The End of All Things
What would you do when the foundation of everything that you took for granted came crashing down? When everything that was once familiar and sure dissipates into ethereal nothingness? This -- this is not the world you remember. This is not the place you once held dear. This is a world of decay. This is a world approaching the end of all things, where survival is the one and only thing that matters, and you cling onto ideals and memories as they become ash and dust.
This........this world was once an amazing, wondrous place. In the mythic past, the world was one great mass. The progenitor wyrms, the first and the greatest of dragon-kind, ruled all. The three most powerful - Siberys, Eberron, and Khyber - discovered the Prophecy.
A world shattering struggle ensued. The battle split the world into three parts. Siberys became the glowing ring that surrounds the world and gave birth to the next generation of dragons. Khyber was bound to the darkest depths and spat out fiends and demons. However, Eberron laid amid them, to heal the world and from this sacrifice sprang all manner of living things. The Prophecy was scattered across the width and breadth of existence and lost.
From the ashes of this struggle, the world as we once knew it sprang forth and prospered, and Eberron entered a golden age. A world of magic, a world of technology, of trains, of skyships, of mechanical beings forged by magic. Such wonders we witnessed. The floating city of Sharn, streets infused by artificer powered light. This was an age of technology, and of culture unbound.
And then, one dreadful night, the magic failed. Across the world, the lights went out. Skyships fell, crashing and burning as they struck the ground, killing hundreds of thousands. The trains stopped, and over time became nothing but rotting, rusted husks. They were a symbol of what once was -- a golden age lost to overwhelming darkness. Bereft of the magic that supported it, the City of Sharn fell, toppling off the mountain it stood, smashing into the earth far below -- everyone who dwelt within it dead, killed in an instant.
But it wasn't just the magic that died. Every single spellcaster, every cleric died that terrible night. When the morning came, there were none left. Nothing but a memory of what once was.
Hundreds of years have passed, and it is a broken world you have inherited. You are five friends, living alone with each other on a farm. Yours is a simple life, but it is a life. You scrape by, and you grow enough food on your farm to live off. It is more than most have. From these simple origins, you could not possibly envisage the larger tapestry that you would be swept up in.
The world as it was before is lost to you, save for wonderful tales span by travellers passing through your simple farm.
The world you know now is a dangerous place. Society no longer exist, and Eberron has descended into anarchy, where survival is now the only thing that matters. Gangs roam the surface world, scavenging for food and water, killing all they come across. Worse, strange feral creatures roam the surface. Creatures whose simple touch can kill, turning you into one of them. These creatures, Plaguebearers, have overwhelmed whatever remained of organised society following the apocalypse.
Broken cities lie scattered across the surface, an ancient, eternal reminder of what once was. Ruined skyships and rusted trains lie broken. They will never know life again.
Here, on the farm, you are sheltered from the worst excesses of a world that has spiralled into ruin.
But that is about to change.
You are the bearers of a fell prophecy from a dying man. A promise of answers -- a cause of the apocalypse. And when you begin to exhibit signs of magic, the last spellcasters in a dying world, it becomes a call that cannot be resisted. Thus, accompanied by two grizzled ex-mercenaries, you begin a dangerous journey spanning the breadth of a continent. To discover the truth behind the end of all things, and to usher in the dawning of a new age.
To survive.
