Rinoin

In the early Golden Age, Rinoin was romanticised as one of the great "lost civilizations". However, unlike most cultures to recieve such praise, the Rinoins have the distinction of actually having existed. The belief during the Golden Age was that they were some sort of Utopian society, advanced in intelect and morality, and slain at the cruel hands of the Marcon Alliance. This belief was fueled when several books found in the Library of Arindell were positively confirmed as Rinoin in origin.

The truth, as it turns out, was far more exciting.

History

Very little is known about the Rinoins, and nearly all of it comes from secondary sources. Their civilization probably began around B.G.A 2900 and ended around B.G.A. 2200. The ending date can be more precisely fixed due to records from their destroyers, believed to be an early iteration of the Marcon Alliance. The only information for the start of Rinoin culture comes from a single passage in a book written several centuries later, which alludes to Rinoin culture being "only 700 years young" at the time of it's destruction.

Other sources tell of the war and Rinoin's eventual defeat. It was well into the Dynastic Period, though still over six hundred years before the Marcon Alliance would officially solidify. Still, all sources claim the Marcons destroyed the Rinoins, indicating that either the Marcons solidified earlier than previously understood, or one portion of the empire was already using the name well before then.

Modern Discovery

For over two millenia, through the Golden and Second Ages, the Rinoins were written off as myth. Though several books had been discovered in the Library of Arindell that were believed to be Rinoin, they could not be translated, and thus were not considered actual proof. It was not until the early-mid Third Age when a Rinoin city was finally excavated, that proof was finally found.

The city was at first believed to be of a much newer vintage. There was large-scale evidence of poured concrete, and buildings made with steel construction. Though little remained, it seemed evident that many of these buildings could have been sky scrapers, and easily reached 40-60 stories in height. Not only that, but a fully modern plumbing and sewage system, along with an underground transportation network, were discovered beneath the ruins.

The entire metropolise was found underneath farmland, which itself sat atop two hundred feet of dirt, which appeared to have been carried in and dumped, literally burying the the place. Artifacts found while diging through the topsoil dated back to the Dynastic Period of the Mage Wars, indicating that not only was the city at least 3500 years old, but that it had been delibrately buried by human hands.

The discovery of a relatively modern city under thirty centuries of Mage Wars-era dirt baffled archeologists. It was not even original believed to be Rinoin, as tradition held that the Rinoins were a technologically regressed, but socially-advanced people, and thus could not have build such a city.

Metal plaques were eventually found bearing the same script as the Rinoin books in the library, and among these some with translations into other languages. This eventually allowed modern scholars to interpret and translate the Rinoin dialect, and it was then that the ruins were finally positively identified.

Understanding

The discovery of the first Rinoin city led to finding several more, all in similar states. That is, burrined beneath huge mountains of earth, delibrately places over them. The finding of Marcon settlments around most of these proved that the cities had been buried by members of the Marcon Alliance.