Short History of Visten

Visten is a hostile place of cyclic floods and storms. They are both caused by a twin world around which the planet circles in an elliptical orbit. When the planets get closer, the tides start to rise, reaching even a few hundred meters in height at worst. This, however, is not how the world used to be. The planets, Visten and Endur, were once tidally locked, circling in a perfect unison. Engineered by the ancient to serve their purposes of galactic conquest. Now it is a sad reminder of greed and megalomania. This was the age of prosperity, but also an age of oppression. It all came down in the end.
In the times before the world went into total chaos, a race of autonomous machines was created by the ruling elite. Assembled from service and military robots, these machines were tasked with protecting their masters as a last desperate attempt. What actually happened is not known anymore, but it is certain that the machines failed. Now what is left of them randomly pop up in the world, after having regained some of their strength via self replication. They pose a severe danger to all those living, and even others of their own.
Sometime after that, when humanity had recovered, an alien species arrived. They called themselves the Myzild and were refugees of a calamity of their own. Their world had been infected by a rampaging fungal disease. A person infected by the mushroom's spores has their nervous system overtaken by the hypha of the mushroom. This causes them to slowly go mad and eventually fall under the mushrooms control. Not long after being infected their skin will start to emit new spores, causing others nearby to get also infected.
Unfortunately for the denizens of Visten, the aliens brought the disease with them. Luckily, it turned out to take a while to infect the locals and even then it has proven to be much less lethal and infectious th than Myzild had claimed. Still it was not considered to be of any fun and so the Myzild are generally hated.
If that was not enough, a vast light and searing heat was experienced around the world. This event wiped most life from the surface of the planet and pushed the world back centuries if not more. As a result the two worlds were torn apart and now perform a deadly celestial dance causing the floods and storms of the world. On Visten a great scar in the form of Solnater, the Great Salt Sea was left. A vast area of strange phenomenon surrounded by tall mountains.
Now the world has recovered and life has found opportunities to prosper. Several civilizations have managed to rise. Many have chosen to use magic to do so. For many the price of magic is little known, and even the magic and its nature are guarded secrets. In For many magics existence is a little known fact and even fewer know of its dangers.
Many of the ancient threats have survived the latest calamity and are an ever looming danger.