It has been a millennium since mankind fell upon the fires of judgment, and precious little remains of the world that was.  We know it as The Great Cataclysm, an enigmatic disaster that tore continents asunder and erased all we had accomplished.  Many tell interpretations of the event, and precious few clues have been gleaned from the scattered remnants of the old world, but in the face of time it seems the knowledge of what led to the terrible reckoning of our past is all but lost.

Quote from op.

More than a couple decades have passed...