Lanterns Held Aloft - Opening Crawl

A massive Catastrophe shook the world and plunged it into darkness. No one knows what caused it; it has been theorized that invaders came from another dimension, or another part of the universe, given that many strange devices and machines found in ruins appear to have been weapons or similar engines of war.

Knowledge has been supplanted by superstition, myth, and legend, where many facts about the history of the world are not certain, such as the exact amount of time that has passed since the Catastrophe occurred. Prevailing theories say that the world pre-Catastrophe was highly advanced and knowledgeable about the multiverse, planes, magic, and technology.

The world is riddled with ruins of old cities, nations, and kingdoms. Civilization is slowly returning to the world, primarily centered in independent city-states which have cropped up across an array of the world’s land masses. Secret societies, guilds, and organizations exist across the city-states. Some seek to improve society, while others want to hold back progress. Methods of supernatural practice that rely on learning have been passed down through active practice, repetition, and oral tradition. There are no written or stored records of arcane formulas. While magic in some forms and certain types of technology eventually made its way back into the world, in its absence, other phenomena such as alchemy and the discovery of gunpowder followed a much faster path to advancement. Additionally, there have been concerted efforts devoted to understanding how the mechanisms left behind by those who ruined the world function.

Some people believe they know the exact specific details of the sacred/divine (one god, many gods, which gods, etc.), but it has yet to be determined with absolute objective certainty.

The skies above Greymahr are gloom-soaked, clouds clinging to a perpetual pall of precipitation that makes it feel like a shower’s always about to fall, but never quite seems to. The reclusive Baron, a powerful industrialist and business magnate about whom is known very little, has been recently sending cloaked and hooded agents out into the ruined remnants of the cities Greymahr was built over in search of something, around which rumors abound, but no truth has of yet been discovered. Isaiah Greylocke, the proprietor of a curiosity shop within the city, believes that the search is for something nefarious that will only further cement the Baron’s wrought-iron grip, and has reached out to you to find out what the Baron is looking for and what might he do with it once he’s found it.