Shards of Light

I prefer the term Shards of Light as a shard is easily broken and destroyed leaving nothing but a slight crunchy noise under the feet as darkness rolls over it.  Points of Light might grow and expand to merge into one big field of light. Â  Shards rarely go back together and when they do they remain brittle, ready to break apart at the lightest touch in the wrong spot.

This then is the world as it exists today, the last remnants of the sun glinting from the final shards of civilization, broken edges dancing with tiny rainbows of all color before nightfall comes bringing with it all the fear and darkness and uncertainty of the unknown.

Those that prefer the light huddle over the remaining few embers of civilization as lonely souls caught in a blizzard of darkest snow huddle over their last precious sticks of wood while cold winds howl and tear at their fragile shelter.

The biggest cities, once jewels beyond description, have fallen into decay and misery; where once hundreds of thousands bustled and thrived in their lives, bare tens of thousands now trudge out their years.  Large cities hold scant thousands now with entire sections of city fallen into disrepair and squalor. Â  Untold numbers of towns, villages and hamlets have dropped from the face of the world, swallowed by the darkness unending.

The mighty airships that once traversed the skies carrying goods and passengers far above the dangers of the wilderness are seldom seen, the mighty rituals that empower them seldom cast, or perhaps the numbers of those with the power to cast them shrunk too far to do so.

The brave or reckless who still traverse the countryside to bring trade between the cities do so on foot and wagon and ships that fear to leave sight of land.  And their numbers grow smaller every year as each year sees more heading out, packs and holds laden with goods to never be seen again. And each year there are fewer who have the courage to take up the mantle of keeping the lines of trade and communication open.

The fabled city of Aredale, City of the Clouds is no more, the remains like the shattered golden bones of a mighty drake scattered across the grass covered fields of the Unending Winds with only scavengers to fight and snarl for rapidly spoiling fragments.

The black dank waters of the Bitterwater Swamps in the south creep outward a little more each year, eroding and poisoning the adjacent lands. 

With the shrinking of the Light so shrink the lives of those who turn their face to it.  A hand of decades perhaps is all most of those born human manage between squalling birth to whimpering death.  Where once populations boomed, they now decline and fewer are born into this world of darkness and fewer yet survive to adulthood.

Races that once shared an enmity against one another find little strength to hold their hatreds and most realize that only combined efforts hold faint hope of warding off the dark and little hope there is of pushing it back.  All those who turn their face from the darkness walk as equals and uneasy comrades as each shard is slowly worn down till it shatters.

Yes, this then is the world of Karn as it exists today.  Faint welcome you’ll find as you enter but perhaps, just perhaps, you will find the strength of will and heart and arm to help hold off the darkness for a little while longer, to perhaps give ease and succor where exists only pain and suffering.