Meiris

The world is old - everyone knows that. There are ruins in all corners of the world, remnants of civilizations long past, the tips of their tallest towers protruding into our daily lives. Farmers use ancient temple minarets as a support farmhouses like any other cornerstone. Stone from burial sites where the body has long decayed into dust are dragged into cities to build the halls of justice and the manors of the rich. The old is part of the new - it always has been.   A series of recent earthquakes has shaken even our deepest foundations, however, and made us come to reckoning that the things we thought we knew about our oldest ancestors might not be true. Mountains shake down to reveal old keeps belonging to goliaths or deep mining tunnels shared by gnomes and dwarves. A toppled tree has revealed deep artistry carved into the wood in a technique long unused by mortal hands.   And these things call to us. Expeditions to reclaim the past spring up almost daily in the biggest cities, with some even claiming the grandest of ancient things has been buried beneath our cities or drowned on the ocean floor. There is, as there has always been, a pull toward what makes us so ourselves.   But humans and other short-lived races forge ahead with the plans that have been in the works. Steam power, recently harnessed, is driving new innovations to rival the mage's skill. Innovations in travel make the world smaller for everyone, not just a gifted few. It is moving backwards, they say, to seek out a world where societies were divided and often at war. Foolishness to limit power to a few exceptional individuals in each race.   The old has always been part of the new. But what these expeditions discover could underlie even the oldest parts of our knowledge - and change everything.