I woke up in my really comfortable bed which costed way more than your average bed. Or so I'm told. I have no idea because I don't actually look at the price of anything I buy. Why? I'm rich of course and the son of a famous house in a big town.
How are we so rich and famous you ask? As the story goes my great grandpa happened to buy a piece of land that had magical coal in it. These rocks were worth a fortune since they were used by magicians and train conductors everywhere. Naturally my great gramps sold them to highest bidder and used politics, influence, corruption, and other underhanded tactics to establish himself as a power house in our town and our country.
My dad had already been born when this happened and had positioned himself among his siblings to be the ideal candidate for the reigns of power. His positioning got him into the right position after my great - grampa passed away (by which I actually mean he just prolonged his life with magic and went into hiding with his wife so they could enjoy their wealth without the responsibility). With my dad's new found power and wealth , he expanded our operations and businesses to other useful industries like magical gambling along with magical lobbying to magically approve of the magical gambling. He also expanded his marriage by adding two more wives because he could, as he said, "now afford them".
Through the very honest and hard work of monopolizing all magical mines in our country, my dad eventually overthrew the oppressive monarchy. I don't know if they were actually that oppressive because the dude who was the king just handed my dad the crown after they went into a conference room. I know because my dad brought me there for some reason. I can only assume it was a "bring the youngest son of your third wife to work day" kinda situtaion. While I was hanging out outside the conference room I saw the old king's daughter who was around my age and very pretty. I was flirting with her pretty aggressively but I kept getting rebuffed since she said she was a princess. She slept with me as soon as her dad's crown came off though because "normal people were allowed to" and "you're a prince now". Quite the amazing day if I do say so myself. I high fived my dad (he had no idea why) and from that point on I followed the spirit of his marital practices... without the marriage part. So yeah, I'm the son of a King, our house is a castle, and our big town is Capital City.
This was when I was 19. When I was 20 , the world as I barely knew it would change. Turns out burning too much magical coal pollutes the atmosphere with magical toxins. By the time I was born , my dad was 120 and had been running his business for at least 80 years. Magical coal was being used the entire time in this 80-year duration in every magical industry for magical power. Portals, summonings, necromancy, trains, light bulbs, ovens, and all other sorts of things used magical coal to supply them with magical power. The was great at first. Magical rain made crops grow faster and magical water was good for you and the animals. Magical tsunamis and hurricanes were devastating however. The first time a magial hurricane occured , half of a country was wiped off the face of the planet, with millions losing their lives. The second time it hit, magicians were now prepared and protected most cities and settlements, though hundreds of thousand of lives were still lost.
The world became more hostile for several years. Predatory animals were more fierce, powerful, and magical. Poisonous plant life was more deadly. There would occasionally be acid rain that destroyed fields, melted skin, and rendered areas to be magical hell holes of chaos. Women I tried to sleep with were also magically more bitchy. Some people tried to stop the use of magical coal but there was too much money in it for anyone to listen. The air quickly became filled with magical smog and diseases that were once curable were not harder to stop, requiring greater spell work to cure. The wealthy could afford it but many of those living in poverty died off. When I was 23 a quarter of the population had died in what was called the "Slow Black Dawn" or "Slow Dawn" for short. Every day at sun rise the world seemed to get dimmer and dimmer. At dusk , it became more and more necessary to use portable lamps to see outside.
Then a powerful wizard with a weird hat and no fashion sense came along and created a one-of-a-kind magic circle. It allowed him to gather up all the magical smog in the world using his mind. For several weeks all power generated in the country was sent to this magic circle. On the fateful day the wizard made several nonsensical hand gestures and all the smog in the world rushed towards the circle forming a vortex-like sphere that kept abosorbing the smog. It kept getting bigger and bigger and when it was finally big enough the wizard used all the remaining power of the circle to launch the ball into space.
This would effectively get rid of the ball and rid the world of smog, letting humanity finally find a solution for smog-free power. Yet, like in all my botched dates, a swordswoman with a grudge came and ruined everything. (Okay okay it was actually only one time, it just sounded cool to say). She somehow pierced through the barriers with her blade and cut off both his outstretched hands. The ball started falling because, for some reason, it used his hands as a guide. The wizard quickly kicked the woman into the ball which then collded with him and created a huge magical explosion.
Now , this should have destroyed everything on that side of the planet. Instead, right before the ball hit the ground it turned white and when it exploded it hit everyone on the continent forcefully, but harmlessly. Officials who witnessed the debacle reported seeing a headless wizard laying on the floor and a crying swordswoman with his head in her hands, both disappearing as they turned into white dust. Naturaly, I was also seeing this since my dad funded a majority of the operation. We were sitting at a table nearby with magical shielding around us. Shielding that was eviscerated by the explosion which also knocked us down from our chairs.
I didn't really focus on the two main characters of the whole event as much as I was focused on the massive cyclindrical hole beneath them. The two fading bodies were floating on top of an ever deeping chasm. Also I might want to add that the sword was MASSIVE. It looked like someone had taken a hill made of marble and carved a sword out of it. The sword also fell into the hole as soon as the swordswoman dropped it to pick up the wizards head. The size of the sword was most likely magically enhanced , though I guess we'll never know since the hole was covered up immediately after people got their bearings.
Days later, people started having weird dreams where they were given skills and knowledge associated with a given class. This was new as people before just had normal jobs and no class. Enough people had gotten these dreams to the point where, months later, economic and military systems incoporated them into their assessments of people. Not everyone who was hit by the explosion got one though. But every subsequent new born on this side of the planet did. The babies class was known since the mother would get a dream at the moment of conception on what the babies class would be.
It was too much of a coincidence that this happened right after what was now called the "white dawn" (very original, I know). So people assumed that the explosion had something to do with it. Most people got very fitting classes. My dad got a King class but so did the previous King so that was awkward. My siblings all got classes related to royalty, like princes and princesses. The benefit of all these royal classes was an enhanced charisma and keenness in leadership as well as the ability to specialize in whatever weapon or profession they wanted. My dad chose to specialize in magical accounting. This sounded incredibly boring except now he was way smarter and could keep track of various mines in his kingdom without having to go there himself. Each of his three wives became wizards at his behest. Lenara became a water mage, Sylvia became a fire mage, and Romuna became a garden mage. Dad asked Romuna to be an earth mage but my mom didn't really care to fight so she specialized in something that wasn't directly violent.
I have like 10 siblings so I'm not going to go through them all now. You'll meet them later. But it is important to know that each one of them had a dream , and each one of them chose a powerful class. I didn't however. In fact , I didn't have any dreams at all for the next 3 years.
A little after I turned 27 and got dumped for the 4th time, (my fault, I should really stop getting caught cheating,) I had a dream where I was sitting in a really familiar fancy bed. Next to me were all of my exes, asleep and naked, a simultaneously pleasing and dreaded sight.
A voice boomed, "Elmer, for your willingness for going into depths uncharted and exploring all the holes you see, you have been selected to be the Chosen One."
Was that... a joke?