Far into the sea of existence, there is a world, once much like our own. A shining jewel, blue and white and teeming with life, it once played host to a grand civilization. Now, however, it is ruin that dominates. Shattered cities dot the landscape, punctuated by the shells of once proud, mighty towers. Joining them, decayed roads crisscross the land, their paved surfaces, once thought invincible, now riddled with cracks and holes, slowly wearing away. Far above it all, ancient and battered machines orbit, their masters long dead. The night, once banished by countless lights, has returned full force, lit only by the planet’s lone moon or the arcane glow of leylight. It is this leylight that one would notice first, from afar. Great bands of energy, strewn across the surfaces of both worlds, glowing a soft electric blue. They were not always there. Where once calls and song filled the air, silence now reigns. One would, in light of devastation around them, be forgiven for believing the silence to be unnatural. They would not be wrong. A great death cleansed this world, not too long ago. Any traveler to set foot here would find themselves hard pressed to avoid the results. Bones, large and small, blanket the ground; some still wear clothing, the synthetic fibers tattered and fraying, succumbing ever so slowly to the elements. Here and there a flash of movement can be glimpsed, if one is observant, but this is a dead place. Wilderness, but far from wild. The vegetation has fared better, but not by much. Twisted and mutated, trees and grasses now rule, covering the world in a patchwork of forest and plain, broken here and there by desert, tundra, and mountains. But life adapts. Among the diseased remnants of the past, new species can, from time to time, be found. Lifeforms like this world has never before seen appear with greater and greater and greater frequency. Most die out, some slowly over decades, some before they have a chance to grow. But, rarely, one or two will find their place in this new ecosystem, and [i][b]thrive[/b][/i] Some greatly resemble their predecessors. Some would have been impossible outright, a scant few centuries ago. Life, as always, adapts. One might believe, in light of the devastation around them, that people who of this once grand civilization are long gone, taken by the disaster that had taken so many others. In this case, they [i]would[/i] be wrong. There is a fundamental truth to the world. One demonstrated every day by the continued persistence of the people of Normerc. By their art. Their culture and science. Every gleaming citadel they build. Even by their petty squabbles. It is that even the gravest of wounds, given time, will heal. And life goes on.