Era of Man

Summary
The rise of the Human race as an influential and dominant force, this age gave rise to several nations, organizations, and other things familiar to the present day world. This era was defined by Humans doing all of this on their own, until the Gods made their presence known.

11,500 P.C. - 9,000 P.C.
In the remains of the world left behind by the Fiends, the Humans somehow prospered. Many nations and kingdoms and potentates rose and prospered in all the various regions. One of the most influential was the nation of Falmar, which rose to prosperity through the slave trade. That empire ruled a large chunk of the continent of Thargorum.

However, towards the end of this time period, their emperors began to overreach and believed themselves invincible. The power was too great, and the great Falmar empire fell into infighting, assassination, and ultimately civil war.

9,000 P.C. - 6,500 P.C.
The era was not all internal fighting, though. Many nations formed in the wake of the Falmar Empire falling apart. They each found their own way to prosperity. However, this did lead to clashes with one of their old rulers: the Elves.

After expanding their cities and claiming more and more land as their own, the forests that once covered most of the world began to slowly diminish. The Elves, not as powerful as they once were, still were not okay with this. Around this time they formed the Circle of Aerenoth, named after it's creator, a cleric and druid devoted to Luontu. The Circle did not destroy the Human empires, but at least they presented enough difficulty that the Human's expansion into the Elven forest ceased.

The Humans met similar resistance from the Dwarves, who refused to give up their mountain homes. Their advantage was not numbers, but their homeland being extremely rough terrain. The Humans allowed the Dwarves the settle where they may. It was around this time that Sun Dwarves and Frost Dwarves formed. The different Dwarves' approach to dealing with outsiders began to delineate the differences between the two subraces we all know today.

This was also true for the Stone Halflings and the Gold Halflings, who each had a different way to live in the world now that the Humans were in charge.

6,500 P.C. - 5,000 P.C.
Towards the end of the era, the Gods began to "reveal" themselves. They were known to the world, and clerics had served them and had been granted divine powers. However, the Gods seemed to have been distant and the divine powers the Gods would grant were limited and stopped after a certain....level (5th Level).

Over the course of a couple centuries, the Gods each made their own individual entrance into the world, appearing as their avatar, choosing the leader of their church, and suddenly their servants began to have extremely powerful divine abilities never seen before.

It was only when the Gods Aubade and Vane finally came to this world that a new era began...

Signs of the Era
Many nations that were formed in this era were the nations or eventually became the nations we know today. Falmar being a significant one, but many other formed from the pieces of larger nations or by combining several small nations into one.

The Circle of Aerenoth was formed during this time, but some other groups were formed that didn't survive to the present. These included the Falmarian Free Trade Consortium, which was just a glorified slave collection and trade group, and the Shadow Guild, which was a league of Assassins with ties to the Shadowfell that got too close to the plane and accidentally relocated their entire group to the plane, destroying most of them in the process. Some say elements of these two groups still exist today, but even if that's true, they aren't organized in any manner.

The numerous subraces began to form during this era. Sun Dwarves, Frost Dwarves, Stone Halflings, and Gold Halflings all start during this era. More variations would come up in later years, but the majority of the Dwarves and Halflings were in either of these two groups for centuries, and that's still true today.