Portal:History

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Welcome to the History Portal! Here, you'll find links to many of the timelines, events, eras, and calendar related event articles on the Great Library of Greyhawk wiki.
Timeline of Official Events • See Also: Age of Worms Timeline • Timeline of Alternate-future Greyhawk 2000
Major Historical Events	Greyhawk Holidays
Great Battles and Conflicts	Greyhawk calendar and the Common Year
	Various other cultural Calendars
Other pages related to the timeline and events can be found listed in Greyhawk Chronology.

The World of Greyhawk Timeline is a list of fictional historical events that either explain the history leading up to the present state of the World of Greyhawk D&D campaign setting, or which enumerate further developments described in campaign products published or licensed by either TSR Inc. or Wizards of the Coast.

Development of the timeline

The original campaign setting of Greyhawk was a home campaign world invented by Gary Gygax in 1972 while playtesting the game that would become Dungeons & Dragons. In the beginning, the entire "world" consisted of a single dungeon underneath an abandoned castle. This world eventually grew to encompass a nearby city and then some neighboring states, but since Gygax, and eventually his co-DM Rob Kuntz were making up the story as they went, there was no need for an elaborate historical background. Although Gygax referred to Greyhawk in many of his columns, magazine articles and D&D adventures, the overall world remained his personal home campaign for several years.

In 1979, Gygax made the decision to publish the world of Greyhawk, but in order to do so, he made substantial changes to his home campaign world. Rather than using his own map, which was simply a map of the United States overwritten with his cities, towns, and regions, he sketched out a new world called Oerth (later illustrated professionally as the Darlene map), then concentrated on one corner of one continent, Oerik, a place called the Flanaess. To quickly explain the current state of the world, and the motivations of various states and important characters, Gygax delineated twenty-one historical events that bracketed a thousand years of "pre-history" leading up to the "present" time of 576 CY (Common Year reckoning). Gygax resisted the urge to fully outline a detailed timeline in order to give players as much leeway as possible when designing their own home campaigns: "The history is given briefly, and most states are only outlined generally so as to allow as much personal input as possible from DMs who decide to acquire and use it."
For the next few years, Gygax was the arbiter of all events that occurred in Greyhawk until he left TSR in 1985.

TSR continued creation of new events for the world, and a re-envisioning of the campaign in 1992 with the Sargent supplements (From the Ashes (1992), The Marklands(1993]], Ivid the Undying (1995), et al) brought an extension of the timeline from 576 CY to 585 CY. In 1997, Wizards of the Coast bought TSR and extended the timeline again, to 591 CY in the Player's Guide (1998) and The Adventure Begins (1998).

Not too long afterward, WotC began the Living Greyhawk campaign (2000-2008), with a further continuation of the timeline to 598 CY in the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer (2000). Simultaneously, from 2000 to 2007, WotC licensed Paizo to publish Dragon and Dungeon magazines, creating newly published material and adding more "backstory" to Greyhawk history, and adding many new details to the timeline.

2007 also saw the publishing of Expedition to the Ruins of Castle Greyhawk (597 CY), by Erik Mona, Jason Bulmahn, et al. It was a new revisitation of portions of the famous castle originally in Gygax's home game, remaining credibly authentic to the original. It filled in many details of lore, while many details of some older stories were clarified and redressed.

The setting got a revitalizaion in 2024 for the D&D 50th Anniversary celebrations from Wizards of the Coast. A new set of core rulebooks were issued for the anniversary, and the new fifth edition DMG contains a chapter on building a world using Greyhawk as an example. It also includes a poster map with a new illustration of the Flanaess on one side, and the City of Greyhawk on the other (the Schley map and the Baerald map. The version of Greyhawk there does not continue the timelnie, but rather is set in 576 CY and goes back to the original year to continue filling out the content for that era. Some few details are changed, like removing religious or offensive terms from national names, including a few newer races like dragonborn and goliath (without specifying an origin for them), and including a few women as national leaders or powerful NPCs. A new organized-play campaign, Legends of Greyhawk, was also introduced the following year in spring and summer 2025.

Historical Ages

The following terms are sometimes used to describe eras in the history of eastern Oerik: Sages divide history into five eras.

The Age before Ages

Main Article: Age Before Ages
Constituting the early history of the multiverse when the forces of Law battled primal Chaos. These three eras together are called the Age before Ages.

In the First Age, the multiverse came into being and beings of law and chaos, good and evil warred for millions of years.
In the Second Age, the Material Plane was formed and the first gods came into being.
In the Third Age, the aquatic aboleth race was created by divine accident, the aboleth went on to master magic and create many creatures including the first humanoids. This Age culminated in a massive battle between Law and Chaos, crippling the ancient powers.

The Age before Ages concluded at the Battle of Pesh, a colossal battle between law and chaos. On the side of Law were the Wind Dukes of Aaqa, an air elemental race whose empire spanned many worlds, while Chaos included demons and evil elder elementals led by an obyrith called the Queen of Chaos. The result was a stalemate: the Wind Dukes destroyed or banished the most powerful demons but lost too many of their number to continue the battle of law against chaos.

In the following Age, humans and other species became numerous and human civilization began. This is the current era and is predicted to end one day with the Age of Worms, where all life will be destroyed.

Age of Mortals

The first mortal was created by accident when Piscaethces, a massive Far Realm creature perhaps related to the Sleeping Ones, brushed against the prime material plane, creating the first monstrous aquatic aboleth. As they have perfect genetic memory, all aboleths remember this event.

Over millions of years the aboleths came to dominate the material plane, learning the first magic and creating creatures – the oozes, at first, and later the first humanoids, which they created as slaves. Precisely who created what race is unclear, but the gods found that mortal faith increased their power. In exchange, they freed the humanoids from aboleth control.

The mortals were also valuable to the primordial creatures for their souls, which the baernaloths used to build into the evil yugoloths, and the obyriths to create the first demons. The first demon, Demogorgon, was forged from the primal fears of the first mortal souls. The Demons grew numerous and overthrew most of the obyriths before turning against Asmodeus’ devils, whose numbers included deities’ servants turned traitor for the promise of power.

Age of Men

Distinct from the Age of Mortals by the ascension of the Races of Men (in this context, being all humankind and demihumans), rather than just the birth of the races.

With the primordials weakened and the gods reinforced by exponentially increasing numbers of mortal worshippers, the era of humanoids and their chosen deities began.

In the millennia after the Battle of Pesh, humans and the other races created civilization and learned the use of magic. The demons and devils continue to fight each other in what has become termed the Blood War, although few are ancient enough to remember why it started. The Wind Dukes never recovered their losses.

Age of Worms

The Age of Worms is also known by other names like: the End Times, the Dark Age, Eternal Ruin, and the Waiting Age among others. a time of death, decay, and writhing doom that lurks in the shadows of every tomorrow. Doomsayers speak of the end times, an era of destruction known as the Age of Worms. Servants of mad cults work to hurry this along. Neither the deities nor the remaining primordial evils want this to happen any time soon, since both benefit from the continuing growth of mortals.

The Age of Worms appears largely in the "Age of Worms Adventure Path" published in Dungeon and Dragon magazines from 2005 to 2006.

Other Known "Ages"

Epoch of Magic

Presumed to include all known history prior to 576 CY back to the Age of Men when mortals learned to use magic. Uncertain end date—definitively before 998 CY).

Age of Glory

Period of Suel dominance. Ended with the Rain of Colorless Fire ca. -422 CY

Age of Great Sorrow

Decline of the Great Kingdom of Aerdy, ca. 213 CY.

Elder Age

Time when secrets of immortality were known.