Lore: Arkeyans
In the time of the Fracture, the Arkeyans were one of the principle civilizations, coexisting with the Jovians and the Kiltians. Precise details regarding these ancient civilizations are in short supply in the modern world, having occurred over ten thousand years prior to the dawn of the Ronkan Empire. What little is known is fragmentary at best.
What is known is that the Arkeyans' rise to dominance was due, in large part, to the development of Technology. It is known that dwarves were among the primary leaders in research, and seemed to have taken a much more active role in surface society and culture than they do in the modern era. Evidence exists that suggests the Arkeyans even developed and constructed primitive analytical engines, though they did not seem to be in widespread usage, and there is no evidence that they developed accompanying technologies, such as pin panels.
Arkeyans also developed walkers, a technology that would not be seen in the world again until Roywyn Folkor reinvented the necessary technologies decades prior to the rise of the Ronkan Empire, though there is some evidence that suggests she may have uncovered lost lore from an Arkeyan ruin. Memetic records indicate that these were developed to combat vilekin, which - at the time of the Arkeyans - were still a considerable threat, as they did not go dormant until several millenia after the Fracture.
Historians and memeticists who study the Arkeyan civilization typically divide their history into three distinct phases: the early Arkeyan period, in which the initial group that identified itself as Arkeyan rose to dominance in their territory, carving out an empire from squabbling tribes and city-states; the high Arkeyan period, in which the Arkeyan Empire became one of the main three powers in their time period, using their advanced Technology to great effect and holding a significant portion of the world's landmass; and the weird Arkeyan period, of which there is much less documentation, but what does exist points to a significant departure from their previous research efforts, and also the eventual downfall of the Arkeyan Empire.
While the three powers of the era were primarily human, with the Lynae population spread between the three of them fairly evenly, there were a number of races that seemed to prefer one over the others. For the Arkeyans, these were the dwarves and hobgoblins: the dwarves seemed to prefer research projects, but were not uncommon in larger Arkeyan settlements, while hobgoblins formed the backbone of the Arkeyan war machine, serving both as foot soldiers and walker pilots, though members of both races seem to have not been uncommon in other roles through Arkeyan society.
Overall, Arkeyan culture put significant emphasis on science and rooting out the nature of reality. While their educational institutions seem to have not produced many philosophers - most recovered writing is of a more technical bent - they were a deeply rational people, building upon the insights of previous generations and producing new wonders. While the height of their technological prowess did not reach the levels of modern technology in Trinity, it came close, and many have claimed that there is evidence to suggest that the Arkeyans could very well have been capable of space flight.
Until AO 30, these claims were largely treated as crackpot theories - if the Arkeyans had traveled outside of the atmosphere, it was argued, surely there would be some trace - but the discovery of Kiltian pyramids on one of the moons of Adnez led some historians to reconsider these arguments. While what was apparently the primary pyramid self-destructed, leaving almost no trace of what had gone into its construction, the much smaller pyramids which had begun an assault on settlements in the Desert of the Unspoken were taken down in much less destructive manners, allowing archaeologists and historians to study them in much greater detail.
The pyramids - which were clearly of Kiltian origin, given the Kiltian logographs ubiquitous throughout their interiors - were clearly powered by what appeared to be engines, but also were clearly magical in nature. Mages and engineers were consulted to further study these designs, and many reached the same conclusions: these vehicles had attained space flight through the application of devices that were originally designed as Technological in function, but repurposed or otherwise modified in some fashion to instead be fueled by mana, which was stored in massive batteries housed within the pyramids.
This resurgence in interest in Arkeyan history has also led to significantly more funding and research efforts being directed at the weird Arkeyan period, of which there is unfortunately much less information available. While it is generally assumed that the Fracture caused the downfall of the Arkeyans - similarly, the Jovians and Kiltians seem to have suffered much the same fate, in roughly the same timeframe - some are of the opinion that the Arkeyans' insistence on studying strange new theories and approaches to reality were what undermined their economic and military power.
Fewer claim that what the Arkeyans were studying, based upon maddeningly fragmentary research reports with bizarre new terminology with no hints given as to what the new terms mean, was an attempt to fuse together Magic and Technology, into what some call magitech. Evidence for this view, however, is scarce, controversial, and up to interpretation. Some even claim that Arkeyan society underwent a significant culture shift when it was discovered that some of their brightest minds had somehow developed various mental powers, akin to Psionics of today, and that this sudden change in the population resulted in structural collapse (due to Force interactions, of course): evidence for this position is shaky and relies on fragmentary reports.
Of course, there is always the fact that the Arcanic and Assembly languages - traditionally considered the primary tongue of Magic and Technology, respectively - are both written in the Arkeyan alphabet. While arguments can be made that using an alphabet for such purposes is preferable over logographs and syllabaries, some argue that this lends credence to the idea that the Arkeyans - while unarguably initially invested in Technology - began researching Magic at some point in their history.
