Setting Lore

[animamods]

The land is dying. It has been dying for generations, ruin and disaster wracking the world.

The process was so slow that at first it seemed like natural causes, drought slowly consuming once verdant lands and deserts becoming flooded wetlands. While worrisome for those in these areas, most of the land went about their normal business until something within the land and themselves cracked like a fragile egg shell. This soon showed its repercussions quickly and violently. Land was gone within heartbeats as the ground roiled and sunk back into the sea, while in other places the frothing and churning waves boiled as heat rose rapidly and caused twisted new land masses to form. Animals went extinct or suddenly sprung into being, while new and more deadly beings seemed to crawl from the nothingness to stake their own claim on the lands. It was not all just physical these devastating changes and disasters. Magic once easily used and common place became corrupted or out of reach of those that had once mastered these forces. Even the people did not go untouched by these as the sickness of the land seemed to take many of its people as well. Some physically and emotionally twisted in the same manner as their once homelands, others and entire cities seemed to vanish leaving nothing but fragments of crystal like substances as a mark of their existence.

Races were forced to put aside their differences, and a few hundred years in the past formed Haven, hoping that together they could stave off the end.

But this was only a stall for time, and could not last forever. The runes of the city were fading, and barely enough mages could be found to recharge them and hold off the storms and blights surrounding their island city.

That was when the crystal was discovered. Theories abound on why, but the most common is it was formed from a mixture of divine intervention, and the gathered refugees using their mixed magic and energies to fulfill their plea for help and safety. It gave Haven a temporary burst of energy, enough to strengthen its defenses. Even enough to make some search parties bold and venture a outside Haven’s walls, setting up settlements again. But even this seemed finite, and as the years passed, the crystal began to dim in its output and power.

And then a strange discovery was found, that the crystal constantly shed fragments of itself. These shards seemed to almost resemble eggs. Originally these fragments were thought to be little more than dead shards, with just a vestigial spark of magic left in them.

Eventually, there was a breakthrough by a collection of scholars, mages, and explorers. The eggs were not dead, but dormant. All it would take was a jolt to wake them up, a connection to the soul of a living being to jump-start whatever was inside these shards. Unfortunately, few people in Avalice would be able to provide such a connection. They were all tired, haggard and unsuited for sharing their soul with another.

But there were other worlds...

The council attempted to call souls from other worlds, the first attempts resulting in failures and cracks in an already teetering balance. The dead began to walk again, and many decried the council’s attempts as unethical, and breaking the world. Some in the council were ready to give up… but others were more desperate. They attempted one last summoning…

The sky opened up in an explosion of light and sound, and when it all cleared the council and mages were all gone. Only the crystal remained, recharged, and a great Rift was opened in the sky. And with it, people began to emerge from the Rift. People strong enough to bond with the shards, and become Scions and form the last hope of Avalice.