Stelze

The first Crystal appeared in Enhdyl without much noise or notice. Nobody paid the fifty feet tall hunk of mud and gunk much mind, either, until the field in which it had sprouted went up in flames. Elsewhere, crops and entire villages alike were washed away in crystaline floods while blizzards drowned out the stars. Whereverso these formations occurred, the natural order seemed to get sundered like the ground which gave them birth.

A glimpse of something more. A power beyond humanity's lack thereof.

To dream of the fantastic in a wonderless world is to be derided as an eccentric. There are whispers of the occult everywhere for those with the money and time to listen, but in Enhdyl, dusty old books and shiny rocks are always, always just that. Until the Crystals. These men of means were able to set up camp around the Crystal sites without scrutiny from the local lords. And thus began the great work.

'Magic', they called it: the property of being able to alter the forces which govern the world. Of allowing one TO govern the world. Studies were conducted, samples were taken. Shards from the Crystals, even finger sized ones, bore almost just as much magic as the full sized thing. The question then became how to channel the power. Sticking them to the tips of sticks that would then be waved around, weaving them in clothing or other objects, all of it fruitless. The Crystals themselves ran deep, deep underground, and so it was theorized that embedding them into something with lifeforce might be the key to powering them. Something like a human.

From that grotesque proposition the first Shardlord was born. The first human that could sweep away trees with but a wave of his hand. That could melt iron as easily as wax. Crude, bloody though the method might've been, it was the only way to manipulate 'magic', and with their newfound power the Shardlords set their sights on the world, and the Crystals on it.

Enhdyl, the birthplace of magic, became the seat of its power. Regional lords with their droves of levied peasants or even the crown's armies of armored knights melted and exploded alike. The scale of destruction was unimaginable, as the Shardlords used their magic indiscriminately. If the local populace survived the devastation, they were enslaved and set to work mining Crystals in hazardous and often deadly conditions, so that the Shardlords could further turn their flesh to power. The process was never perfected, with many of them dying from mutilating their bodies beyond recovery. Magic could do much, but not mend the human body in any capacity. To further research their power, and sometimes even bolster their ranks, they would take children from conquered regions, then test them for high tolerance to shard implantation. Some would be kept around as living experiments while the rest were discarded. In time, some of those children became Shardlords themselves.

For five centuries did the Shardlords reshap the world into a reflection of the Crystals. Spires from which to govern, suspended bridges from one former country to the other, and vast mining operations which dotted the landscapes everywhere. Complete control over the Crystals meant complete control over magic and who got to practice it, which is exactly how the downfall of the Shardlords came about.

As time went on the scale of magical advancements grew exponentially. Right alongside the inhumanity of the experiments. Every generation of Shardlords was stronger than the last, understood more about magic and the Crystals, but all from knowledge built on the backs of their test subjects. And fronts, and insides, and every other place where you could stick a piece of glass. Survivors, willing or otherwise, would often be made to field test new types of magic themselves. Some Shardlords even began calling their lab rats 'apprentices'. It was not unheard of for a young man or woman with incredible magic potential to kill their own master and take over their title, or for apprentices to betray or outright kill their peers as a display of prowess. Proximity allowed them access to the mining communities which worked day and night for their masters whenever extra power was needed, and sabotage was often employed to cut off potential rivals from their own supplies.

Perhaps that was the greatest mistake the last of the Shardlords made: dwelling in towers that reached so above mortal concerns that they could no longer see them.

Foul play created a demand for security, from which militias emerged. At first, only armed with weapons of steel, then, of the mind, as they demanded be taught the secrets of magic for their continued collaboration. Myriad factions were born, some only vying for money or survival, while others dreamt bolder, of things like freedom and the end of the Shardlords themselves. Likewise, while some apprentices funded these factions out of nothing but selfish desire for power, others supported what had slowly begun to resemble a resistance movement as a means of taking revenge on the masters that had robbed them of everything.

