The Universe is inconceivable.
The final illusions of omniscience dissipated long ago, bringing about chaos. For millennia, the Collision has represented an unfathomable force, which was shaping the Universe on par with the gods. The primary battlefield that unfolded at the very heart of this world served as a proof that it is doomed and finally was a success: an epoch of struggle against mayhem was followed by the Divine Exodus. The Guardians abandoned the Land of Amun, quietly and unnoticed at first, allowing an illusion of the Creator’s will to linger for a while. Centuries later, the world as we knew it is on the brink of extinction, and providence ceased to be the truth, but rather became part of a history long forgotten.
And yet nature abhors a vacuum. Priests of all stripes have popped up all over, speaking on behalf of all sorts of supernatural beings — from fictitious deities to real-life demons. Several clergymen managed to set up religious communities so vast and powerful that they transformed into branches of local governments. Minions of evil attempted to establish demon cults, and some kingdoms that let that happen were turned into rubble. Shrewd Holy Joes, who took advantage of the current state of affairs, traded both blessings and curses, spreading heresy to every corner of the world. There is no saying now who brought happy afterlife to the market, but it remained a top seller for decades. Success stories from lucky profiteers caused the mass emergence of prophets, who filled in the gaps in the continent-wide picture of hogwash.
On any square of any run-down town, one cannot but see farseers with crystal honest eyes. Their invariably encouraging predictions lead those eager to tempt fortune straight to sharpers. Dupes’ dough is enough to have whole organizations on the payroll, bribe aldermen, and hire bouncers. The latter protect profitable territories from scammers of other kinds, unless they pay.
Unable to withstand competition, keepers of what they claim to be “sacrosanct” knowledge, like palm reading, ply their trade on the streets. Seers stick at nothing, closely cooperating with pickpockets, so prepare to pay twice.
Prophets knowledgeable about rituals benefit from work from home with flexible schedules. Unlike other fortune-tellers that don’t make money at night, these mystics multiply their fees, making this business most attractive for beginners. My personal favorites are crystal-gazers and tarot semi-pros. At least you can see what you have paid for unlike hyped up and always busy Oracles. I have met a handful, and I would hardly recommend them to anyone.
But jokes aside, I’ve got plenty of prophecies to learn firsthand that they are not worth a damn. I’ve seen enough reckless acts to declare that blind faith never does any good. Ages of compelling studies defy this entire heresy nonsense, but people keep choosing belief over reason while dismissing any arguments, making the same mistakes over and over again.
I feel like something is trying to convince me that mind is just an illusion. I resist by sacrificing the few remaining enlightened. But what is my voice of reason if not an echo amidst numberless ruins of air castles if even the Creator himself ended up buried thereunder?
But first things first…
The Universe
Rumor has it that some of the gods were able to regress back to the beginning of times and there was “nothing discoverable” there. I tend to accept this wise wording. Indeed, emptiness is about a poor ability to see things, rather than a property of reality. In confirmation of this theory, ether was uncovered when the gods’ minds started shining a bright illuminating light, while voidees were exposed much later. Those were “empty” bubbles hardly distinguishable from their environment.
Through endless times, voidees were the only satellites of the gods. The bubbles brought a lot of joy while playing catch — their erratic movements made it really hard to approach them and easy for them to evade. But, overall, they seemed to bring no value whatsoever: any attempts to interact or destroy them failed miserably.
Left on their own, the gods infinitely colored the surrounding ether. Beautiful auroras helped cope with the blues, but could not mitigate endless awakenings in absolute darkness of the void. Despair made the gods glow, torturing them most of the time, but in the end, their shine reached each other and they finally converged. The fear of being alone paved the way to the invention of the Ethereal Sense and Teleportation techniques.
The above skills made it possible to detect and observe the voidees, whose occasional collisions resulted in a temporal phenomenon. Along with the radiance and short-term “empty” space, the gods witnessed outbursts of temporal substance. This prompted the Creators to conduct elaborate experiments with ether, and, eventually, matter was obtained, though impermanent. Numerous attempts to make it stable turned futile. To make things worse, when the voidees happened to pass through matter, they brought about wormholes and often thwarted the gods’ plans completely.
