Prelude #3

Prelude 3



More than millennia ago, the world was a very different place. This was a world of plenty, of wondrous, unimaginable things. Carts that could travel faster and further than a man could blink, cities made of glass that reached the sky, and strange enormous ships that could go even further. And there were people, proud, immensely tall, some even made of metal. These are the people we call the Ancient Ones, and they once called this place their home.

They had thoughts that reached the stars and beyond, thought of things we could never conceive. And they had power, vast terrible power. And even through all of those amazing ideas and creations, they could not save themselves from it. War broke out among the Ancients, a war that shattered those cities made of glass, brought the ships from the sky, and nearly destroyed even the very ground we stand upon. Mountains fell, the land cracked and burned, and the sky filled with a dense cloud of ash and dust that remained for centuries. But finally, when everything became still once more and not a thing stood, the war had ended, and all the great and beautiful things the Ancients had once held were gone forever, reduced to ruin.

And it is from this ruin we rose, the forgotten, abandoned by the ancients who long fled the surface and left us to fend for ourselves in this new, devastated land. We endured, came together, and built new cities of stone. Some of us believe that the Ancients destroyed all on purpose, as a test to prove our faith, and will one day return. Others blame them for all the wrongdoing in the world, waiting for a return so they can have their revenge, to destroy the Ancient Ones. But whatever happens, many believe they will return, and many fear that day as the end of all things.