It all culminated with the Enhdyl Ultimatum, when the largest militant groups, now acting as an united front, came up with a last resort. Do or die. Destroy the entire planet, or take the magic from the hands of the Shardlords and give it to everyone. A certain spell, worked upon the largest of the Crystals could cause a chain reaction all the way down to their point of origin and then back up through all the veins. For the first time in five hundred years, the world found itself at war as thousands upon thousands died protecting magic users that had switched sides, or blindly defending their masters.

The end of the Shardlords came with a bang. As the Crystals vaporized, so did everything built out of them. Those that were more glass than man turned to dust as well and the rest apprehended and executed. As for the ritual's participants, no countermeasure could've prevented the blowback entirely. Their implanted shards grew like tumors, crystalizing portions of their bodies, or organs or entire limbs.

All while everywhere in the world it rained stars.

Glassfall, they called it; an entire planet's worth of Crystal dust, blanketing the atmosphere in magic, allowing every human future or present to at the very least harbor the potential for magic... to varying degrees.

Ten years have passed since, during which the world has reverted to blissful feudalism.

Stelze was only sixteen at the time of the Proclamation. A tall, scrawny redhead with dark dead eyes. One of the tribute children unlucky enough to be born with an unusually high Crystal tolerance. Up until that point, her entire life had consisted of being cut up, stuffed full of shards, then stitched together and sicced on other experiments or even innocents. When the fighting began in earnest, she killed her master and joined the Ultimatum. When taking a break from the ritual, Stelze would be tasked with helping the magicless civilians caught in the middle as much as possible, and in doing something good for the first time in her life, discovered something she'd never known: hope. However, Stelze had a very strong affinity for fire magic, which often would see her sent straight where the fighting was thickest.

When it was all said and done, and the war was over, Stelze suffered from the same effects as everyone else. The shards in her body reacted violently, causing her feet to completely turn to crystal and thus rendering her unable to walk. And worse still, the growths began to slowly creep up her legs, turning more of her body solid, a symptom which the other afflicted had noticed in themselves as well. The ones that could still function congregated into the Refraction Society, a group entirely dedicated to finding a solution for what they had named Crystalization before it killed them. Stelze, however, saw how self-absorbed and utterly uninterested with the world they had just saved its members were, and turned down their invitation to search for a cure in her own way. Not that it would stop the Society from constantly trying to recruit her anyway.

Since then, Stelze, twenty-six now, has been living by herself in a modest house in Enhdyl's capital. There was much to build and rebuild, and more importantly, much to teach. The Glassfall had granted everyone the potential to cast magic, but not the knowledge. During the war, Stelze had seen people cast types of magic unheard of before, so her hope is that she'll eventually discover someone with the potential to cast healing magic. By her estimation, she's got about ten, fifteen years before the Crystalization, which has by now reached her knees, kills her.

Life with such a condition isn't easy. The war had left many people crippled, and so advancements in medicine were quickly made. Including wheelchairs. Made out entirely of wood, rather uncomfortable to sit in and precariously balanced, but it's the only way for someone like Stelze to get around. Her legs aren't even "legs" anymore, just light-red crystal she has chiseled in the shape of legs, as they continue to grow even when cut away entirely. As the crystals are rather jagged, this makes wearing pants or shoes impossible, so Stelze just cuts linen pants into what she calls "shorts". They go fine with the long sleeved buttoned tunics she wears over her flat chest.

Stelze is a figure known in the community for her infectious optimism. The sort of person to live by "tomorrow's world cannot be allowed to be worse than yesterday's". The money she charges for teaching magic goes back into the reconstruction effort, or helping the needy. Ponytail held high, she's always on the lookout for individuals displaying peculiar types of magic potential. Deep down, she feels disgusted for being a product of the system responsible for ruining the lives of so many people. Can't go a night without having horrible nightmares about the war, or the atrocities she'd been made to commit under the Shardlords. Stelze's master used to keep around a lot of girls and was particularly cruel to them, so she only ever really feels at ease when comforted by another woman.