Awakened Dena

Deep beneath the bones of Dena sleep crystal giants of wing and fang. Dragons, feeling the long sleep coming, for they are immortals of memory and have slept through countless transitions, dug deep into the bones of Dena to slumber and hide for these thousand's of years.   For them, the time passes in an instant, for without magic they become crystaline potential and nothing more, once-living gemstones awaiting magic's key to awaken them. For all the lesser races of Dena, the approximately five thousand years without magic have been long enough for myths and gods to begin to drift. Here and there about the countryside, once floating castles lie buried where they fell, and bridges with impossible spans proclaim that magic did once flourish here.   Three continents crowd about the equatorial Mendebaldea sea, smallest Ipar, secure in its northern chill and wild and wooded Urrun bracketing the sea on its western edge sits astride the equator. Stretching from the deep south, far to the east and north past the waist of Dena is Hegoaldean, the largest and most balkanized of Dena's land masses.   Ten nations struggle to survive on Hegoaldean. Without magic, this balancing act has been precarious, quiet and somewhat successful. With the discovery of magic returning to the world and all the chaos and disruption this provides, things are getting agitated and inflamed. One locus of this conflict is Murkatva, a trading city state caught at the border of three nations. Ama, a feudal based matriarchal society, Onen, a bureaucratic nightmare of merit based promotions and sly corruption and Jainko, a monotheistic theocracy.