Central Tyria
Five elder races ally against the Elder Dragons
As the Elder Dragons awoke and began consuming the world, the five elder races — dwarves, Forgotten, jotun, mursaat, and Seers — set aside their differences, formed an alliance, and shared their hoarded magic with one another.
The "elder races" were the five species that survived the previous dragonrise: the dwarves, the Forgotten, the jotun, the mursaat, and the Seers. They were the elite of their age, having hoarded the use of magic and so kept other species from developing as they had.
When the Elder Dragons rose more than ten thousand years ago, these races put aside their differences and forged an alliance, sharing their magic with each other to oppose the dragons. According to the Mursaat Lore Tablets, however, they could not agree on what to do: the jotun hid, the dwarves withdrew into their fortresses, and the Seers turned to storing magic for use after the dragons returned to sleep — leaving only the mursaat and the Forgotten willing to take the fight to the dragons.