Timeline

The First Epoch
The First Epoch (in nomenclature, 1E) is the longest of the epochs, stretching from roughly 13.8 billion to 2.1 million years before the Fourth Epoch and covers the period from the forming of the world until the first evidence of our earliest ancestors begins in the geological record. Of this period, almost nothing is known. However, the sammonish'i have a creation myth worthy of note said to take place over this time.

According to their tales, the world in its youth attracted non-coropreal intelligences called the Emrys. While not responsible for the creation of life, precisely, they did guide creation with their song, shaping the world in a manner that most pleased them. They are responsible, in short, for the variety of flora and fauna, and all the systems which keep them in balance. Some time towards the end of this epoch, the Emrys were attacked by another non-corporeal intelligence the sammonish'i called, rather uninspiringly, the Darkness, who used subterfuge and guile to destroy the Emrys from within.

What resulted was a bitter civil war, resulting in the Fall, which, in sammonish'y myth, was the crashing of the Emrys into the earth. They fell, according to the desert warriors, in flames, becoming lesser beings of flesh as they did so. They slammed into the world's land and oceans. The resulting catacysm threw up dust and rock, separated landmasses, raised up mountains that bled fire and spewed smoke, carved valleys, creating tidal waves that washed entire landmasses away and other disasters aside. The whole event took several hundred years.

When the tumult died down, there remained but three Emrys, Ula, Enthe and  Orin - two sisters and their brother (these three became the main deities of the sammonish'i people) - who could do naught but watch on in horror.

It should also be noted that the keshal'i mythos also holds space for these non-corporeal intelligences, which they call Shen, from whom they are direct descendants. The keshal'i religious life is focussed on attaining spiritual perfection in the hopes that they will be able to return to the Shen after they die, and dance and sing forever in the palace of the heavens.

This Fall and the resulting cataclysm (known to the sammonish'i as the First Dark) ended the First Epoch.

The Second Epoch
Spanning from 2.1 million to 3 990 years before the Fourth Epoch, this epoch, again according to the sammonish'i creation myth, saw the burnt survivors of the Fall stride from the oceans to make their homes on land (only those Emrys who landed in the oceans survived the Fall.  The rest, it seems, perished). During this period three factions formed and went in their separate ways, diverging into the three peoples which populated the world - the waygar'i (folk of the plains), the keshal'i (folk of the forests), and the sammonish'i (folk of the desert). These three groups continued to grow and evolve largely separate from one another, though it seems that the keshal'i and the sammonish'i developed close trading ties in the latter portion of this time (as evidenced in the physical record).

This is the epoch in which the hero Stran of the Deep supposedly rose to prominence, according to fír suthr tales. This epoch was once again ended by a cataclysmic event. The fír suthr and the local legends of Ardea proclaim without guile that the Second Epoch ended with the Battle for the Dawn, where a coalition of waygar'i, keshal'i and sammonish'i battled the Darkness (presumably the same from the First Epoch?  It is unclear) under the banner of the hero Stran of the Deep.

The ending of this period saw the separation of the fír suthr from their continental kin, as they settled the Southern Archipelago, as well as the mysterious disappearance of the keshal'i from the archaeological record (explained in the myth by a heartbroken Lord Emperor stealing the keshal'i to a far away land where they might recover from the ravages of war). With no evidence of a great environmental disaster, war does seem the likeliest explanation for what can be observed in the physical record.

The Third Epoch
Beginning some 3990 years before the Fourth Epoch, the third epoch also met its end in war. The waygar'i had expanded to fill the territories on Doma the keshal'i left behind, moving, even, across the Mael Strait to establish the Barony of Vis.

Nearly two thousand years later, the waygar'i of Doma began to feud. They call this time The Strife. A cult, the Church of the Sun, established itself a the dominant cult of the continent and converted Isha Del, king of Karas Strem, who then declared them the sole true religion of his territories. Backed now by the cult and its fanatical adherents, the king went on a sanctioned rampage, eliminating his rivals. With the backing of the king, the church went after its rivals, destroying sanctuaries and followers of other deities in a bloody inquisition now known as the Great Purge. At the end of it all, the borders of the fourteen kingdoms were settled, Isha Del acquired the fealty of their rulers, cementing his claim to the position of high king, and the Church of the Sun became the only religion on the continent.

The Southern Archipelago remained largely unaffected (though the Church of the Sun did make a few attempts; their boats were wrecked and the attempts were eventually abandoned), and so continued to live as the waygar'i of the continent had prior to The Strife.

It is the end of the Third Epoch in which the events of The Great Man cycle is supposed to take place, the Great Battle ending the epoch in, if it is to believed, spectacular fashion.