I. The Godfall
The high lord Cha'mutte won the Great War.
His armies reached through the Divine Veil, killed the Embodied Gods, and shattered the Land of the Dead, a moment later known as the Godfall.
The Godfall wreaked havoc and devastation. The stoneborn became statues where they stood; lizardfolk aged through centuries in a generation; no elf child was ever born again, and the ageless survivors slowly departed a world falling apart that they could no longer protect.
Dwarven kingdoms beneath the mountains fell dark as runic magic failed, and widespread famine drove a refugee crisis of epic proportions as their cities emptied in panic and desperation. Halflings woke to the Quiet, severed from the ancestral mind that had once made strangers kin. Only the orcs received something that could be called a gift: Thark's command vanished from their blood, leaving them free to decide whether freedom could ever justify the crime that purchased it.
Out of this chaos and destruction, the world changed.
II. What Was Lost, What Remained
Divine magic vanished from the world. The prayers of the desperate could no longer grant miracles, and sickness and famine spread. The religions of humans failed, as one by one the incorporeal gods fell silent. Gone, trapped, or dead, no one could say. But their loss was keenly felt as the minor miracles of local priests could no longer heal the wounded, bless crops, or sanctify the dead.
In the place of the divine, a new magic arose: chaos glass, crystallized in the wounds left by the Godfall. Dangerous, poisonous, and difficult to control, it could be made to yield heat, motion, or explosive force, but only at risk of catastrophe.
III. The Legion States
Hobgoblins, who had never relied on gods or divine magic, emerged unbroken and strong. Their battlemages still commanded fire and their armies in the field quickly struck disorganized foes suddenly bereft of their gods. They did not conquer everywhere, but legion-states spread through the wreckage, maintained by the slave camps of those they conquered. The human kingdoms of the west fell before them, or negotiated to survive.
IV. Chardon, the City of Towers
Now, years later, the city of Chardon is thriving, ruling over a growing colonial empire powered by chalyte and chaos glass.
The pale towers and skyships of the city hide the compromises that power its progress: stolen labor from the underclass of refugees, canals poisoned by chaos magic, open treaties with hobgoblin slaver kingdoms, and a hunger for the glitter of progress whatever the cost.
Beyond Chardon’s ports and defended corridors, the world is a patchwork of hobgoblin domains, isolated settlements, ruined roads, and poisoned wilderness, where refugees struggle to eke out a living and those who trade freedom for safety toil in farms for hobgoblin masters.
In distant parts of the world, it is said that deserts spread and sorcerer-kings rule the last wells.
V. Terrible Wonders
This is a world of terrible wonders, where miners excavate chalyte in chaos-powered exoskeletons to power skyships that carry the rich in safety above the world below, while factory workers routinely die in explosions caused by concentrated chaos glass.
It is a world where chalyte-powered magitech can achieve remarkable feats, while the cost is never seen by those with money, status, and power.
It is a world where magic touches everything, but mercy is scarce, and those who wield magic and those who pay the cost are rarely the same.