Numiastra No Gods. No Hope. Magic is dying and the only path to survival lies in steel, shrouded by smog.
Year 62 of the Age of Occultism
The Gods are dead, and with them, hope - 2,000 years ago, one of the legendary Skycities of a far-off Empire crashed headlong into the center of the then-thriving megacontinent of Numiastra, and changed part of the planet forever. In a single instant, vast swathes of the continent's ecosystem were rendered lifeless and transmuted by the detonation of the Skycity's magical core into something far, far more terrifying: a perfect mixture of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal: gunpowder. In that singular instant, the Black Desert was born, and in the next, the world went white as that very same desert, now stretching from coast to coast of the continent, ignited and rocked the entire planet of Ea with an explosion that nearly split the planet in twain - though it would survive, the continent of Numiastra would not, and subsequently broke into countless chunks from the force of the detonation.
Now, two thousand years after that terrible calamity, and magic itself has malfunctioned all around the lands of Numiastra - remnants of the crash of the great Skycity that changed the land forever. Spellcasters are driven irreparably closer to spiraling madness with each casting of their spells, terrible monstrosities lurk the night enacting unfathomable horrors upon any caught unprotected, and the gods have either died or left this horrible and accursed place: all that remains is the remnants of the life that once dwelled here, clustered around The Iron Empire's sky-choking cities of Steel and Soot to survive the horrors that now lurk in the night. Clustered around the leadership of the Empire's eternal ruler Tavross, The Iron Empire enacts a cruel, totalitarian law across the land - mages are to be hunted and spirited away to the Empire's secret corners, and all non-humans are forever declared the enemy of mankind.
Standing in opposition to them lies the unending blood-drinking scourge of The Vrykus Throne, united under the banner of the Vampire Queen Kali - ancient survivors of that terrible apocalypse which created The Black Desert, transformed into something infinitely more demonic in the aftermath of the blast heard around the world. With them lies nothing less than the total reshaping of all life in the known world - a supposed "mercy" enacted by the Vampires, Undead, and other inhumans who rally beneath The Vrykus Throne in the name of enduring the harsh conditions of Numiastra.
Yet, even as these two mighty superpowers fight for the fate of their world, all is not as it seems - elves wage a constant guerilla war against The Iron Empire, the Dwarves of Zur have all but retreated into their Citadels, and The Black Desert remains as the most existential threat to the entire land of Numiastra, its deserts of blackened minerals mere sparks away from detonation and seemingly an endless source of gunpowder to fuel the blasting hellmachines of The Iron Empire. Can the world survive in the face of this apocalypse? In this uniquely human-centric realm where inhumans and outsiders are worse than death and just as maligned, can anything truly thrive? Can anyone endure the unnamed horrors that lurk within the unfound dark and bring this land to prosperity once again?