Enigmatic Weapons of the Undying Age

Around about the start of the Second Chaotic Period, a large number of weapons began to appear with unique names and the suffix "of the Undying Age". Each had a name something like "Rylmekal, Sword of the Undying Age", or "Bnammer, Hammer of the Undying Age", over three thousand unique named weapons have been documented, and it is believed as many as three times that may have once existed.

Every weapon had similar, especially powerful enchantments and a clearly similar design aesthetic. Of particular note is the metal, which is grey to black with wavy white lines going through it. Some weapons had modified components, such as axe handles and sword hilts, but the metal components are clearly made by a common hand.

The weapons became highly sought-after by fighters of all kinds, and had an odd tendency to show up in the most unusual places.

Provenance

No weapon from the era has a provenance that can be traced back further than around 400 B.G.A.. No maker can be identified. Only a very large, well-appointed weapons smith could possibly have made so many high-quality pieces, and such a maker should have been identifiable based on surviving records of the time. Moreover, the weapon designs, while highly varied, did not resemble any of the common styles of the time. The few commonalities most closely resembled the popular choices from the First Chaotic Period.

Early Incorrect Suppositions

Early in the Golden Age, several weapons came into the hands of antiquarians, who sought to solve the msytery. It was proposed by early Erologists that The Undying Age must be a previously unknown epoch of civilization, of which these weapons were the last surviving remnant. Dozens of books were written about this lost age, built entirely on nothing but the cataloged weapons and their names. Eventually a narrative started to emerge, about an era that took place before the events of the Age of Darkness, in which each weapon represented a living person who, foreseeing some calamity, gave up their life to power the enchantments of an indestructible weapon that would prove, no matter what came to pass, that they had lived.

These were, eventually, proven to be fully and completely wrong. But the narrative lived on as a work of fiction, and continued to be told for many years.

First Official Catalog

During the third century of the Golden Age, the Arsenal of Freedom on Arden Song published a report on the 317 weapons they had collected and identified as part of the series. After exhustive scientific and physical examination, they were able to demonstrate incontrovertibly that the weapons had been crafted sometime during the late First Chaotic Period or Intermediate Period, based on matching each design to know exemplars from the period.

The Arden Report further concluded that the weapons had been made by a single smith or workshop, but as records from the time were scarce at best, identifying it would not be possible.

Theories

Accepted Histories Theory

Herbert Patric Galactis in the Accepted Histories argued for a simple explanation. He believed the weapons had been made for a specific army, then hidden in a specific cache, which remained undiscovered through the Dynastic Period and only uncovered sometime near the end of the era. His supposition was based on little more than the theory making sense.

Gudersnipe Foundation

Many historians point the finger at the Gudersnipe Foundation, being the go-to explanation for anything weird and inexplicable showing up right around the change from the Dynastic to the Second Chaotic. The Foundation has been quick to point out the weapons in fact appear in the historic record at least a solid decade before the old Gudersnipe Army began operations. And in any case, their elite battle sorcerers were armed with Orichalcum.

Graveyard of the Ulanat

It took all the way to the era of the New Day for the mystery to be solved, by which time all of the weapons of the Undying Age had been lost, save for the non-magical reproductions on display at the Arsenal of Freedom. A researcher known only as The Weevil used the original catalog report from Arden Song to trace the exemplar weapons themselves to a little-known and forgotten civilization called Ulanat, which existed somewhere on The Greater Continent of Aren in The Interior. The Weevil was able to bring up several references to Ulanat including two primary sources who described them as having a belief in an afterlife they described as "The Undying Lands" or, in one reference, "The Undying Era".

Based on the scant information uncovered about the Ulanat, The Weevil theorized that the weapons were crafted over a sixty-year period as funeral totems, meant to accompany a dead warrior into the afterlife and that, due to millennia of drift, they must have called this afterlife "The Undying Age".

The Weevil further theorized that the Ulanat's graveyard lay undiscovered through the eons, and was found and looted only