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- What has gone before....
- The Golden Age of Tarmara was not so very golden. There
- were no rich and beautiful empires. There were no glorious
- kings.
- There was no peace.
- Cryptic Alliances, closely knit organizations of people
- sharing identical fears, enemies, and doctrines, battled
- each other for world dominance. Some two hundred of these
- Alliances existed, and each would do anything to destroy the
- others.
- Nevertheless, this was the golden age of Tarmara.
- This is because the world's surface was not wasted and
- devoid of life.
- This is because humanity was not on the verge of
- extinction.
- Once, Taramara's surface was covered with forests, lakes,
- rivers, fertile plains, and oceans. Humankind was free to
- walk the surface of the world, free to bask in the radiance
- of the sun and the cool night sky. But all this came to a
- crashing end....
-
- Two Cryptic Alliances had risen above the rest, The
- Gathering of Chaos, and the Fellowship of Steel. Of these
- two, the Fellowship of Steel was the strongest. In the last
- days of what is now called The Great War, the Fellowship
- launched one final attack with an army so immense, nothing
- could stop them from asserting themselves as absolute rulers
- of Tarmara. All knew this, and all were helpless to prevent
- this.
- All except for one Cryptic Alliance.
- In a last ditch, selfish act of desperation, The Gathering
- of Chaos, preferring suicide to defeat, called upon its
- darkest secret and invoked an Apocalypse.
- A chain reaction spawned a global fireball, destroying the
- Fellowship's army. Whole forests were disintegrated, oceans
- were evaporated. It was as if the sun itself had
- encompassed the planet. In those furious moments, all
- Tarmara had been laid waste....
-
- Some Cryptic Alliances survived the holocaust. These were
- the ones with the foresight to invoke Spells of Retreat. By
- the time the Apocalypse annihilated the surface, some score
- and a half of these Hosttowers, which had predicted through
- Divination the destruction of Tarmara, had retreated to deep
- subterranean resting places and avoided the desecration. As
- the surviving members of these Cryptic Alliances began to
- realize the full extent of the damage done to their world,
- it became apparent that these underdark resting places,
- scores of miles beneath the surface, could very well be
- there home forever, for any tower that ventured to the
- surface soon found all of its inhabitants dying horrible
- deaths as their hair fell out from some unknown sickness.
- Resigned to their fate, the remaining Cryptic Alliances,
- in hopes of outliving their food stores, Cast Spells of
- Suspended Animation on their members designed to end when
- Tarmara had healed. Every remaining member of Humanity went
- to sleep that year, or starved to death. Of those that
- slept, each dreamt of conquest....
-