Setting Sample Part 3

Magic is real.

It’s no great secret, really. Everyone knows it. It’s only the crazy who would think to deny it. Magic has always been real, from the earliest recorded history up to modern day. Magic has existed, and so have those who wield it.

Called a dozen things by a dozen cultures: witches, warlocks, shamans, those with the talent for magic have always stood out from those around them. Modern day sees them called magicians, but it’s really just another term for the same thing.

Why am I telling you all this? Because you are one of them, and I suspect you’ve always known it. You’ve always been able to do things that other people can’t. Little things, but impossible ones all the same. You’ve made things float or a bad meal taste like candy. You probably didn’t know it at the time, but what you were doing was magic.

I’m here to offer you an invitation. No, more a golden opportunity. Come back with me, leave this place behind and embrace your true destiny. Come study magic. Become one of the great magicians of this age, and make the world shake with your footsteps. Okay, so maybe that’s thinking a bit too big. But even so, there’s so much potential within you, and you’ll be wasting it if you stay in this backward town. Come with me to greatest school in the world. Come with me to Glimmer.

Why am I making you this deal? Simple. When I was your age, and in about the same situation as you, someone came and made it to me. And it changed my life. So now, I’m asking you the same question they asked me. Do you want to stay here and pretend for the rest of your life that you’re normal, or do you want to come with me and embrace your magic.

You’ll come? Good. In that case, we’ve got to hurry. We have a train to catch.

A Little History

Comfortable? Good. The trains heading to the capital are really quite nice. Ever been there before? No? Well, you’re in for a treat. The city has everything. Stores, exotic restaurants, bars. There’s this great place down on McLough street that I …

Well, that’s not important right now. I see that look in your eye. You want to hear about where we’re going. About Glimmer. It’s a fantastic place, really. But before I can tell you about it, I think a little bit of a history lesson is in order. I know, history is boring. I’ll try to make it brief, I promise.

As you probably know, the world is composed of one vast landmass, called Mundus. Around it are a few islands, and beyond them an endless ocean. Well, we call it endless. The truth is no one has ever found the end, and so we just assume that it doesn’t have one.

Anyway, Mundus is home to every landscape and climate imaginable. It’s a vast place, and the people who live on it are varied to an extreme. There are the wolves of the Junhar forests. The great horse cities of the Seven Plains. The coral palaces of the shark along the southern coasts. If you can imagine it, it probably exists out there somewhere. Maybe, if you play your cards right, you’ll get to visit some of these places one day. What does this have to do with Glimmer?  Be patient, I’ll get to that.

Anyway, these different people have always gone about their own business. They traded and occasionally made war, but for the most part each region had its native rulers, and people accepted that. Until the Empire came along.

Around fifty years ago, a group of races along the western coast banded together and formed a single nation. They called themselves the Empire, and declared that they were the rightful rulers of the whole world. Then they launched a series of coordinated attacks against their neighbours. They quickly conquered them, and turned their attention toward the rest of the world.

Within a year, the world was plunged into the most brutal war ever fought. No one had ever imagined fighting on this scale before. Pretty soon, whole nations were covered in trenches and their landscape was torn apart by artillery. What’s worse, the Empire used magic to fight their war, charging their bombs and artillery with arcane properties and decimating everything that stood in their way.

One by one, the nations who fought against the Empire fell. Alone, they simple didn’t stand a chance against its military might. Within five years, the Empire controlled a quarter of the continent, and it looked like it would quickly conquer the rest. That was when the remaining free nations got the idea to band together. Alone, they would fall like all the others had, but together they might have a shot at victory.

Most of the world’s remaining nations came together and formed the United Federation, and with their combined strength, they finally had a fighting chance against the Empire. The battles that ensued were the worse the world has ever seen. Millions died. Whole nations were wiped out. But the Federation held its own, and eventually beat the Empire into a stalemate. That stalemate has continued to this day. Mundus is divided down the middle by a line of military fortifications and barricades, separating the Empire from the Federation.

You’ve heard most of this before, I hope. Good. Your home town isn’t quite as backwards as some. But what you probably haven’t heard is this. In the aftermath of the stalemate, the government of the Federation launched a plan to gather and educate as many magic users as it could. It reasoned that, if the stalemate ends and the war resumes in full, it will need as many magicians as it can get in order to stand a change against the Empire.

See, as the Empire grew, it poured vast amounts of resources into collecting and training magicians. It’s still doing so to this day. It hopes that magic will prove to be the decisive element that wins the war for it. The only way to counter this is for the Federation to have its own army full of magic users, and so it created Glimmer.

I know what you’re about to ask, and the answer is no. I haven’t recruited you to join a military academy. We don’t live in the Empire, and you’re not going to be pressed into military service. The Federation leaves Glimmer to run itself, but don’t be surprised to see army recruiters coming to talk to your upper year classes. The real reason that Glimmer exists is so that, if the war ever starts again, the Federation will have a large pool of magicians to recruit from.

Here’s our stop. Get your things, we’ll be disembarking soon. Are you hungry? Good. I know this great sandwich shop down the street from the train station. If we hurry, we can get there before the lunch rush starts.