HISTORY

On an evening of June 14th, '64, the world was duplicated.

And everything changed.

Fantasy became reality and reality became fantasy. All powerful beings known as Gods began to walk the earth. Humanity fought these Gods and won. In the process they destroyed much of their countries and lands. They may have severed the link between worlds, but it was a double-edged blade and left much of the world polluted and in ruin.

In humanity's desperate search for safety, the Three Cities were formed- safe zones, enclosed and protected against outside threats both physical and spiritual. Guarded by the last remaining Elder Dragons, the Big Three link to multitudes of smaller divisions, and are gradually growing wider over the earth's surface.

However, not all make it into the Cities. People who are deemed unlucky, unworthy, unfortunate- those who were not allowed or could not enter the Cities' Walls- they live in the Wildlands. Forming culture, community, villages and towns of their own against the aftereffects of the Wars.

And then there are the Monsters. A new class of creature not evolved naturally but the result of errant mistakes and Rift fallout. They too stalk the Wildlands. Some live amongst the people. Others create their own groups. And some choose to wander, alone.

Creatures called into truth by the Gods also lurk in the world still, the remains of fay, ghosts, and other vengeful spirits most common.

Machiness fill the ranks of those who can live in the Wastelands. Remnants from the Wars, they are emotionless algorithms built to serve a dead purpose.

Last is the vengeful dead. The radiation is not the only curse from the wars- Rift fallout infests the lands below the surface, reanimating corpses and driving men to madness.

Even the seas were not left untouched, although they are the least affected by the war. Monsters that escaped the wrath of mankind hide within the depths, alongside others who may be far more sympathetic to the losing side.

Details

The Rift is the name for the occurrence of June 17th, '64. A world undefined attempted to mimic ours, and reality began to overlap the two in an attempt to fix the duplication.

The two worlds met, and changed.

A great tear opened up in the sky where our world and theirs met. And it was then that humanity learned of the rules that bound all worlds- the Contracts of Universal Law. The people of the other realm, they tried to cross into ours. But in order to do so they must pass through the Crossroads, and it was there that they were Unbound, freed from Contractual rules. The Crossroads are a liminal space between conflictingly similar realities, the empty expanse that shouldn't exist between a mimic and the mimicked. Because the Crossroads shouldn't be, they do not exist within Universal Law, and thus beings within are Unbound from their Contracts. Once Unbound they discovered themselves free of all dimensional realities, and thus immeasurably powerful. Their mere presence in our reality tore it to pieces, their words becoming law in ways humans could have never done. They rebuilt our world to their wants, changing our beasts, our plants, our air to their own whims. They made fantasy reality and reality a fantasy. They walked as Gods amongst men.

So humanity declared war upon them.

It was a bitter brutal conflict with at first no sights of victory. What chances did mere mortal men have against beings whose very words were reworking reality?

But then men entered the Rift themselves.

And then we too learnt the secrets of the Unbound, and stole the fire from the Gods.

Now humanity besieged the other reality, while their kind railed at ours. We walked foreign lands on remade legs to reshape unknown soil to our own bitter territories.

We delved into the Crossroads and learnt the terrible secrets of the Universe. And then we used those Secrets to make weapons capable of cross-dimensional damage. To create blades that cut in all six tenses, bombs that shattered across a thousand dimensions, bullets that scarred heavens and hells themselves.

The first man who'd walked the Rift, and his twelve disciples who travelled the furthest into the depths, closed the Rift in the end. Endowed with ancient and unspeakable knowledge they and only they could speak the Contract that would rebind the realities. They convinced the other world with honeyed tongues and bitter voices of its own identity and as such ceased the intersection.

When the Rift closed, it trapped the Gods on this side of reality. With their umbilical cord severed, the foetuses of dead men soon began to unravel as the Universe corrected their errant Contracts. They crumbled apart like sandcastles to the tide, rid of their connection to their own world and having no rules to keep them together. The Rift closure was the end of the Wars, or at least the official end.

Those that witnessed the Rift closure gained strange abilities. They could see the Gods, see the Contracts, see the links between Life and the Universe even after the Rift closed. The unmade light burned their eyes and gave them sight beyond sight. Rift Witnesses are a rare and precious resource these days, where most have died from age and disease.

The Dragon King remained within the Rift, having closed it from the inside. It' s widely believed the Twelve Dragons remained there as well, becoming permanent denizens of the Crossroads.