The Creator Amun was the first one to infuse matter with divine power, making his world Amonet persistent. Voidees failed to disperse its matter, but could occasionally alter its parts, turning solids into gases, or liquids into sands, each time differently.
Given this, three fundamental essences of the Universe came about:
Ether — the cradle, or the source of everything.
Gods — divine power to shape and rule over the Universe.
Voidees — chaos or, as mortals call it, Death.
Hundreds of worlds were created by the gods. Most of those realms offered unique physical and magical rules, but there was no escape from the alterations caused by the voidees. The new phenomenon — life — inevitably arose everywhere, changing the environment even more, as evolution advanced. The gods accepted this fact, and, moreover, bringing new life to the world became another joy for the Creators. Quite often, they met to showcase their progress. But the most impressive of all times was Sigma — the very first planet of Amonet… until the Collision turned it all to hell.
The Collision
Little is known about the incident. Many of the gods assembled together somewhere near Sigma in an attempt to create something unprecedented through their joint efforts, which inexplicably resulted in a devastating disaster. As a result of the catastrophe, some worlds disappeared without a trace, some merged with others to varying degrees, and some were transformed beyond recognition. The Collision that arose out of nothingness was able to establish connections with the remaining worlds and open portals here and there, facilitating the progression of Chaos. Since then, the gods have never convened again but instead focused on dealing with the consequences of what had been done.
The Collision triggered certain fundamental ubiquitous changes, most commonly in spirit invasion. After leaving their bodies, some of the souls accidentally got into the Collision space and avoided reincarnation, thus maintaining their previous identity. Because of this, they turned into spirits and could be summoned out of the Collision space to other worlds. Unpredictable behavior of the strangers in a new environment along with their physical immunity and freedom of movement became a source of numerous troubles for the Guardians.
On the other hand, a soul that left its body behind, but was not purified, maintained an intangible link with its former host. And because of that, every time a spirit was summoned back to its native world, its remains received a minor fraction of the soul’s divine power, which was however sufficient for sporadic activity. This phenomenon resulted in what is commonly known as the undead.
Demons became the most severe aftermath of the Collision. When these powerful creatures (not necessarily malevolent, though) got teleported to threateningly unsafe environment, they oftentimes instantly released all of their power in agony, thereby bringing about devastating destruction. But much worse were the demons that managed to adapt to the environment, which resulted in demonic cults. And that caused even more detriment to the native inhabitants over time.
As a result of the incident, some of the gods were significantly strengthened. They were chosen to maintain balance across the Universe. The Sigma inhabitants know of Ra and Osiris. By absorbing most of the combined power of the gods so that it would not go to the Collision, Ra gained the ability to propagate divine power over the Universe. This allowed the Divines to effectively counter the manifestations of the Collision in any world. Osiris received less power, which was still sufficient to manage lost souls, sending them back to their native worlds, bypassing the Collision space.
Post-Apocalyptic World
It is well known that before the Collision, Sigma had three moons: the Shining, the Blood, and the Faded. People made adjustments to their plans, depending on their phases. The Shining Moon phase was the best time for travelling, even at night. Better keep your windows closed during the Blood Moon, and nobody cared about the Faded Moon, since it did not have any effect other than giving a little hope to those who were completely lost.
Two continents were explored, the Land of Amun and Atlantis, with trade routes established between them. It took a month for a ship to sail to the other continent, with the help of Air and Water magic, of course. Dozens of races established hundreds of king`doms, and Divine beings — Amun’s subordinates — endeavored to keep balance, finding place for each and every being.
Until the Collision changed it all.
Amonet should have been completely destroyed, but the Creator sacrificed himself and sealed living chaos inside Sigma. The planet was about to be cleaved asunder, but it was merged with the Shining and Blood Moons with the god’s last effort, bringing about drastic change to its landscape. Sigma turned into a world full of dungeons, having imprisoned chaos as its core. The Land of Amun continent survived, and it is still unknown what has happened to Atlantis overseas. None of those who sailed there has ever returned.
