Desert of Stars

"O Shah, live forever! though such is thy might and majesty that the vault of heaven alone should be thy throne. All the world is submissive before thee, and I can bethink me but of one thing that is lacking unto thy glory."

Then Kai Kaous questioned him of this one thing, and the Deev said, "It is that thou knowest not the nature of the sun and moon, nor wherefore the planets roll, neither the secret causes that set them in motion. Thou art master of all the earth, therefore shouldst thou not make the heavens also obedient to thy will?" Ferdowsi, The Shahnameh

Almost four thousand years ago the primitive iron-age Yavanas and La Tène stumbled, by an accident of chance, on an unexpected inheritance: the Guidestones. Carved on their blue-grey surface were the breathless secrets that catapulted forward their civilizations. Above all there was an unwritten promise; those stars without number that wheeled above their heads were theirs to take.

The first brave adventurers found themselves alone in a desert of stars, a vast alien wilderness stretching to horizons beyond all imagination. It was a time where legends were written. The great sailor Dirac who unfurled her sails in an endless sea that still bears her name, charting the stellar winds. The verdant Flower Worlds of the Satavahana dynasty, with their petal plates that basked in the sun. The great Henges of the Druids, powering endless cities. The Hundred Thousand Rajas and their steel warships. A Golden Age.

In between the cracks of their Empires, other people, with other Gods were climbing the stairway to Heaven. They too had their own Guidestones. Some of these they taught. Others they conquered. But soon the empty sky was slowly filling.

The end of their Golden Age was not a tempestuous war, though cruel and terrible wars were waged between their mighty princes, nor was it some plague or ague that ate it up, though many individual kingdoms were claimed by calamity. As the Yavanas and La Tène scattered further and further apart, as if driven by the relentless gyre of the stars themselves, they simply came to forget. They forgot their suzerains. They forgot the ways they had tread. They forgot even the names of their Homeland. So many great nobles, administrations, so many high chieftains, so many proud princes and power so splendid; as if in a moment and a twinkling, a breath it all seemed a mirage. There were other tragedies, other plots, titanic struggles resounding with glory and savagery, but none remember them now.

The Yavanas and La Tène have faded, but the Desert of Stars is home to a squalling multitude of people.

It is time for a new Golden Age.

Welcome to the Desert of Stars.