The Era of Ruin (300s BR - 0 BR)

Dark and terrible was the age that came to be known as the Era of Ruin, a time when the world of Sparkalia was brought to the brink of annihilation by the folly and wrath of its own people. Driven by their thirst for power and mastery over the earth's magic, they had set the world upon the precipice of destruction. For nearly four centuries before the escalation of catastrophic conflict, the embers of discord smoldered.

In the final century, war raged across the land, unceasing and without mercy. Kingdoms fell, empires crumbled, and the mighty laid waste to all that stood before them, each seeking dominion over the other. The weapons of that age were forged not by wisdom, but by hunger—an insatiable lust for power that knew no bounds. With hands both cunning and reckless, the great powers of the world wrought devices of devastation, engines of war so terrible that they threatened even the firmament of the heavens.

The 100 Years War

The 100 Years War was not just one war, but a cataclysmic series of conflicts that spanned a century. In its early years, the world was consumed by a brutal, industrialized war that pitted once-proud empires against each other. It was a war fought with both magic and machinery, where enormous constructs powered by arcane energy clashed upon the battlefields. Empires, driven by ambition and greed, mobilized armies of magical machines, merging the forces of steel and spellcraft. Titans—the patron gods of the peoples, archmages, and other great wielders of power slain each other in blind loyalty to their respective sovereigns. By the age of the final war, few wielders of power remained.

In the 13 Years Final War of Ruin, empires ground against each other in an unholy conflict. The landscape was reshaped as cities were leveled, forests burned, and rivers were poisoned by the horrors of war. Lurynium, a rare magical element discovered some time before the conflict, powered many of these war machines. Its presence on the battlefield gave rise to arcane-powered constructs that rivaled mana weapons and provided nations the capability of the first weapons of mass destruction.

But the beast of war myopic of compassion did not see a final blow nor victor, as a demonic invasion bombarded the realm—a cataclysm that none of the war-weary peoples expected.

The Beginning of the Twilight Winter

In the year 9 BR, demon armies arrived from the blighted realms, a dark and twisted dimension beyond the fabric of reality. The dark lord who led them, was a being of pure malevolence, a searing void of fire, shadow, and twisted magic that sought to consume the very essence of Sparkalia itself, drawn to the war’s great expulsion of energy.

The demon legions were unlike anything the people of Sparkalia had ever faced. The main armies were composed not of flesh and bone but were automatons—soulless, cold beings created from the darkest magics of the void. These automatons were not bound by the rules of magic as the mages knew them; they were constructs of corruption and entropy. Also present were armies made of poor souls and creatures that were corrupted by the dark lord’s previous exploits in other realms. The skies were painted blood red, streaked with eldritch auroras—twisting, ionized streams of light that screamed across the heavens like the wailing of the damned. These screams were heard across the land, causing a great weariness to grip the people of Sparkalia. The Sun was encased in shadow, leaving a darkness upon the world that soon led to a terrible blizzard across all the land.

The demons were the harbingers of the death of magic, the very lifeblood of arcane energy in Sparkalia. With every city they razed, their presence disrupted the flow of magical energy. The people were powerless to stop the onslaught. The machines that had once been used to wage war against each other now turned to defend their homelands in one united front, but they were no match for the corruption and relentless assault of the demonic hordes. Yet from despair there arose one last hope. The Mage of the Turning—or Althar, as called by the Kethites, stood against the tide of ruin and led the world against doom.

The Mage of the Turning and the Final Battles

She was once just a mere soldier during the 13 Years War, but legend has it that after she had lost her hands during a mission, she took her leave to pursue sage knowledge at a monastery to restore herself. She quickly rose to prominence as a star prodigy, and she was soon gripped with a holy purpose to restore the world. By the time the Twilight Winter began, the Althar was a master of mystic arts.

A perilous campaign across the world for artifacts and lost texts was waged by the Althar and her allies, chief among them the Kethite god, Mergan, who himself became a great leader during the calamities. It was imperative that the alliance would muster as much strength and knowledge as they could. The Althar learned great secrets from within deep vaults for countering the entropy, thus became able to preserve the allies’ magic to slay the demonic hordes.

