Tales from Gorgh

The end of the Elvish Dominance in the bloody days of the schism gave rise to the beginning of the Age of Man. Human spellslaves and elvish thinbloods picked over the demon-haunted ruins of the great cities and began to rebuild. The slave races were generally spared most of the horrors until the very tail end of the schism, being viewed by the ancient High Elves as useful resources. By the last few years, when most of the elvish princes dead, the human spellslaves and thinblooded bastards held most of the magical knowledge left on the continent. They began to coalesce into city-states run by wizard kings, and the greatest of these new city-states was Mystara.

Although a far cry from the shining cities and crystal towers of the elves, Mystara was preeminent in lore and prestige. They had a great trove of spellbooks and the few known soul-forges that had created the Warforged in the middle years of the Schism. Mystara created the modern calendar and saw the building of roads connecting regions who previously had flown or teleported via the arcane arts.

For five hundred years, Mystara held sway. They built a wide network of towns protected by the famed flying castles. Magical research was nearly unlimited, and many spells were invented or rediscovered in a flurry of magical advancement that has yet to be matched. Mystarans lived in luxury, fat and happy and distracted, always dedicated to pushing the limits of practical and theoretical thaumuturgy.

But then came the Castlecrash, the day when Magic went away. For one whole year, mortal magic could not be touched. The flying castles fell from the sky, crushing the cities below into dust. The horrors in the world surged forth, goblins and orcs, gnolls and kuo-toa, wyverns and beholders previously held back by magical might came to collect their due in souls and spoils. Many of the magical leaders turned to warlockery, exchanging dark pacts with demons and Old Ones, and ruled sinister and necromantic kingdoms from the collapsed Mystaran fortresses.

In the wake of the Castlecrash, most races were left with only a few clerics able to touch magic. The change of the clerics from being viewed as quaint in Mystara to the backbone of civilization is the most significant one to come out of those dark days. It was only with the help of the clerics that any semblance of humankind made it through and began to reforge something new. Humankind allied with the dwarves, sharing some gods and needing the metalcraft the dwarves had always fostered, and the dwarves, as always, needed the grain and wood so difficult to obtain in their mountain fastnesses. Slowly, humankind began to pull itself together again.

No one knows quite what happened to cause the Castlecrash. Thaumaturgists maintain that magic itself was changed in the event, with ancient magical engines working differently and producing dangerous and unexpected effects. Elven spells had to be re-worked, adjusting to the warped metathaumic landscape, and many Mystaran magics became unpredictable.

Modern thaumaturgical theory, of course, has adapted, and some of the wonders of Mystara and the High Elves have been reproduced, but the boundaries of the possible seem to have retracted, limiting mortal power on this plane. The arcane is still viewed with some suspicion, and many have a bone-deep aversion to the practice, seeing it as the reason for all the years of troubles.