For the first five centuries after the Crimson Convergence, the peoples of Criozevan lived in loose tribal groupings with no formal centralized authority. Communities formed and dissolved along ethnic, geographic, and magical lines, but none consolidated into anything resembling a state.
Around Year 500, informal proto-kingdoms began emerging across the continent — territories held together by shared race, shared land, or a powerful individual’s influence — but these were still fluid, without fixed borders or formal governments.
The Goldhelm Consolidation
The first true centralized government on the continent was created by the Goldhelms. Around Year 700, the Goldhelm people — who had long held their isolated northeastern peninsula but remained internally tribal — coalesced under a unified ruling structure and founded what would become the Goldhelm Kingdom.
The Catalyst Effect
Their consolidation acted as a catalyst: as the Goldhelms pulled inward and stopped engaging with other groups, the surrounding peoples recognized that organized government was not only possible but necessary for defense and trade. Over the following decades, formal centralized governments began forming across the continent in rapid succession — each partly in response to Goldhelm’s precedent and partly out of the practical need to negotiate with it.
This period of state formation laid the political groundwork for the continent’s current map. See: Goldhelm Kingdom (Kingdoms).