[center][h1][i][b][color=ed1c24]The Age of Fire[/color][/b][/i][/h1][/center]

With but the faintest spark began the Age of Fire. 

In the waning epoch of the Forgotten World did mortals lose the Old Divine, whatever number of candles they breathed life into gasping into fruitless smoke, never to be seen again. Of those times little is known but much is said, regardless of the veracity of such pointless talk, but before there was the Age of Fire there was Then. Magnificent works climbed high into the heavens and the world was a jewel in the crown of creation, mystifying and awe inspiring in its divinely-impressive majesty. With the passing of the Old Divine in His singularity or Their multitudes the World-That-Was weeped, mourning the loss of its creator. Light slowly left the universe as the creations of those greater and grander times fell to ash and all that had been earned was snatched away by time’s cruel embrace. That, however, was not the Age of Fire.

Though man huddled close to the sparking embers of a fire their ancestors lit, desperate and pleading for the return of their great successes, the cogs of civilization ground to a halt. One by one lights went out, homes went dark, and minds turned inwards towards aching needs. Pettiness drove man upon itself gently as the departing of the Old Divine left many questioning what lasted in the beyond if such a powerful force could simply be snuffed out. Faithless men with shallow hearts and ambitious minds sought their own futures without the guiding light of What-Was and so it was that mortal-kind failed itself. 

Even that, however, was not the spark that set the flame.

Something crawled beneath the surface of Galbar, festered and dragged, slithered and writhed. 

In the waning days of the Forgotten World the ground cracked and became pocked as life unseemly and untoward burst forth from the depths of their forgotten barrows. Like a thunderclap crashing in to remind mortals of their place in reality, monstrous life of all shapes and sizes unleashed itself onto Galbar, as if punishment sent by distant deities for humanity’s lack of faith. From the depths of those many fetid warrens seeped all manner of plague and pestilence, killing bountiful crops, laying low stout men, and turning the clock back on all that had been done.

And yet the hand of fate was still not done.

One by one the stars went out, lights that had so long been present in the skies of the world flickering out of existence like eyes turning aside to not observe the catastrophe. One night the moon did not rise and the following morning no sun followed suit. Strange lights danced in the sky, looking as unwoven strands of nature winnowing off skyward to some strange destination. In the darkness mortal-kind clung to what light they held and what weapons they had fashioned, ever increasingly pushed farther from one another as the very ground upon which they stood turned against them. Great quakes toppled many of the massive spires and vast structures their forefathers had raised, sending the ruins thundering to the earth to scatter those yet living from their protective embrace. 

Minutes from proverbial midnight and mankind was nearly spent but, despite their circumstances, they doggedly refused the hand that was dealt them. Where monsters rose, weapons were bared. Where pestilence reared its vile head, good sense and skill prevailed. Even when their fellow men turned upon them, most of mortality stood stalwart. They were a dedicated people who, despite all they had lost, would not surrender the world of their making to the fickle will of sightless design. The Old Divine had been with them, of that they were certain, and so too would it return and join them again. Day by day, mortals crawled back into some semblance of light.

Then sparked the Age of Fire. 

The ignition, what set off the blaze, would never be known. The great cracks and crags that had grown across the landscape reached far and wide but never before had they worked such dread results. Massive, burrowing monsters may have tunneled into places they had never found themselves before, splitting the world into splinters. Whatever happened, the cuts went deep and for the first time the very core of Galbar was opened to the sky. Sickening light burned brightly from dozens of growing fissures across the surface, separating what was left of the world from the rest of it. All the work that had been selflessly earned by stoic heroes in the ending days of the final epoch of Galbar was undone.

The roaring aurora that scorched the sky in a rainbow blaze reached low to touch the rising, baleful inferno of Galbar’s inner heart and together the two turned the world inside out.

In the heart of an ancient citadel, in one of the forgotten ruins of Galbar’s past, decrepit machinery that still somehow turned end overend creaked and moaned with its eternal effort. The dread events that occurred day after day outside the confines of the structure had meant nothing to whatever arcane engineering, chugging along in its unenviable and equally unintelligible task. Every so often the walls would shake or shudder but regardless of any chaos ruling beyond its boundaries the citadel remained strong and the machinery continued on. 

