Origin of Adventure World
Ages ago (scholar debate the exact timeframe), the world of Arth was whole, predictably mutable in the manner taken for granted by most. Season predictably followed season, animal and plant species evolved over millions of years, and landforms took ages to change.
But the natural order was not to last. An advanced society had spread throughout the world, combining science and magic into greater and greater works. The Ancients (as the races of Arth now call them) sculpted the world to suit their whims, a world of easy prosperity and almost limitless possibility.
The Ancients, however, were not without their conflicts. Disagreements over their path created a divide between those who advocated magic, the hard-won might of the individual, and those who supported science, the triumph of collaborative effort. Initially, this rivalry remained civil, each faction striving to out-do the other in crafting spells or mechanisms for the advancement of Ancient civilization. As with all too many conflicts, however, it eventually led to violence.
No one today knows which side broke their increasingly uneasy truce, but the precipitous result was apparent. Spell and machine, staff and sword, wonders and horrors now undreamed clashed, laying waste to continents. The original stalemate eventually collapsed, as the smaller numbers of magic users could not win a war of attrition against the technologists. They gave ground, making the enemy pay for every inch, but they knew it could not last.
Finally, beleaguered and pushed back to their last stronghold, the followers of magic birthed a dangerous and audacious plan. Magic had always been a fluid thing, and art more than anything. Science, while flexible and powerful, was based upon laws, rules, or even tendencies, phenomena more static than not. In this, magic had one last advantage its practitioners could hope to exploit: if your enemy must follow rules, change the game.
Bending the flows of magic, gathering all power possible, the magicians began to spread their last great spell across the face of Arth. Ley lines split, the borders between worlds bent and snapped under the strain. The great works of science malfunctioned, causing havoc and death as the very basis of their existence altered.
But the power was too great even for the last masters of the art of magic to contain. This energy, this changing glamor, only grew. It took power from the realms it touched, and burned the fuel of those great magicians’ souls. Like a flame, it was hungry, consuming more and more and altering forever that in its wake. Seas boiled, froze, disappeared. Mountains grew higher, were laid low, became glass or metal or stranger substances. The world of Arth was forever changed, and would continue to do so. The magicians’ last spell seemed the death knell for their world.
The peoples of Arth, however, were too resilient to acquiesce to their demise. Pockets of civilization remained, eking out an existence in the newly mutable world. It would be centuries, though, before anything resembling the level of the Ancients was achieved anew.
