Fallen Earth
It was almost 300 years since the world ended, or so the elders say. It started with what they called the first of the superbugs... No vaccine or cure could be found to fight it. One by one, the medicines of the world seemed to stop to function, and a hundred years of medical knowledge seemed to slip out the window. Than machines started to break down... From the most complicated of supercomputers to the lowest of little gizmos that people seemed to take for granted. The large cities became death traps, as those whose skills were more suited for the office struggled to make it in this new world.
It is said that close to 6 billion people died that first year alone, and humanity itself seemed to be heading on the fast track to extinction. No one knew why this happened... Some suspected that God had abandoned the world, either through our own choices or from giving up on mankind. Governments all over the world broke down, factions split off in a desperate struggle for survival.
275 years ago was the first known occurrence of magic. While rumors say that it was someone in the middle east, it spread throughout the world like wildfire. No one was sure why some had the gift for the arcane, but these early mages were worth their weight in gold.
Fifty years later, the gods arrived into the world. At first people were sceptical of these new powers, clinging to the faith of their grandfathers. As the years stretched on, the temples of Pelor and Boccob seemed to become as easily locatable as the churches and temples of old.
It is about this time that people started to notice that humans did not the only ones on this planet. Maybe they had always been here, hiding in plain sight... Maybe they are how people mutated to adapt in this brave new world. Those who fled to the mountains were said to become what we know as dwarves, Elves to the forests, and all numbers of other variants upon the human condition.
The cities of old are little more than ruins now... Many of what had once been thriving metropolises became little more than wastelands, where little more than dangers await those who are willing to delve for treasures of the past.
The year is 238 NE, and a story of new heroes is about to begin in a little fishing community called Issaquah the end edges of Lake Sammamish... Though the original meanings might be lost unto the sands of time, the names held.
