I. The Age of Plenty
Before this story truly begins, there was an era that later generations would name the Age of Plenty.
Every kingdom and realm raised its wealth on territory, institutions, trade networks, military strength, and the slow accumulation of culture. The treasuries of kings, the trade roads of empires, the knowledge of scholars, and the glory of heroes — these four pillars together held up the wealth of nations.
It was an age when order could still be seen. Trade routes wove their nets across mountain and sea. Kingdoms kept their borders. Scholars lectured in the city-states, and legendary commanders won glory for their banners on the field.
II. The Cracks Beneath the Calm
But the stability was only a surface.
After long wars, the kingdoms and city-states settled into an uneasy balance. Trade limped on, and the legacy of the Old Empires still propped up the world's economy. Yet the cracks were opening on every side:
Resources were running dry — rich veins and fertile fields slowly turned barren.
Trade was withering — the roads were no longer safe, and the ocean routes grew shorter year by year.
Wealth was moving — no longer gathering at the old centers, but seeping quietly toward the unknown.
Order was loosening — old compacts frayed, and promises between kingdoms began to fail.
No one can name the year the turn began. But in every city, people sensed the same thing: the order of today might not survive to the next generation.
III. The Quiet Collapse
When the collapse came, it came almost peacefully.
Empires fell, cities emptied, the web of trade snapped. There was no single decisive battle, no tyrant's final command — only countless small concessions, retreats, and acts of forgetting, wearing the old grandeur through, thread by thread.
The armies remained, but no longer answered to one center. Caravans still set out, but fewer and fewer reached their destinations. The banners of the Old Empires were never formally lowered. One morning, no one remembered to raise them.
IV. The Inheritance
The collapse did not leave nothing behind.
The legacy of the old world lies scattered across the land: the ruins of ancient cities, strongholds rich in strategic resources, forgotten trade lanes, deep-buried veins of ore — wealth that once belonged to empires, waiting for a new ruler to gather it again.
Scholars have set out once more to study the ruins. Explorers claim to have found ancient remnants on distant continents. Bandit mercenaries plunder what is left amid the broken order, and Rebels, split from the armies of fallen kingdoms, hold the mountain passes and the wilds.
After the Old Empires fell, a new empire waits to be built. Its future ruler has not yet been named — but already, someone is walking toward that throne.