INTO THE WORLD OF LACRYSIA...

Before there was a world, the universe consisted of a milky ocean of darkness that was The Night. A goddess of nothingness, of potentiality and expansiveness- she was utterly consumed by her solitude. Then, one day, something changed. The Radiance-the antithesis to everything the Night knew herself to be; the force of creation, an all-consuming Light -thrust her way in to the void that was Her body and together they created something new. They created the first gods, Aphelia; the moon, and Callista; the sun, and they created the world, Lacrysia. On this planet Callista created Dragons, her first children, and Aphelia created mortals- who were each given a special spark of Divinity from their Mother Sun, and became her children as well.

The most abundant of these were humans, who made a home from anywhere they could. The middlest between the two, they had pieces of both the sun and moon within their souls. The closest to the Sun were the dragonfolk, who made their homes in the extreme and hard to reach places that Humans could not go. And closest to the Moon were the Changelings- who could not find a home anywhere, cast from society and forced to blend in, no matter whose company they were in. Though these races are the most recognizable, many more were born early on in the history of the World, but each of their origins are lost to time- as is the nature of the Cycles.

The world has since gone through many iterations, each one known as a Cycle. The Cycles of Lacrysia are always marked by a complete and total collapse of society typically due to some manner of apocalyptic event, and the deaths of each god in the pantheon, from which their divinity returns to a single source known as the Divine Flame. It's not known how the Divine Flame came to be, but at each Cycle's end, the divinity each god borrowed from the Flame returns to its source, killing the host in the process. This Flame then resides somewhere on Lacrysia until it's claimed by a surviving mortal, who becomes the first of the nexy Cycle's pantheon. They shed their mortal name and become known only as The Warden.

THE FALL OF THE FIFTH

The world is currently in its Sixth Cycle , though it's not often called that by its denizens. Lumarian records and first-accounts tell that this most recent cycle's end related to a war that occurred between the gods as they fought to preserve the Divine Flame and their own power over the mortal earth- ironically, ending in the very thing they were afraid of. The gods of the Fifth first sent their followers to fight for them, then eventually made the earth itself their battlefield as they fought and destroyed one another.

This may be true- however, an event that transpired in a location (somewhere near modern-day Silkspire) known as The Vault is said to be the true cause of much of the devastation suffered by the population of the Fifth cycle, as well as the reason the Divine Flame was called back to the City of the Gods.

The Vault itself and its unsealing is considered by most Fifth Scholars to be "ground zero" for the devastation which leveled cities across the world. While accounts vary, a few things about the events of the Vault are certain- That the Vault had contained Aphelia, who was imprisoned there and therefore absent from the pantheon for most of the Fifth cycle, and that use of a human vessel was employed, through which Aphelia was able to break free. A moonless night fell for six days, during which a flood covered most of the earth until receding after a flash of white. The moon took her place in the sky again after this event, which has been dubbed by most as the Lunar Reprisal.

It's said that only about 6% of the world's population survived the Lunar Reprisal, and what few people did remain did not document well the difficulties they faced in the new world created by such a cataclysm. However, it's known that the Vault's unsealing created a great distortion in the fabric of magic across the world. Magic became exceptionally difficult to cast- in places, entirely impossible due to Ethyris vacuums said to be created as the Vault drew energy unto itself. Additionally, no gods remained at this time due to the final events of the Divine War of the Fifth. This made cleric's spellcasting impossible, including healing and protective wards- an especially detrimental side effect considering the esoteric plague that began infecting early Sixth populations, especially in those that were close to the Vault at the time of its unsealing.

The Vault Contagion was a sickness that spread from person to person, initially caused by a lingering energy that existed within the Vault. It was also believed to have been carried by the eldritch creatures that lived inside the Vault, angels of Aphelia which were her sworn protectors during her time inside her prison. These creatures were extremely volatile and powerful, killing mortals with little discretion after they were released alongside their god, and spreading the Vault Contagion at an alarming rate. The Vault Contagion also seemed to affect people who utilized magic in and around the Vault, or in places affected deeply by its unsealing.

TVC was marked by flu-like symptoms, followed by a period of coma. Typically, people did not wake from this coma- and those who did only did so after they had mutated and turned into horrible creatures not unlike the aforementioned Vault Guardians. The forms TVC would mutate victims into were extremely varied, and what few firsthand accounts we have of TVC and its effects seem to suggest that the form taken by victims had strong connections to personal struggles and traumas they had undergone.

Though the dangers presented by TVC are not entirely gone, the world has mended such that fears surrounding TVC are almost entirely put to rest. Cases of TVC are rare, and the apocalyptic state the world was once in are just the faintest of memories in dusty tomes in the libraries of scholars. The World of the Sixth, though it has had it's ups and downs, has seen a full recovery. The world was aided greatly in this by technologies preserved by the Sealed City, Lumaria, as well as knowledge that has been preserved by the extant dragons of cycle's past.

PROCEED