The sun rises on a new world- a world not like that you may know. Shattered by a catastrophic impact not long after the extinction of the dinosaurs, Earth is not as it should be. This impact, a star falling to earth, changed not only the shape of the world, but also her content; this star bore strange light and eldritch crystals, warping and altering the planet where humanity slowly arose. Continents were broken, minds shattered, even animals and plants twisted and changed. It is a different world, one in many ways hostile to humanity- but in the end, it is your world.
You stand forward as one of the leaders of a great city of men. It has been many centuries now since the first tribes emerged in the impact of the Cataclysm, family groups formed from scattered wanderers and survivors, and now civilization in earnest is rising from those embers. Men ply trade upon the waves of the sea, either propelled by oars and scarred backs, or the might of sails. Caravans roam savage lands, making fortunes for their owners if they are not devoured by ferocious beasts. The first priests, and god-kings, and republics lay claim to the passages of the world beyond the sight of their doorways, and bronze-armed warriors march across the hinterland. Men declaim poetry, and gaze at the stars, wielding magicks both powerful and dangerous.
To be a leader in such times is to be given glorious potential, but also enormous responsibility. Civilization is fragile, and dark things lurk both in the hearts of men and in the wilds of the world. Will you rise to greatness alongside your kinsmen, or will you falter and be forgotten? Come, and tell the tale of the Noble Cities.
Near the outskirts of the Pillar of Varra, a man hews a tree with a gleaming copper axe. A fire burns not far away, where another laborer in the woodlands bludgeons a similar tool with a heavy stone, crudely hammering a cutting edge back onto his blunted tool. It was hard work, for every stroke of the blades nocked and rent the sturdy haft the swarthy man relentlessly wielded - but there's certainly something to be said for not having to cut up the tree by hand with a sharp rock.
He paused for a moment, dabbing at his forehead with a grimy piece of cloth. A creak from the woodlands covered the sound of an arrow silently falling through the air, and he didn't notice that his kinsman had been shot in the throat until he turned around several seconds later to ask for help with the arboreal giant. Shock crossed his face at the other man, struggling in the dirt with his hands slick with blood, and after only a moment's pause he was off, running back toward the cultivated fields around Varra.
The man didn't get very far. Two more arrows, tipped in bone and fletched with crow feathers, took him in the back. Axe falling from nerveless fingers, he pitched forward onto the sparse dirt path. The men that emerged from the forest a few minutes later looked little better than savages, the pelts and fetishes wrapped about their bodies remnants of a wilder and darker time. Their eyes glittered with black malice as they looked towards the fair dwellings and wide paths of Varra, before turning their heads down to their work.
Into the forest the bodies disappeared, along with the ambushers. The dark times were not yet altogether gone.