The annals of Zyrelis record no peace, only an inevitable, crushing unity. Centuries ago, the planet was a fractured mosaic of warring nations until the Great Unification War burned away the old borders. Out of the ash rose the Nova Empire, forged by the steel and ambition of the victor king—now the Eternal Emperor. Under his lineage, humanity shifted from killing one another to conquering the laws of physics.
Science became the new religion. Technology evolved at a rate that outpaced morality. The Nova Empire did not just inhabit their world; they outgrew it. They mastered terraforming, turning dead moons into lush gardens, and launched a thousand colony ships into the dark sea of the cosmos. Eventually, the Empire was no longer a nation—it was an omnipresent force, its banners flying across systems, its hunger for resources insatiable.
Then, the long-range scanners found it: Valthora.
To the board of directors at the Black Star Mining Guild (BSMG), Valthora was more than a world—it was a treasure trove. Preliminary probes revealed a planet of impossible wealth: veins of ores that sat comfortably on the periodic table, and shimmering, "extra-physical" deposits that defied known chemical classification. Most importantly, Valthora was a "Goldilocks" world. It required no terraforming, allowing for immediate settlement and profit.
The BSMG moved with corporate efficiency. Decades ago, their massive, slab-sided mining vessels and sleek colony ships exited warp in Valthora's upper atmosphere. They claimed the Extreme North as their primary extraction zone—a region so brutal and frozen that orbital scans showed no signs of civilization or competing industry.
They built sprawling, high-tech refineries, modular cities, and automated excavation pits. For years, the humans from the stars lived in high-tech isolation. They fended off the local wildlife—monstrous, biological horrors that the BSMG security teams dismissed as "hostile local fauna"—and focused on the bottom line. From their heated hubs and neon-lit streets, they looked out at the frozen tundra and saw an empty, profitable wasteland.
The Nova Empire believed they were the only masters of this world. They had no idea that far to the south, beyond the mountains they had never bothered to cross, an entire world of kingdoms, magic, and ancient races was descending into a bloody chaos that would soon send thousands of desperate souls marching directly toward their doorstep.
******
The air in the south had tasted of smoke and copper for too long.
Filavandrel looked back only once. Behind the column of refugees, the horizon was stained with the orange glow of burning elven districts and dwarven warehouses. For the Aen Seidhe, the Dwarves, Gnomes, and Halflings, the choice was no longer between staying or leaving—it was between a quick death by the sword or a slow one by the elements.
"Keep the ponies moving!" called out Milo "Dusty" Thistle, a stout Halfling whose family had lost their entire farm to a human mob in the Maradal Valley. He moved among the wagons, checking the wheels and patting the shivering shoulders of the younger halflings. "If we stop, the frost will do the humans' work for them. Keep those toes moving, or you'll lose 'em!"
The exodus was a miserable sight. Hundreds of wagons, their wheels creaking under the weight of salvaged heirlooms, carved a deep scar into the virgin snow. The Halflings, usually known for their cozy holes and warm hearths, were now draped in heavy, oversized furs, their nimble fingers numb as they clutched the reins of sturdy ponies. They were moving into the Extreme North, a place the human maps simply labeled as The White Death.
"Crazy," muttered Brouver Hoog, a stout dwarf whose beard was matted with frozen sleet. "Moving to a place where the wind can strip the skin off your bones. What do you say, Thistle? Better to freeze here than hang in the town square?"
"A blizzard doesn't call you a 'freak' before it kills you, Master Hoog," Milo replied, his breath a thick plume of white. "And it doesn't set fire to your grandmother's pantry just for the sport of it. We'll take the ice."
The Elder Races had formed an uneasy alliance of necessity. The Dwarves and Gnomes provided the engineering to keep the wagons moving; the Elves provided the scouts and the remaining magic to ward off predators; and the Halflings—ever practical—managed the dwindling food stores and the morale of the camp.
They sought a valley beyond the mountains where no human king would waste his soldiers to follow. They wanted a place where their children could grow old without the shadow of a noose.
"The scouts say the mountains ahead are the highest yet," a young elven woman reported, shivering. "But they also say the air... it feels different. There's a hum in the earth. Not magic, exactly. Something sharper."
As they climbed the final, treacherous pass of the mountain range, the natural silence of the wilderness was replaced by a rhythmic, low-frequency thrum that vibrated through the soles of their boots.
"Do you hear that?" Filavandrel whispered, signaling the column to halt.
Milo Thistle climbed up onto a crate of Gnomish tools to see over the ridge. He expected to see a desolate, white valley of snow. He expected to see the lair of a Frost Giant.
Instead, as the mist cleared, they looked down into the basin below.
The snow was gone, replaced by leveled plains of gray ferro-concrete. Gigantic, metallic towers—larger than any castle in Nilfgaard—stabbed into the sky, crowned with blinking red lights. Massive, multi-legged machines, glowing with a fierce, artificial blue light, were chewing into the mountainside with a roar that drowned out the wind.
Filavandrel's heart turned to lead. Milo's jaw dropped. These weren't the humans of the South. These weren't knights in steel plate.
"Gods," a gnome whispered, peering through a brass spyglass. "Those aren't stars in the valley. Those are lamps."
They had marched into the jaws of the end of the world, only to find that the humans from the stars had already turned the "uninhabitable" North into a factory.