Seventy years ago, the Duskward Spire—the nexus anchoring the kingdom's foundational enchantments—was struck by a catastrophic failure that began cascading through every spell woven into the land.
In the late Age of Splendor, the Duskward kingdom was a unified realm held together by an intricate web of ancient magic. Its roads glowed with enchanted light, its towers stood impossibly tall, and its seasons followed a precise arcane pattern that permitted a golden age of agriculture, art, and learning.
Then, in 557 AU (Age Unravelling, Year 1), the Sunken Spire—the kingdom's grandest work of arcane engineering, built into the earth itself—suffered a catastrophic failure. Whether sabotage, natural decay, or something far stranger, the spire's core logic shattered. Within months, the spell-network propagated the damage outward: roads cracked, towers listed, and the seasons became erratic.
The kingdom fractured almost immediately. The Council of Mages blamed each other and feuded over how to fix the collapse. The merchant cartels saw chaos as opportunity and seized control of supply lines. The underworld expanded into the vacuum. The Rust Wardens emerged to study the spreading corruption.
Seventy years of decline later, Duskward is less a kingdom than a ruin being fought over.
Related events: The Unravelling (ongoing); the rise of the three major power-blocs; the spread of the Glitch Swarm into the borderlands.