained in the arts of the sword, they never gave them especially high honour. 

The Restoration lasted for 300 years. After that came a period of consolidation, called the Middle Years, in which all the arts flourished in peace and harmony. At about the year N720 came the first promptings of disquiet, and also the last King; for the Monarchs made war on each other in an argument about succession, and in the strife the ruling line of Norloch was destroyed. The Seven Kingdoms at this time revised their alliances with Norloch and restated their autonomies.

After this, the Bards ruled alone in Afinil, incorporating into the authority of the White Flame the triple sceptre of the Kings of the Norloch; and after the destruction caused by the rivalries of kings, it seemed to some this was better, and that the Bards, constrained by their vows to the Light and the Balance, would rule more wisely. But there were others who said this was a distortion of the Balance; and they also pointed out that women were no longer placed in authority in Norloch, as they continued to be in most other Schools, and saw this as another symptom of imbalance. 

Gradually, over the next two hundred years, it became clear that things were amiss in Annar. The fortresses in Dén Raven were rebuilt, and the sorcerer Imank made war on the Suderain, although he was fiercely resisted. There were other signs of imbalance: the White Sickness, never seen before, began to ravage parts of Annar, and some Schools began to be estranged from their peoples, demanding high tithes and grudging their services, which caused an enormous loss of the Bards' prestige in many parts of Annar, and sometimes outright and violent resentment. There were more frequent sightings of Wers and other servants of the Dark, and for the first time since the Restoration Hulls were seen in Annar. More disturbingly, some Bards began to report a disturbance in the Speech itself, which they found impossible to express, but which troubled them deeply; they said that it seemed to them the Speech was losing its ancient virtue. However, it was not until the School of Pellinor was sacked and burned to the ground in N935, followed by Baladh and Jerr-Niken in the South within the next four years, that a few Bards began to suggest that the Nameless One had at last returned.