From time to time, the Collision would randomly teleport creatures gathered from all over the universe inside the planet. When this was first discovered, the divine beings established underground outposts in an attempt to protect both Sigmians and aliens. Peaceful strangers were teleported back to their worlds, and those aggressive were eliminated. As the Collision progressed over the Universe, incoming aliens became more and more dangerous. At some point, the Guardians were no longer capable of dealing with the strangers underground and departed, leaving everything to chance. The depths of Sigma turned into the most severe natural selection platform in the Universe. When it was proved that most of the aliens were dying underground, and divine patrols could handle the survivors, the Divine Exodus occurred. The motivation was to explore and destroy the Collision’s connections in other worlds.
Despite the death of Amun and the Divine Exodus, magic was still available to Sigmians, albeit at a lesser degree, with the potency of spells gradually diminishing. Wise souls capable of absorbing and accumulating energy from their surroundings continued to thrive, but overall, wizardly training became increasingly unpredictable. Since very few apprentices were able to advance to mastery, magic lost its former allure - the era of warriors was ushered in.
With the magic guilds – once strongholds of order and diplomacy — losing their gravitas, long-suppressed bitter conflicts surfaced. Many kingdoms and races that had lived in peace for thousands of years embarked on wars. Infinite battles tortured the Land of Amun for centuries until a strange series of earthquakes announced the emergence of something extremely powerful. Even orcs sensed the menace and deployed their armies to the pulse point where a rift was uncovered. In a while, invaders with unbelievable magic powers emerged from the depths, exterminating everything in their way. The Total War unfolded.
Unable to take a stand against mages wielding superior powers, Sigmians were put on the brink of extinction. The kingdoms that managed to survive joined forces with the remaining divine beings and retreated to the mountains, believing that if evil came from underground, highlands might be safe. And their plan worked. On the North Highlands isthmus, explorers found the White Rock, which markedly reduced magic powers around it.
The Last City was built in an antimagic area on top of the rifts that served as a shelter. For years, its defenders successfully held their ground against onslaughts until the invaders assembled a horde of enslaved creatures. During the continental clash of million-strong armies, the Sigmians were forced to fall back to the fortified dale, and the Last City was besieged. When the stronghold was about to fall, another disaster befell them — a meteorite crashed not far from the city causing an earthquake so powerful it brought down even the besieged walls. Both sides were devastated. The remaining enemy forces retreated deeper into the continent, but months later, enemy outposts sprang up like mushrooms at the border of the anti-magic zone, forming a ring tens of miles from the Last City.
The allied forces scoured the crash site in search of something to turn the tide of war only to discover otherworldly rock fragments and remains of unknown creatures. Apparently, a shard from a shattered world, torn to pieces as a result of the Collision, almost eradicated the remnants of the Sigmian civilization.
The remaining defenders weighed the risks of reviving the new species, full off with doubt, for almost everything that came to this world only seemed to contribute to its destruction. The few surviving leaders of the resistance who literally stood amid the ruins of their world were so desperate to believe in the best that after countless attempts at resurrection, a new race came into existence in the Land of Amun — fallens. These aliens turned out to be superior warriors with robust magic resistance and extraordinary speed and dexterity.
By the time enemy vanguards reached the crash site, the allies had already formed effective combat units with fallens, whose prowess against enemy mages proved invaluable.
A mutual assistance treaty was forged. Some fallens settled in the Highlands, devoting all their time to locating their scattered brethren, who were then revived by the allies. Others, acting as part of elite sabotage and reconnaissance squads deployed deep behind enemy lines, purposefully exterminated enemy magicians.
Lacking sufficient resources to resist the ‘thousand cuts’ tactics, faced with advancing enemy forces, the leadership of the invaders fled, abandoning their troops, vanishing without a trace. This caused widespread desertion of enslaved creatures and sparked a series of uprisings, which finally destroyed the enemy armies’ fighting capacity. Within a few years, order was restored across the continent. As for the ill-fated rift, it was sealed by the Divines throughout its miles-deep extent. Should the invaders return, they would have to look for another path to the surface.
The Last City never recovered after the Total War, though. Its surviving dwellers, weary of the harsh conditions in the former battlefield, departed in search of safer havens. Fallens, who initially occupied their place, eventually spread across the Highlands, preferring their traditional solitary hunting lifestyle. Through decades, the stronghold remained nearly abandoned and its name was changed to the Lost City.