The great Mage of the Turning’s campaign culminated in one discovery above them all. She acquired the ancient Hourless Nexus, a once-terrible artifact created by the ancient gods then locked away after a long-lost time of legend; which was now terribly needed for her confrontation of the dreaded dark lord. The Hourless Nexus rang its reawakened power across the realm and beamed a light of hope among the darkness. Within 7 weeks, the alliance was able to expel the armies of the damned.

However, it did not dissuade the Dark Lord. Sparkalia fell into silence as the Althar met the Dark Lord in a grueling battle between voids. Little is known of what happened between the Althar and the Dark Lord, as their battle across realm and time spanned 7 years in Sparkalia’s time. While the duel of fates raged, the Twilight Winter still persisted. The demonic blight may have been successfully banished from the earth, but the Sun was still obscured in the Dark Lord’s spell.

These 7 long years were enough for all creation to have some amount of relief. The land lay still—not in peace, but in ruin. The fields were ash, the rivers ran black, and the air was thick with poison. No victor arose from the carnage, for there was naught left to claim. In those years of desolation, the remnants of once-great civilizations wandered the wastelands, shadows of the peoples they had once been, clinging to life amidst the wreckage of their own making. There are few written records of the nations that once stood - almost as if this great trauma had eroded memory and laid waste upon the centers of knowledge.

The Great Restart

It was clear there was a victor, as the Althar returned from beyond the void; yet as a changed woman. She beheld the world and wept for what had been lost. Knowing that no path remained but one, she called upon the deepest wells of her power and wove the great working, using the Hourless Nexus one last time.

In her final act, the Mage of the Turning cast the Great Restart—a spell so powerful that it reset the world to a state where it could begin again. The stars trembled, and the very bones of the earth groaned beneath the weight of her spell. With a force beyond reckoning, time was unmade, the land was unbroken, and the world was reborn. The Sun was free from the demonic spell and could shine its radiance upon the remade earth. To protect from future extradimensional threats, the planet was engulfed in an impermeable shield named the Void Aegis. The people who had survived the apocalypse woke up to a world that felt both new and familiar.

Some say the Mage of the Turning’s last words were a lament for what was lost. Others say she was satisfied, knowing that she had given Sparkalia the chance to be reborn. Some of her last words were certainly passed to the ones who would become known as the Guardians of Memory—Mergan being one of them. The Althar herself disappeared, vanishing into the weavings of the world’s fate, leaving behind only her legacy: the Cikaran Canon, a collection of truths that would guide future generations and serve as a warning of the mistakes that had been made.

No one knows where she went after the Great Restart. Some believe she became one with the world, existing now as a timeless force, while others think she was lost to the very forces of magic she sought to control. Whatever her fate, the Althar is remembered as the one who gave Sparkalia a second chance, even at the cost of her own presence in the world. Her disappearance remains a mystery. But one thing is certain—she is gone, and Sparkalia’s fate now rests in the hands of those who must learn from her lessons or risk repeating the same mistakes that led to the Era of Ruin.

Thus ended the Era of Ruin. All memory of the age was eventually forgotten, save for the tireless preservation of historical text and those few who had been chosen to remember. And they, the Guardians of Memory, bore their burden through the ages, waiting for the day when Sparkalia might once more look upon the truth and not turn away in fear; or for the day when the Mage of the Turning may return.

The Patrons of the World

With the Wars of Ruin annihilating many Titans and great mages, including the Allfather of the Kethites, few patrons remained to steward the harmony of the world, especially with the disillusionment that spelled the gods as more destructive, selfish wielders of power than was previously believed. However, Mergan and the Guardians of Memory believed they could conduct themselves better than these old gods. While they are Ashborn - mere mortals that have been remade into godhood with the gifts of the divine in a fiery rite, they had the power to lead the new world. With their leadership, the Guardians of Memory established new academies for magic, fostering the future with new talent.

