The Last Hours of the Surface World

    In the year 1402 Above, on the tenth day of the Month of Trials, the people of the city of Marinna were preparing for their Wintertide festival. The streets were decorated with colored lamps, evergreen boughs and snowberry bushes assembled in festive wreaths on every door. This festival was a tiny glimmer of warmth and hope in the midst of the bleak Vallish winter, something to look forward to as the ever-present chill of Vall intensified into the biting, killing cold that took so many lives. The air was alive with anticipation...and then something fell from the sky.

    There was a flame in the sky at first, the red-orange contrasted against the perpetual grey clouds. Then, there was an earth-shaking boom as the first of the Towers crashed down onto the ice covering Mannimar Bay. When the dust and snow cleared, atop the shattered ice stood a tower stretching higher than the tallest buildings of the civilized world. It looked somewhere between architecture and organism, Gothic-esque arches and spikes made of bone-colored chitin. It was foreboding made manifest, something utterly alien attacking without provocation, in a way the people of the Vespisian Empire could not anticipate nor defend against. Out of this tower came shapes, too far away to distinguish anything but their sheer numbers, the ice covered in silver armor and black cloth, bristling with weapons.

    This was the first encounter with the Swarm. Their Towers crashed down all over Vall, pouring out insurmountable numbers of infantry. The Vespisian Naval Guard sent forth all of their Icebreaker ships, soldiers marching alongside them, ready to face the unknown enemy. An opening volley of mortar fire was turned away in midair, exploding harmlessly on the ice before it could reach the approaching alien army. The Swarm's return salvo was anything but harmless. Bolts of sizzling green light streaked across the battlefield, and each one that found its target burned and melted the flesh of Vespisian soldiers. They collapsed, their black blood seeming all the darker against the blue-white ice. The Icebreakers were able to survive the assault, barely, six-inch-deep holes melted in their thick bow plating. The Icebreakers were unable to survive what came next. 

    From the advancing Swarm army came larger creatures than the mere infantry. These War Gods were covered in black-and-white banners bearing the insignia of their empire, clad in silver armor and wielding massive cleaving blades. They charged, tearing up the ice as mortar fire exploded against them and bullets ricocheted. The first of the blades fell, cutting straight down the middle of the first Icebreaker in formation. The ship came apart from the sheer force of the blow, cut cleanly in half.

    Thousands of soldiers died that day, the ice stained crimson with their blood. It became apparent when the battle started that this was not a fight the Vespisian Guard could win. Instead, they fought tooth and nail, sword and rifle, mortar and artillery, each one laying down their lives to buy time for the people of Marinna to evacuate. One man, Iohan Mitchell, found a path below the surface, the path that would one day be known as the Long Walk. The citizens and Lord Mayor, as well as the reserves of the Vespisian Guard, traveled below to escape the Swarm. 

    In modern Descent (Year 283 Below), the surface world is all but forgotten, historical records like these are actively censored by the Church and Lord Mayor, and the Swarm exist only as an all-pervading anxiety. Any day now, they could break through the cavern ceiling, and slaughter all that's left of humanity.