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The Great Wars refer to a series of historical conflicts in the Shannara timeline that escalated into a cluster of apocalyptic events, culminating in the destruction of the Old World and the end of the Age of Man around the end of the twenty-first century or the beginning of the twenty-second.

In earlier Shannara novels, Terry Brooks refers to the Great Wars as a historical event in the distant past. It is not until the publication of the Genesis of Shannara trilogy that Brooks describes the events of the Great Wars in detail and confirms that the Shannara series takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth. For example, the trilogy reveals that before the Great Wars, some portion of the Four Lands was actually the Pacific Northwest.

Description[]

During the Age of Man, science and technology ruled the world and humankind's medical advancements had gotten to the point where the population was close to conquering death itself. It was around this time that the Great Wars began.

The Great Wars were the result of several factors. Some, like territorial disputes and other geopolitical disagreements, were common to most societies, but demons serving the Void played a significant role in fomenting and escalating these conflicts.

The conflicts that began the Wars were initially confined to small areas and only affected small groups of people. However, they soon started occurring more frequently and grew in scope and severity. More and more countries would get involved, until the situation finally reached a flash point. Doomsday weapons, never intended to be used on a massive scale, were unleashed upon the world. Explosive devices of incredible power wiped out entire regions in a series of unimaginable firestorms. Artificial plagues were unleashed on whole communities and radiation poisoned the lands, rotting massive human populations and entire bioregions from the inside out.

The climax of the Great Wars lasted only a few moments, but the results were catastrophic. The uncontrolled energies unleashed by the sciences humankind had developed over the years tore across the earth, drastically altering the landscape and killing nearly all life in its path.

Geography[]

Massive earthquakes broke out and volcanoes erupted in response to the destructive energy released during the final moments of the Wars. Floods battered shores, swallowing whole communities. Mountain ranges sank, and the sea floor rose. Infernos raged in forests and skies turned black. Ultimately, the Great Wars reshaped the earth itself.

Eventually, the reshaped lands became known as the Four Lands, bounded by oceans on the west and east: the Blue Divide and the Tiderace.

Advent of the Five Races[]

Humans ceased to be the dominant species on Earth, as humankind was almost destroyed. It tooks generations for the harmful radiation released during the Wars to begin to subside. As the surviving communities of people began to recover and as they emerged from their places of refuge to rebuild and reestablish themselves, they discovered that new races of human beings had emerged.

One group of humans had fled to underground caverns and tunnels to escape the impacts of the Great Wars. Generations of life underground caused their bodies to become short but very strong, with eyes adapted to darkness. When they emerged they were nearly blinded by the light of the outside world, but they began to make a life above ground. Because of their new appearance, these people were named Dwarves, after a mythical race with similar proportions described in tales from the Old World.

Another group of people had fled into dense forests to shelter from the impacts of the Wars. The radiation and generations of life within tall, thick stands of trees gave these people short, twisted physiques, elongated limbs, and yellow skin. The mutant humans were initially known as the Spiders due to their elongated limbs and the way they moved. Generations later, the descendants of the Spiders became known as Gnomes. Just as with the Dwarves, they were named Gnomes after the creatures of the same name from the Age of Faerie, due their resemblance to them.

Some survivors of the Great Wars went north into the mountains to survive. Living above ground, these people were fully exposed to radiation and became the most altered of all the human populations after the Wars. These humans became large and powerful, with tough, bark-like skin, and they became known as Trolls.

Meanwhile, some humans were lucky enough to be living well south of the apocalypse, far enough away that they were mostly untouched by the radiation and its mutagenic impacts. These people would come to be collectively called the Race of Man, the only group of humans to have remained unchanged by the Great Wars. Perhaps because they were mostly untouched and safe from the worst effects of the Wars, the Race of Man became the most populous of the Races in the Four Lands. Humans who lived on the opposite side the Tiderace, such as the Skaar and the people of the Nambizi, were also seemingly untouched by the aftereffects of the Wars and can also be considered part of the Race of Man.

Finally, a fifth race emerged after the Great Wars: the Elves. While many assumed that the Elves were just another population of humans that had been altered by the Great Wars, in truth they were creatures of Faerie that had chosen to keep themselves hidden during the Age of Man to avoid being driven to extinction by humankind, like the rest of their Faerie brethren. They decided to come out of hiding only after humankind no longer dominated the Earth.

The Elves have the distinction of being the only survivors from the Age of Faerie apart from a few notable exceptions, but the Great Wars did force a drastic transformation on them as well: once fully magical Faerie beings, they had adapted and changed to become quite similar to humankind, with most of their innate magic lost during their struggle to survive post-apocalypse.

First Druid Council[]

For a thousand years after the Great Wars, these five Races struggled to survive and lived a brutish existence in constant struggle against each other. Then Galaphile, a wise man among the Elves, gathered the greatest minds of the Races at Paranor. Galaphile knew a great deal of knowledge from the Old World and he knew that the only way to bring the new Races together and lift them out of a near-primitive existence was to recruit the wisest of each Race to come together in an effort to gather and protect the remains of knowledge from the past and create solutions for the future.

In honor of an Old World term for learned men, Galaphile named these men and women Druids. They became known as the Druid Council, and Galaphile was named the first Ard Rhys. This first Druid Council was responsible for creating what was for a time a durable, lasting peace in the Four Lands by dividing up the lands between the Races: the Elves controlled the Westland, the Trolls controlled the Northland, Dwarves and Gnomes controlled different parts of the Eastland, and the Race of Man controlled the Southland.

Legacy[]

Ultimately, the cataclysm of the Great Wars led to the birth of a new world, with new societies and new Races of people—this is the world in which the events of the Shannara novels take place.

Some elements of the Old World continue to exist in the new. Among these include tbe remnants of the old sciences preserved and passed down by the Druids. Other survivors included monstrosities like the Creepers, the artificial intelligence known as Antrax, Antrax's technological creations, and ruins from the Age of Man like Eldwist and Stridegate.

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