The Era of Renewal (0 AR - 1383 AR)

With the passing of the Great Restart, the world of Sparkalia entered an age of resurgence and rediscovery. The first centuries of this new era were marked by the refounding of states and the birth of new faiths, for the beliefs of old had been left behind in the veiled past. From the ashes of forgotten empires, new powers arose, and with them came the spreading of the Cikaran Canon, its sacred teachings warning against the hubris that had once led the world to ruin.

It was at this time that the first great nations of the new age took shape. Among them, the Calestelian Kingdom and the Kingdom of Prestore stood apart, their might extending not only across land but upon the vast and uncharted seas. Empires did rise and fall, such as an empire created by the ruthless Kasifken, reigning for a thousand years up till the 13th century, when their own hubris diminished their power.

As the world awakened, so too did magic, flowing once more through those who sought to wield it. The arcane arts flourished, and for many centuries, mages once again stood as the architects of civilization, their mastery shaping kingdoms, healing the land, and guiding the people. The peoples of Dacia stood out as a prime example, where magical girls banded together to create their own vision of society. Magic and the natural order of the world remained in harmony, allowing society to flourish in balance with the lessons of the past. War and suffering is still a presence in life, but it was considered a blessing that this new age would not ever see the scale and severity of the Era of Ruin.

The Arrival of the Hollowborn

In 1361 AR, the peoples of Sparkalia were alarmed by an arrival of entities who descended seemingly from beyond the Void Aegis. Neither born nor fallen from the heavens, but manifested. While of foreign form, they shifted themselves to be more familiar for the awestruck peoples, shimmering in a holy flame. These entities would be called by the Kethites “the Hollowborn.” The Hollowborn assured all in a panic that they were not here to conquer in voices of stardust with no discernable gendered tone, delicate yet resonant, as if the universe itself were speaking in a hush meant only for the ears of the chosen. They were aware of the Twilight Winter, but they were only present to provide edification that had previously only been speculated by heretical mages.

The Wisdom of the Hollowborn challenged the very foundations of how the peoples of Sparkalia understood magic; not by rejecting it outright but by reframing its essence. To the dominant cultures, magic had long been a force to wield, a means of power and mastery over the world. Yet, the Hollowborn whispered a different truth—that magic was not something external to be controlled but an inseparable current within all things. They spoke of it as an ebbing flow, more akin to breath than fire, urging practitioners to abandon their obsession with dominion and instead align with the natural unfolding of existence. Their teachings mirrored the balance of Yin and Yang, suggesting that struggle against the world’s tides only led to suffering, while true mastery lay in yielding, adapting, and becoming one with the unseen rhythms of reality.

This wisdom struck a deep nerve, for it threatened the established hierarchies of magical learning and authority. The Hollowborn claimed that the greatest illusions were not woven by spellcraft but by the mind itself—shackled by expectation, desire, and fear. They warned that the more people sought control over magic, the further they distanced themselves from its true nature. To them, the most potent magic was not the grand displays of arcane might but the quiet act of recognition, the understanding that all change and all becoming already exist within the flow of the world. This redefinition unsettled the great academies and ruling orders, for it suggested that even the most untrained peasant could, in moments of deep attunement, wield power greater than the most learned sorcerer.

Such ideas were met with both reverence and resistance. Some saw the wisdom of the Hollowborn as a revelation, a means of rediscovering magic not as an art of control but as a way of being. Others decried it as a dangerous mysticism, undermining centuries of structure and discipline and the sacrifice of the Althar. What made the Hollowborn truly unsettling was their indifference to how their message was received—they did not seek to teach in conventional ways, nor did they try to dismantle institutions. They merely spoke and watched, like winds stirring the leaves, unconcerned with whether the trees resisted or swayed. Their words lingered, spreading like ripples in a vast ocean, forever altering the way some would come to see magic.

The Guardians of Memory asked the Hollowborn where the Mage of the Turning could be since they came from the void, but would only be disappointed with the Hollowborns’ nescience of her fate—unable to provide any answer for they were not omniscient. Some had resigned to despair believing she is no more.

The Hollowborn left just as they came, returning to the shimmer and in-between.

