The year is 4E 500. For nearly one thousand years, the world of Taerel has been ravaged by the kin’toni plague, a sickness that converts those inflicted into kin’toni, vampiric monsters seeking the blood of the zu’aan. Forget the power of technology, the world has been sent back to a new dark age. The tools used are stone, bronze and iron, as the means of advanced technology has been lost. Only the rusting remnants of a past age remain. The once-mighty cities of the Xenea Zu'aan Empire, the Ka'orn Kingdom and the other once-powerful nations now rot and rust away as overgrown ruins. The once grand hive cities, once home to millions are now only home to savage kin'toni clans and primitive zu'aan.
In the Awakening Age, the zu'aan was hunted, the kin'toni relentless, and the zu'aan had to form primitive tribes shunning all technology in order to survive. Even in the Twilight Age, these tribes were and still are always on the move to evade the much more numerous kin'toni clans, hungry for their blood and wishing to convert them to grow their numbers. In the Twilight Age, there were zu'aan who managed to form cities due to the cession of hunting by the kin'toni, who were busy with their own matters. These cities use high walls and their armies in order to keep the wandering clans of kin'toni away. Such cities still have to be wary of gaining too much attention from the kin'toni as otherwise they may be overwhelmed by a hungering horde.
The Xerea Empire still stands as remnants beyond the mountains of Qobvoudon, on the Aqidwyz landmass. Their capital, Kran-Xtar is built within the monumental hive city ruins of Xae'dehar. The Xerea empire's remnants still have some of the technology of their golden age, but even that is dwindling. In the darkness of the forgotten parts of Xae'dehar, there are kin'toni, waiting for the day to rise. They are only standing due to their walled cities and unity. The many warring kin'toni clans live in the wilderness and dominate the globe, their numbers legion. They adapt to the land around them, with biological mutations. They again are primitive, lacking the secrets of the Old World's technology.
Even in the Shattering of 4E 100-150, a time of great war and darkness, the wars happening due to a lack of resources due to the volcanic winter that blocked out the skies and cast the world into a pail of darkness and cold. Even the lack of food and the conflict did not destroy civilization, the zu'aan and kin'toni endured. But, this new and somewhat stable age is ending, a new ice age is coming with icy sheets from the North and South of Taerel, freezing all in its path. The ice age can not be stopped or delayed, the end will come in time. Groups may be able to delay the end, but they are only buying time. The ice will crush all under its freezing embrace. The glacial end is coming, will they survive?
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