Laethelle: the Starlight Age

The Great Dark. The Starlight Age. The Long Night. For a hundred generations the entirety of the known world has lain shrouded by unceasing darkness. Yet myths remain, legends of an ancient Dawn Age, when the sky was filled with light from a single, blazing orb that drenched the world in golden warmth. Children's stories. Here, in the waking world the sky is divided between the glittering veil of starlight, and the featureless black of the Still, some vast celestial presence whose bulk obscures the stars beyond.   Yet Laethelle has light of its own. Great, towering spires of age-pitted metal stab into the heavens and at each of their crowns, an ever-burning flame. They hang above each spire like stars pulled to the earth and chained to keep them from drifting. Their blinding light drives the darkness for dozens of leagues in every direction and in their glow humanity survives, because to step from the light is to summon death. The dark is far from empty.   Beyond the edges of the Spirelight lay the empires of the Thramorri . Those myths that tell of ancient Dawns speak also of Nightfall and the arrival of the Ancient Enemy. On tattered wings their heralds came, chasing the twilight's edge to claim the darkened lands for their masters. The ancient nations of humanity were pulled down, their people scattered, enslaved, and consumed by the new Lords of Laethelle. Only those who cowered in the light of the Spires were saved, for the Thramorri could not step foot within the golden circles of Spirelight.   In these lighted shadows we rebuilt. We discovered the secrets of Spirelight and with it drew lines of gold across the darkened face of the world. We learned much of the ways of our enemies, and fought them all along the edges of our lands. Our wisest sages counsel that no darkness can last forever, and in time, a new Dawn will come, and when it does, it will find us standing.