When the world cracked, that changed.

The ancient hall sundered itself in the middle of one of the growing crags, an entire face shearing off as the crevasse boiled into screaming brightness. The lower floors descended and evaporated into the heart below, while the upper portion climbed high into the sky, shattering into a million shards and expanded into the sky as a cloud of flak. The machine’s gentle blue glow hummed out of existence and roared back into a red light, ancient-engines shaking violently as a whole half of the building that housed it roared off in two separate directions. Outside what was once its protected stronghold the world was shaking as each shard of Galbar severed from one another. Even as it shook itself apart the machinery still whirred and roared, a sickening red glow starting to emanate in all directions. A loud buzzing bellowed from the machine, one moment after another, howling louder and louder. Outside the world continued breaking but within the machine churned on heedlessly as the jet black sky opened into a hundred thousand different colors. 

All across the surface of what remained the midnight sky and the sea of lights erupted into blinding fury. Uncountable points in space and time vomited unreality into existence, the very stuff that myth and legend were born of, and for the first time in countless eons did magic pour ceaselessly into the world. As the iridescent spectrum of light poured forth onto the world the ancient machinery of that long forgotten station finally reached critical mass, the crimson glow now bright enough to melt eyes from sockets. Vermilion bolts of electricity danced from the machinery down dozens of tubes and pipes and wires. In one single, dazzling display of energistic release whatever powers that were once confined within the arcane apparatus exploded.

A fireball the size of an old city rapidly expanded into the sky, spreading outwards as the glowing lights of magic danced with the corona of the explosion. The detonation looked every part a storm, howling like a beast while lightning and flames ripped at the surroundings. All across the remains of Galbar similar explosions set off, echoing off old pipelines and tearing apart the landscape. 

The rising mushroom cloud glowed a sickly, baleful scarlet and spread that same cruel light all across the landscape, eclipsing the rainbow array of colors spread forth from the magical aurora in the heavens. In the heart of it all, just barely visible through the brilliant gleam, was a smile. A perfect grin, broad and brash, rose out of the eruption followed by two dark pits that served as eyes. All around it the world was coming apart, fires spread, and magic unleashed upon the doomed remains of an already dead planet sang the clarion call of the apocalypse. Across the world the little attempts at relighting mortal life were nearly snuffed out. It was in that moment, when the last chance at a human secured world ended, that the Age of Fire began. 

It was in the sight of that apocalypse, that the explosion excitedly laughed.

[color=ed1c24]“This is gonna’ be a [b]blast![/b]”[/color]

[hider=Summary]
In the World that Was, so-called Galbar, the light of the Old Divine, for whatever reason, left the world. Left to their own devices mankind did not perish and struggled through it all despite some losing sight of the bigger picture. Seemingly unwilling to let sleeping dogs lie, the cruel will of fate dealt the mortal progeny of Galbar one losing hand after another. Even then, mortals on Galbar persevered. In a sudden and instantaneous release of energies long thought dormant or gone, magic erupted into the world of Galbar and in that action sundered the world irreparably. With that one act of seemingly random happenstance, all the effort by mortal men to renew their world ended. 

In one distant part of one of the many failing fragments of Galbar, an ancient stronghold harboring an arcane machine chugged on. During the final, magic-induced death of the World-That-Was the machine exploded, mixing with magic into something utterly and completely new. The very first New Divine was born in the cataclysmic detonation and set its senses upon a world in utter chaos. 

[color=ed1c24]It laughed.[/color]
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[hider=What happens now?]
With the breakdown of reality, magical and divine energies are freely and chaotically flowing throughout the world. This sets the conditions for your god to spawn. When they have spawned, venture out and begin your story as a god of Galbar.

Turn 0 - The Apocalypse is expected to last the normal two weeks but may continue depending on how long people want it to last in order to get out all their desired posts. During this turn, actions that would otherwise cost MA are free - the restrictions for what players can do even with MA still apply (see overview under Major Actions in the OOC). At the end of the Apocalypse there will be a timeskip of at least a century; do not create mortal characters during the Age of Fire who you're not prepared to lose, excepting gifts of immortality. Finally, try to restrict the more nuanced elements of Civilization building for later turns; let the Age of Fire be appropriately apocalyptic!
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