3rd Age
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The Vanishing
By the end of the 2nd Age, the First Kingdom had become almost unrecognizable. The Wardens had distorted its people into races, its provinces into competing realms, and its shared inheritance into rival ideals. The empire still stood, but its unity had long since died.
At the height of Warden civilization, the impossible became commonplace.
Warden magic folded spacetime itself as vast distances were crossed in an instant.
Airtight fortresses crossed the stars full of colonists
Worlds were terraformed.
Civilization spread relentlessly through the cosmos, as did her wars.
In that time there appeared an Heir on Riftmoor unlike any other. Out of the Keepers he emerged. He claimed no throne and gathered no army, yet he gained fame and a following for his teachings and cures.
Few saw Him for what He was, and even the Keepers—who had waited since the First Kingdom for the King's return—failed to recognize Him.
The Wardens, grew uneasy. They found themselves unable to bend His will. Where every other heir had, in some measure, yielded to them, this one never did—not in deed, word, or even thought.
Unable to master Him themselves, they did what they had done during the First Rebellion.
They turned the heirs against one of their own.
Accused, abandoned, and condemned by his own, the Heir was put to death by mortal hands. The Wardens believed another troublesome heir had been removed, never realizing that, for the first time since the First Kingdom, an heir had died without ever surrendering the dominion that rightly belonged to the heirs.
In that moment, the Wardens' stolen claim upon the world was broken.
They vanished.
For the second time in history, the world was left without its rulers.
Their disappearance shattered the old order. Interstellar travel ceased, ancient works of magic fell silent, and worlds once united were cast into isolation. Everything that had depended on Warden presence grinded to a halt.
Across the galaxy, governments built upon the rule of immortal Wardens collapsed almost overnight. None had prepared for succession, for none had ever imagined their rulers would all vanish at once. Mortal officials struggled to preserve order, while ancient rivalries, long restrained or directed by Warden authority, erupted into new wars and rebellions.
The collapse reached far beyond politics. Interplanetary commerce had depended upon Wardens to launch and recover countless cargo barges traveling on carefully calculated ballistic trajectories. Thousands already in flight found no one waiting to receive them. Supply shipments became impacts, scattering precious cargo across worlds and reducing many busy spaceports to fields of wreckage.
The frontier suffered most of all. Throughout the galaxy, colonies still dependent upon active terraforming suddenly found themselves abandoned. Some worlds had only recently received breathable atmospheres. Others relied upon ongoing ecological work before they could sustain themselves. When the stars were finally reunited a millennium later, explorers following forgotten star charts occasionally rediscovered silent colonies exactly where the old records had promised—cities left unfinished, their builders had long perished.
