"And so it came to pass, in the 617th year of the Calendar of the Juliean Matanaxes, did the Pax Pumila end with the fall and sack of the great city of Hegemon, center of the Dwarven Empire, then under the rule of Guliean Rehanarch, the seventeenth of the Gulieans. With the end of the Pax Pumila and the Dwarven Empire, and the beheading of Rehanarch and his family by the invading orcish barbarian tribes, the golden age of peace and safety for the world of Taria slipped into the past, and the current age began." -- Gaius Livius Septimus, Historian, Witnesses to the Fall

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Five generations have passed since the fall of the Empire, and Taria has fallen to savagery and barbarianism, which are the common state of men and beasts. Of the Allied Races, the elves have sailed into the East, leaving none but a few scattered remnants of their glory, and the fallen ruins of their floating cities. The halflings have gone from their role as couriers and courtiers in the Empire back to their vagabond trading ways, and separated caravans still ply some routes between distant outposts; their numbers, never great, have dwindled further as the years pass on. The dwarves with their internicene wars have dwindled into pockets of city-states dotting the once-cultivated and protected face of the world, where now the wild lands with wild tribes of Men and Beastials rule. Some bands of Men have formed their own Protectorates, but where legions once marched, now furtive caravans dart from freehold to freehold, and travellers are passing strange.

Civis, true cities, are rare and precious, like a handful of gemstones scattered on black velvet. The glory of past days lies in ruins, choked by the wild present, with but a few reminders of days gone by: the dwarven Roads, still even, straight, and clear after five hundred years of use, seem more a maudlin reminder of past glory than the miracle they manifestly are. Settlments of all sorts exists between these rare and precious gems, some small, some large, some of Men, some of Beastials. These outposts are sometimes guarded or held by small groups of powerful individuals, while larger cities usually have guards made up of former legionaires (or, more likely, troops trained by troops trained by former legionaires).

The unfamiliar is often shunned and frequently deadly, and those who practice magic of any stripe are eyed with distrust, disfavour, and dislike. Those who wield the healing arts are sometimes grudgingly accepted, but travellers are considered ne'er-do-wells until proven otherwise, and Beastials and Men find no common ground -- rare is the individual who finds contact with either group as an outsider, and vanishingly rare is the ideal of one who can bridge the divide between Wild and Tamed.

With every passing year, the Wild and the Beastials claim more and more of the known world. Settlements and towns lose sight, then word, of one another, and the candles of former glory are snuffed out one by one. Not even civis are safe, with the far distant outposts of the Dwarven Empire slowly turning inward, fading away, and disappearing from both memory and reality. The great sages say that the best days of the world have passed, and that truly the spirit of Men and the Allied Races will soon move beyond the veil, and the Beastials will rule forever more.

The last great blazing days of the Empire have passed. Now only the fading embers of glory remain, to be scattered and forgotten.