The Prologue:
(Sorry about the grammar…)
Several hundred years before our tales begin there was a great inventor, his name was Algenon. He grew up in the country of Tirante. While wandering in that land he met a woman in the township of Ursa. He settled there to make a living and, during his lifetime, he created a great many things. Stories of his wondrous technology spread far and wide and made the town of Ursa thrive and grow. By the time Algenon was old, Ursa was a great city state. At the end of his life Algenon was said to be working on a machine that would grant immortality. However, he fell ill and never finished the machine himself. He knew that his wife, Yezera, having learned a great deal of Algenon’s knowledge over their life together, might be able to finish it. He instructed her on his invention and its use then passed away. Yezera was old but labored and completed the machine. When she activated it she became youthful and unaffected by age from that day forward.
Yezera went on to create many more marvelous things after this, yet while her husband Algenon was benevolent with his inventions, she was not. Yezera created weapons and used them to make herself queen. She conquered and gathered armies and slaves. All knew the name of her city and when spoken it was celebrated among its inhabitants and cursed by those that were not. This was the Age of Usra, ruled by Yezera, Widow of Tirante. Leafed in gold and painted in blood. For many years Yezera ruled, unfettered by the passing of decades. Ursa itself had become a mecca, her cities inventions were great and she hoarded them. Only those within the walls knew the love and comfort of her nation’s great power. Be it so, that even though the queen was immune to time, her age would still come to an end. The day of Ursa’s destruction was said to have had a great parade. The entire city was celebrating a colossal new invention of the queen that would usher in a new era of happiness for the entire world. Her gift was never received. Instead, as she turned the machine on, a great explosion shook the ground, and the city of Ursa was decimated. The queen was dead but something more twisted had also happened. Within the ruins of the city, holes had opened in the air and the walls, in the sky and ground. Out of these holes poured monsters. Thousands upon thousands of monsters. They flooded over the remains of the huge city. After that day, and for many years to come the monsters would roam the earth in large packs hunting down any civilization they could find with their dark powers. Resistance against them was met with overwhelming numbers, people survived by running and hiding.
Hundreds of years passed like this, until the last great societies fell one by one, and after that hundreds of years more. Then, one day the monsters slowly grew fewer in number. Some think they may have been destroyed over the years and years of war, others think they roamed back from whence they came thru their portals, unhappy with the meat of this world. Why they stopped hunting no one knows, but the roots of society began to grow back, to push against the monsters, and to take hold. Small towns sprung up, then small cities. Armies were formed and eventually, most of the monsters became corralled into the area of Tirante. However the peoples of this world are still not strong enough, and the monsters they fight for their world against are, so Tirante is steered clear of by the wise and the brave alike.
The monsters still roam the world, ever seeking to sate that clawing in their bellies. This is where the stories begin… One is the story of the Duchess of Risote, battling everyday to keep her people safe from the threat of monster attacks, and currently embroiled in a border dispute with her cousin, the Lord of Bonsel. the other story is of a soldier assigned to guard a not so far off small lonely town, Grant, out in a mostly peaceful country side…
