Journeys Through Magnamund

The Time of Blessings is a time that those who lived through it will speak of with tears in their eyes and smiles on their faces. I look around the room and see some of you were most certainly born in that fabled summer that never ended. I can see the sunlight in your eyes. But did you know that the Blessing was nearly our greatest Curse? Today we tell that story, of the odyssey which saved us all.

Good morrow, students! The history we shall cover today belongs to you. It is the story of how the Kai were restored and a bulwark against the future was secured. The New Order was forged in the fires of the Darklands War, doused in the blood of the First Order, and tested against foes greater than even the Darklords.

(Additional reading: a detailed exploration of the gamebook crash)

Seven Stones... their names are mostly hidden from you, yet plague the edges of your consciousness like a foul odor that flees your attempts to catch it. Though the day is warm, you shiver as echoes of screams long ago unleashed whisper through your mind. The Darklords do not keep stories, they only keep their confidence. Their atrocities are lost to all but them, who keep them the way we might keep favorite books, opening them from time to time to savor memories of blood.

Seven Stones... their names are known to you. Now you find their stories, buried among ancient texts thought lost when the monastery was destroyed. Reading the words set down by hands long turned to dust, you are taken back to days of darkness and uncertainty, where the Kai Lords did not yet exist, and the spies of the Darklords were everywhere. Here, a man dared to chase destiny and in so doing, set the world on a path towards hope.

Closing your eyes, you cast your mind into the infinite possibility of what ifs. A swirl of faces swims in your mind, some famliar, some new. Making sense of it all proves difficult, showing that retelling the story already told is no easy feat. One thing remains certain: in all versions there was but a small beacon of hope and the threat of eternal darkness if that light went out. For the dark door had opened and would never fully close again.