The Prestorean Industrial Revolution and the End of the Era

Though the gifts of the Hollowborn set minds ablaze with new possibilities, the true catalyst of change came not from the beyond, but from the depths of the earth. In the latter years of the 14th century AR, an industrial revolution in Prestore was taking off. In 1381 AR, scholars and alchemists unraveled the mysteries of lurynium, a rare and potent magical element rediscovered in the form of “kraken oil”, petroleum laced with lurynium. It was in these years that the Prestoreans, brilliant in their craft and unrelenting in their pursuit of progress, found a way to bind lurynium to machines, forging devices that could perform magical feats without the need for spellcraft.

This discovery ignited a revolution—the rebirth of lurynium-powered industry like in the Era of Ruin. What once required years of training and the delicate touch of an experienced mage could now be replicated by machinery, producing magic on an industrial scale. The Kingdom of Prestore, ever ambitious, seized upon this advancement, and soon, entire cities were reshaped by the wonders of mechanized magic. Enchantments were no longer cast by hand but woven through gears and circuits, embedded within constructs that did not tire, did not err, and did not question.

As the gift of these machines spread beyond Prestore’s borders in 1384 AR, so too did a shift in the world’s understanding of power. Where once the mage had been the heart of civilization, now industry took its place. Forges roared with power, cities gleamed with lights that never dimmed, and the old ways of magic—once revered, once irreplaceable—began to fade into memory. Mages, who had long held their place as scholars, healers, and guardians of the world’s balance, now found themselves cast aside, their arts no longer needed by those who sought progress, much to the chagrin of traditionalists and those who heeded the Hollowborns’ wisdom.

With the rise of industrialized magic, the Era of Renewal—a time of balance, of harmony, of the wisdom of magic shaping the world—came to its end. The age that followed was unlike any before, for it was no longer an age of magic alone. It was an age of machines, of ambition, and of the unknown consequences that progress might bring. Thus, in 1384 AR, the world stood upon the threshold of a new era, one shaped by both the wisdom of the past and the peril of a future that no longer walked the path of magic alone.

The Era of Blemish (1384 AR - Present)

The Era of Blemish dawned as Sparkalia's civilizations embraced the marvels of industry and innovation, yet at the cost of their ancestral magic. The rediscovery of lurynium, a substance capable of fueling arcane machinery, heralded an industrial revolution led by the Kingdom of Prestore, reshaping economies and displacing traditional mages. Magic, once revered as the sacred lifeblood of existence, became a tool—automated, refined, and stripped of its mysticism. The great academies that once trained spellcasters now stood alongside manufactories, where machines wove enchantments with more precision than human hands ever could.

Amid this transformation, the wisdom of the Hollowborn rippled through the world, challenging long-held beliefs. Their cryptic teachings reframed magic not as an external force to be wielded, but as a mirror of the self—an interplay between the conscious and unconscious, harmony and discord. To some, this was enlightenment, a path beyond rigid dogma. To others, it was heresy, an unraveling of the divine truths safeguarded since the Great Restart. This philosophical schism fractured societies as much as technology did, birthing sects that sought to preserve the old ways and others who embraced this new introspection, seeking transcendence beyond magic itself.

Now, the world stands at a precipice. In the spires of the most advanced cities, where industry hums with arcane energy, mere laymen can install magic-channeling cybernetics and become “cybermages”, and disease is but a forgotten relic to the privileged, neon-lit temples of progress cast long shadows over the displaced and forsaken. The Kethites, ever watchful, weave their antigravitational craft through the skies, clinging to their traditions even as they integrate new wonders. The balance between magic and machine teeters, and with it, the fate of Sparkalia’s soul—whether it will be reforged into something greater or crumble beneath the weight of its own contradictions.

But there are whispers in the dark corners of the world—of machines that think beyond their creators, of magic breaking free from its imposed constraints, of forces older than the Guardians of Memory stirring once more. Some believe the Era of Blemish is not an age of decline, but a chrysalis, concealing the birth of something yet unnamed. Whether it will bring salvation or another ruin is a question yet unanswered, hanging like a storm on the horizon.