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Aurealan Realms: The Reckoning Mythos
The world has existed for untold centuries. Gods have come and gone, both benign and benevolent. For the last five centuries,
there have been no Gods. The people have moved on, and for a while all was "normal" in the world.
But without the Gods to stabilize the wild magicks of the world, the world itself began to tremble, and eventually began to
shake itself apart. Bit by bit, the world began to dissolve. Slowly at first, then with increasing speed and violence, entire
areas, both inhabited and barren, vanished utterly.
For decades the inhabitants watched the world diminish, helpless to counter it. The top magicians and priests in the realms
worked tirelessly to determine the cause of the disappearences. Some more doom-minded called this the final
reckoning visited upon a world so steeped in evil that even the Gods themselves abandoned it. Only 80 years ago, the top magical
minds discovered, quite by accident, that the missing parts of the land had not been destroyed, merely
transported dimensionally. The world was fragmenting into different dimensions through magic never encountered before.
The Council of Sages came into being when the top magicians and priests found a way to contact those in the other dimensions.
This was followed by the discovery of skrystals, strange crystalline structures found only on a far-off island, that was able
to temporarily remove a being's natural anchor to their home dimension, thus allowing travel between dimensions. It was this
initial trans-dimensional travel that attracted the attention of the Guardians.
The Guardians came into the world as energy, and assumed forms that reflected both the world and their own personalities.
They immediately assessed the state of the world and set about reigning in the rampant magicks that were so quickly fragmenting
the world. They were unable to re-attach the already fragmented ares, but since their arrival, no more of the lands have fallen
away.
Some hailed the Guardians as Gods, quickly scrambling to form churches and begin the process of worship as had been done in
the past. There was no response. They prayed, made sacrifices, held rituals... there was no response. The Guardians seemed
disinterested in worship, or any of the goings-on of the people of the land. Stability seemed their only concern, stability
and safety.
Soon after the attempted religiosity faded to a dull roar, evidence of the Guardian's work began popping up all over the world.
Sentinels, odd mechanical creatures, were discovered at seemingly random points all over the world. They had been placed in
areas of dimensional thinning by the Guardians to monitor and control trans-dimensional access.
The Council of Sages attempted to penetrate the dimensional barriers with traditional magicks, but their spells rebounded
off the edges of whatever dimension they were in. It seemed that each thinning was unique, and the way to access each unique
as well. The Sentinels, it was discovered, would tell the curious what was required to access each dimension. With a skrystal
in hand, after performing whatever task the Sentinels deemed necessary as proof that one could survive in the other dimensions,
the curious were told the secret to stepping through that particular thinning.
Once again, the world was "whole," in a way, but even so, not as it was.
After a millenium, the Gods found their way back. As they re-appeared, the Guardians vanished as if they had never been. The
only evidence of their having been in the world is the sentinels who remain, guarding the dimensional tears that seem resistant
to any efforts by the Gods to repair them.
This is the world that exists. The Gods are finding their way in a somewhat unfamiliar world, as are many of the returning
and new travellers.
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