Awakening

The world is awakening. Divine Magic is returning to the land after a long slumber. Portals and wells to other worlds and planes of existence are opening all around the planet. After tens of thousands of years, in which they receded into legend and myth, dragons are returning. And, in many cities where power has bent toward corruption and evil, evil is rising to embrace those powers. Built on a crystalline plateau under the scintillating kaleidoscope facets of the Glamour Mountains, the city of Niook rises with spiraled buildings, lightning rods, and towering, needle-like cloud harvesters. The lightning storms that peal over and across the city in summer are harvested by these artificed creations, which bank electricity in humongous quartz crystals that are foundational to the city. This has been the way of the city for over a thousand years.
North of Niook, monstrous threats sow discord and scheme in the dank twilight of Thistlewolf Marsh. Farther to the north, the hostile Red Desert waits, stretching out under ceaseless sun for hundreds of miles in every direction. And that’s a good thing, because on the other side of the Red Desert, the once-wondrous city of Kaja has become ripe with dark corruption. Tales of an otherworldly taint that threatens all that is joyful and good wash up now onto the borders of Niook, riding on the backs of a first wave of haggard refugees who are visibly haunted with shock and terror.