Catalyst: The Fall of House Ulwyn

A thousand years before I was born, the world was a different place – it’s your place right now, run by electricity and combustibles, perpetually at war and just on the verge of becoming truly catastrophic. It became more interesting when that way of life ended, more or less. Everything that used electricity stopped working when the earth was hit by a small asteroid that no one cared to mention, some dull succession of numbers and letters – it was thought that it wasn’t dense enough to cause any harm. We honour it – we named it Catalyst, a designation that it so richly deserved. The asteroid shut everything down with its power and changed the nature of a number of substances on the planet. Some things became inert and useless, while others gained attributes that were highly reactive. We also think it changed us but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.

Mind you, it made a gigantic mess. Catalyst came down and struck the earth with a force that shook mountains to rubble and caused seas to rise up over the land; it may have been small but it was very dense...much denser than what the people alive then realized. Thousands died from the impact but the worst horror was yet to come. Over three quarters of the world’s population died in the wars that followed, decades of war – millions fell within the first few months. At first, the wars were fought with bats and blades, as not even guns worked. It was a brutal, brutal time for humanity that hadn’t been seen since the last Ice Age. People were fighting for food, fearful over what the next day would bring. The soul of man was challenged and asked once again to prove its worth in the most difficult of circumstances.

Cities fell as services stopped and supplies became scarce. Most of the survivors fled from the cities, seeing them as abattoirs for the petty dictators whose kingdoms rose from their scavenging and brutish acts. The world outside the cities was desperate and dangerous as well though, exposing survivors to the grim realities of Nature’s true relationship with us and our own base nature. In short, we entered a second Dark Age that lasted three-hundred years. By the end of it, we were reduced to less than a tenth of what was left after Catalyst arrived.

However, just as one age of wonder pulled humanity up before, such a time came again. One day, a slave woman washing the floor of her master’s palace was pushed aside by a brute guard who had taken advantage of her in the past. She landed in her filthy wash-bucket, splashing the brackish water everywhere. However, instead of cowering and stifling her shame and outrage, she stood up and faced the brute. The next moment, instead of finding herself beaten and raped because of her insolence, she found herself trembling with her arm raised in front of her, wisps of steam drifting from it. In her other hand, she grasped a charm bracelet that her mother had given her; the bracelet glowed with a ruddy, pulsing light. Her shock was also due to the ruin that she beheld. On the other side of the room, surrounded by flickers of flame, was a charred mass of blackened flesh that used to be a man.

She knew what she had done, impossible as it may have seemed. Her master’s palace burned to the ground that day. It was said that onlookers could make out a whirlwind made of fire that seemed to chase the tyrant’s retainers and family, reducing them to ash that blew on the high winds. Of the woman that was said to have started the fire, there was no trace found in the wreckage. Many assumed she died with the rest. Legend tells us that her name was Amira, which came to mean fiery wind. More people began to appear with similar abilities, people who could channel their will through an object that amplified their latent power. Some called it magic. It was another rude awakening for the species. The human population was suddenly replete with people who could tap into abilities that made them obviously superior…a trafficker in animal pelts who found he could summon spirit-like phantasms of those animals to do his bidding…an old woman who could cause storms to appear whenever she wished…a small boy who could move objects just by concentrating on them…each drew from an object that was crafted from one of or more of the changed substances. Some were killed before their power could reach its zenith by fearful people who thought they could see their doom in such individuals. What no one suspected was that, given time, anyone on earth could tap into power. Many people were lost in the confusion that followed. The years ahead were very… experimental.

Unfortunately, our true nature had not changed. Those whose power was greatest began to fight over the world, falling back on our old pursuits for wealth and territory. Armies of powerful mages, as they were then called, laid waste to the world in terrifying, yet beautiful displays of destructive power. Cities of mages began to take shape in the conflagration…even nations dedicated to one certain goal or purpose arose in the years of magical warfare. These were the seeds of our civilization – of the very society that gave me a life and a purpose. Borders were drawn, treaties signed and schools dedicated to cultivating our power became commonplace, a source of competition between our nations. As the years progressed, we became just as ambitious as ever, armed with weapons whose power came from our very souls. Ultimately, it was our wisdom that needed to grow along with our power, instead of one at the cost of the other.

-Davon Ulwyn, An Introduction to the Changed World.