In to the Dark...

What do you do when the Gods die?

After a century long conflict between the light and the dark, these lands have paid the price. The final war, the Fatewar, saw no victory for mortal or immortal. Those Gods that were not outright slain in the war have gone in to hiding or pulled back into their sanctuaries; leaving mankind to its own devices. In the vacuum, other factions arose. At first, it seemed the only solution; if the divine have fallen, then it was surely time for the Arcane to arise. But with power comes greed and corruption; those same vices that had befallen the Gods now plagued mankind.

At first it was the Bone Mages who found that drawing power from the remains of the dead gods could amplify their spells to new heights. Only their own internal strife prevented the Bone Mages from grasping the world with an unbreakable fist. For five decades, the Bones Mages fought among themselves for control of the resources that powered their magics. During that period, the rest of the world waited and watched; knowing that the future looked dark for an already bleak world. The war torn world was barely habitable, the races began to adapt; moving away from the large cities to small sects that could scavenge an existence in the uncharted wilds. Those people who long ago had dwelled underground began to retreat there and build immense labyrinths. And the uncivilized races began to grow bold....

It was purely by accident that a lowly apprentice of a small wizard's enclave made a discovery of remarkable proportion. The wizards, mostly outcasts and misfits scorned by the Black Bone Mages, followed the scholarly teachings of a long dead sorcerer known as Karsoth. They believed that the earth held an innate magic which could be drawn upon; greatly extending the magical reserves of the wizard. Mostly this was theory, several generations of Karsoth wizards had found little evidence that such pool of power existed. That was, until the fateful experiment performed by a young apprentice who was simply trying to prove himself and gain his Adept ranking. What he discovered would once again change the world, a land that had suffered enough change already.

During the Fatewars, the battles between Gods bent and twisted the very fabric of time and space that surrounded the earth. Strange rifts appeared, some times only for a few moments but some seemed stable and static. Most avoided these rifts which good reason, it wasn't uncommon for creatures from other times and places to appear through the rifts. But the Karsoth discovered a rift that seemed rather benign, yet its structure and purpose remained unknown. That was until an ambitious apprentice summoned the courage to perform some rather mundane experiments on the rift. He quickly realized that the rift was exactly the innate source that his long-dead mentor was sure existed; an inexhaustible source of arcane energy.

The Followers of Karsoth closed their doors and retreated into complete seclusion. No one entered or left the enclave for thirteen years, during which the mages explored the power of the rift and documented their find. Having seen the effects that greed and the unlimited hunger for power had upon their brothers, the bone mages, they determined to avoid that fate. They established an orderly process for determining ranks and privilege within their order; with clear and precise rules as to how to advance. It was neither a democracy nor a benign form of governance; for like the Bone Mages, they intended to rule the world.

Eventually the Wizards of Karsoth were found out; their new found power was revealed to the Black Bones Mages. The vastly larger sect of the Bone Mages deliberated and debated what they should do about these upstarts. One faction after another offered up solutions that would undoubtedly had ended the rise to power of the Karsoth. And each time, a rival faction would sabotage the effort. By the time the Bone Mages had agreed on a plan (and the associated distribution of the spoils) it was too late. The membership of the Karsoth sect had exploded as wizards from every walk of life sought their teachings.

Warfare is never a pretty sight but unlike conventional warfare consisting of masses of men on a single field of battle, Magewars require but 1 participant from each side to engage in an awe inspiring spectacle of destruction. As the magics stolen from the bones of dead gods met the arcane energies drawn from the rifts, the world shudder under the impact. There were no rules, no battlefields, and no lines in the sand. Irresistible force meets indestructible power, and the earth began to change.

Those not otherwise committed to one side or the other had but one choice, get out of the way. The civilians had the most dire of motivations; find a safe place or die. Ships sailed the seas looking for uncharted and unknown lands and some success was met. But it soon became evident that just being out of the way was not enough, there would come a time when this world could not sustain life; at least in the fashion that men had come to understand. If the surface could not support life, maybe under the surface would; so they began to dig….

In the end, there was no treaty, no declaration of peace; the hostilities just stopped, there was simply nothing left to fight for. A half-dozen generations of wizards on both sides had been born, learned their arts, and died. Eventually they looked around and everyone was gone, the landscape was eerily silent and glowing with the radiating magics of uncountable battles.

Below the war-scarred lands, a new revolution and evolution was taking place. It also, was not a peaceful one….