The Last Wizard
The Hidden Order of Wizards had been established long before the Collision to explore magic. We uncovered the basic mechanics of spellcasting and shared our expertise with magic guilds. This not only enabled the efficient use of magical powers, but also paved the way for outstanding synergies. It would not be an exaggeration to say that our developments brought spellcasting to a qualitatively new level.
It is worth saying that we invented not only spells, but a law code. Our logical and impartial approach to decision-making was recognized as fair by the majority of social groups. Together with paladins, we maintained order after the Divine Exodus until the latter became obvious. No way could we curb the panic or combat crimes across the continent. There is no point in babysitting the crowd, unless it grows self-sufficient, and so we started exploring mind.
A new Wizard Order evolved among different races and all kinds of prudent people, believers, scammers and even criminals for centuries. Our unanswered questions varied considerably, the most important being: does self even exist, or we are nothing but pawns on a chessboard that higher powers can manipulate as they please and therefore cannot change our fate? And if the second assumption is true, then what happens when a god dies?
The unleashed internal resource was such a power that we eagerly traded demolishing spells for mental skills. Our destruction power diminished, but our ability to create and combine efforts multiplied. Each top party had a wizard. Our word eventually became law again, but not for long. We built the Last City, and its downfall was the end of our Guild…
***
I am probably the last wizard or at least half of what I used to be. At death’s door I somehow turned ethereal and kept that form for so long that I have almost forgotten what it feels like to be material. I go incognito, and very few people know that I am still alive. For such a delicate mission that I plan, silence is paramount.
I witnessed the destruction of the Last City at the very end of the Total War. Who knows whether that meteorite was a blessing or a curse? But all my friends died back then. And most of the knowledge keepers were decimated. The fall of the civilization — that’s what I call the end of the Total War.
I was travelling all over the continent in search of hidden masters, but all in vain. The civilization is in decay. Most of the guilds are extinct. Even though ancient tomes have been preserved, attempts to decode them fail without masters. Emerging mystics are unable to change the course of things: paladins are no longer as powerful as they used to be, and mages are weak. Even finding a good healer has become a formidable challenge nowadays. The Warrior and Villain Guilds are most popular and maintain a fragile balance. Public peace is maintained in big cities, but most of trade routes are controlled by villains, who demand a small fee for letting the merchants go unharmed. Otherwise, warriors step in and bitter fights begin, affecting all sides.
The restoration of the Wizard Guild should bring a hope for progress to the world. Over the past few decades, I have been trying to assemble a team capable of descending down to Level Eleven in search of an Aard of Being or Dragon Blood it’s made from. Both possess rejuvenating powers, and I will be able to finally take on my mortal material form and restore the Wizard Guild.
I have chosen the current location of Springdale for a few reasons: there are several unconnected dungeons around it, and there is a massive anti-magic layer starting on Level Four. Even though my ethereal form offers complete freedom of movement, I never got deeper, because I don’t feel well in such places. Neither do other mages, and there is a chance that a warrior party can succeed with my rejuvenation, provided that the anti-magic layer extends deep enough.
Several expeditions deep inside failed, and the lowest point that explorers have ever been able to reach in the Herbal Dungeon was Level Seven. The only known staircase to Level Eight is guarded by powerful mages, who easily outmatch the current Sigmian spellcasters, making it impossible to descend any further. So I made up my mind to focus on the Mountain Dungeon in hope that it is richer in anti-magic rocks. I found an experienced officer and a healer, who could make a map of the first three levels and feel at ease there. Time has come to assemble a new team and try to go deeper.
The officer’s acquaintances have spread word in the nearby towns that artifacts were found in the Lost City catacombs. And while looking forward to welcoming those brave and desperate explorers, who should visit Springdale, I started writing a post-apocalyptic treatise, spending most of my time in an old decrepit house at the outskirts of the village. The deal is that despite being unbodied, I’m still barely visible and may generate a little rainbow in the light of a luminary. Rumors of Springdale spirits and ghosts do not fit well with my plan, so I’m a prisoner by choice. Another bonus my shack offers me is random guests and immunity from thieves. Whenever they visit Springdale, my house is never of any interest to them.
When my friends are out of the village for a long while, I have to review what’s going on around, typically during dark or rainy nights. I’ve been alone for over a week now, so time has come to get outside, and this is where the story begins.