Early in the new expansionist age there were several races. Elves, Halflings, Humans, Dwarves, and Kobolds. Early on the halflings fabled food production method faltered as they nearly starved to death but for the timely intervention of GruGru Rek. This Grek worshiping Kobold took pity on the Halflings and agreed somewhat hesitantly to gifting the Halflings a small amount of food to be paid back ten-fold.
It was around then that the Golden Dragon began to attack the various empires. All but the Humans and Elves seemed to be affected. Luckily each race managed to continue their expansion with Grugru Rek eventually training his peoples in the art of thievery. SO much so that they eventually began looting EVERYTHING from the Dragon's lair. Including people. As their skills grew the Kobolds eventually stole the Sword of Time from Grek II and returned it to the original Grek. As thanks he gifted them the Cloak of Shadows.
Meanwhile the Humans had begun to dig too deep too greedily, a tactic advised against by the Dwarves. As punishment for their greedy need for Sulfur a Balrog erupted from their mines and began sowing chaos as it slaughtered innumerable troops. Even after their king sacrificed himself in an ill-fated attempt to destroy this massive creature the humans continued to dig and, eventually, released a second balrog. It was a little bit of a nuisance to say the least. Regardless the queen, Matilda the Red [named such for the flowing red gowns she wore to hid the blood of those she executed for questioning her decision to mine ever deeper] sent literal mountains of conscripts to their death in a failure of a military campaign designed to stop the Balrog. After many hundreds of unarmed and untrained regiments fell to the twin balrogs the first, cooler, of the two finally fell. This peeved his brother in arms who still roams the bloody fields outside of the sulfur mine.
On another front the two empires previously described, Kobolds and Humans, began to fight a naval war that truly showcased the Kobolds strengths. Unfortunately this did not include naval combat as they failed miserably. This nearly drove Grugru Rek to the brink of the abyss however there are rumors of his return.
As all this was happening the Dwarves and Elves had arrived at a sort of treaty to deal with Mithril smithing and bar transactions. All that was not stolen by the Kobolds would be exchanged, smelted, and smithed between the two. This is as interesting as the Elves got. At least the dwarves had the Grek damned common courtesy to get singed up by the dragon from time to time to keep the rest of the world entertained. But what can you expect from Non-grek elves?
The Hobbits [which is actually owned by tolkien so... Don't publish this for money. Along with Balrog as an aside.] had merged together literal tons of food to sacrifice their main hero who had brought them the food from Grugru Rek so long ago [a debt paid many times over through the trade of land near the dragon rather than food]. As he lay rotting in the ground he became more than a simple hobbit. He became a necromancer of unspeakable power.
That, my friends, is a brief synopsis of the history of the world off the top of my head. This does not include stuff such as feeding hobbits their children, dolphin offal [which is?], raving seaman thought to be lost, and the many trades over the years.
@GWG What did you think it was?