Part One
“The Crafted Mountain”
Chapter One
“The Artificers of Will”
A long time ago all things that were or could hope to be, were under
the guidance of the wisest; those known today only as the ′Centra′.
They alone were the keepers of the Age of Growth and they alone kept
watch over the world itself from high atop their floating cities and other sources of
awe. They surveyed and kept the balance with the aid and grace of their immeasurable
achievements. Impressive feats born from their mastery of the darkest of magics: a
power they called science. Feats to be remembered always through mistranslated
words and long, half-forgotten, fables carried across generations throughout all the
corners of this exhausted world. Stories and fairy tales, words of the very old to the
very young as scattered memories intertwine themselves with legend, as glory and
fascination eventually turn to dread and warning.
Narrations of incredible proportions, their words and bolstering claims easily
supported by the remaining Centra achievements, left for everyone to see upon this
dreaded world; large constructions, all arrogant and defiant in their design.
Temples standing proud to this day atop higher mountains while waiting for the
brave or the foolish to step up to the challenge.
Cities, magnificent still, that once stood shoulder to shoulder with any cloud, now
just ruins upon the scarred land making up the landscapes of deserts, oceans, forests,
and lakes. All of this creates a world that supplies and displays proof to these narrations
regardless of how fantastic and unbelievable some of those assembled sentences may
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seem to the smallest of listeners.
Words are always passed on with foreboding tones, for the meaning within
its message is always the same, one of hubris and the collapse that always ensues.
The Centra were felled, by what real reason one can only speculate, but gone is their
mighty civilisation, lost to us and it was a mystery that to this day no one can be
certain of their fate. For with all that they achieved and all the power they once held;
they were the rulers of an entire world and handlers of unmatched technologies,
they would still - mysteriously - disappear without a trace, leaving behind only their
accomplishments. As many and as impressive as their feats seem, even today, the fears
were not enough to save them from whatever fate befell them. During their long reign,
for countless millennia, they reshaped all the lands and built a world in their image.
They had the power to do so, and they did. They created and they destroyed.
How many wonders disappeared under the Centra’s thumb? How many were born
from their desire to create?
All of this they did, until one night, in just one night, suddenly, their entire race
was extinguished! What was this mysterious event of cataclysmic proportions that
in a single swoop robbed the world of their biggest prize, not even leaving behind a
single corpse?
What caused the mass extinction of these chosen and sent all their cities and other
flying stations crashing down towards the earth below?
The more that is revealed to us about the Centra, the closer we get to perceive their
real magnitude, the more fascinating and alluring the mystery of their disappearance
becomes. Still, the whole world is, and likely forever will be, the largest testimony for
all that the Centra ever were and forever achieved.
A whole world that even now, as it slowly awaits its collapse, persistently sings to
their glory. The Centra departed leaving behind a world of unshackled magics and
soon to be poorly resurrected technologies. With their absence, and their machines
spent and their cities toppled, so too ended the Age of Growth, but with all that the
Centra left behind, in time, a new Era would begin...
