The Starlit Abyss¶
Our understanding of the cosmos is that it is darkness punctuated by intermittent glimmers of starlight. For every knowable or predictable thing — whether it is the matter that composes stars or the movement of planets — there remains more that defies understanding, such as what is between these bodies or how far apart can they go.
We do not even know what language we can use to talk of this without our understanding being lost in metaphors: whether that space is a fabric that weaves the planets together or a sea in which we are all adrift. Whatever the nature of the cosmos, there is one truth of which we are perilously aware: the facts that comprise it are made more unknowable by the scars left by the Great War Amongst the Gods.
The Shattered Cosmos¶
The Great War has left behind a universe that is broken. The origin and cause of this conflict are inscrutable, as is the scale of its devastation incomprehensible. If it is a fabric, then this is a sundering so great that it unravels all the cloth until becomes impossible to see the weave from the tear. If this is a sea, then what rocks us violently is only the ripple on the surface, and not the real turbulence that surges beneath.
Our Earth is a world trapped in the instability and tumult of this shattered cosmos. The calamitous aftermath of the Great War can still be felt as as our world is caught within the many fissures. And yet the damage extends beyond the body and the spirit of our world, to something greater still. The breaking of the universe led to a fragmentation of all that was known about it.
This is the Era of Legend.
The Whispers¶
Echoing across these fragments of many worlds are the Whispers: truth and wisdom about the cosmos, the Great War, and the many worlds that survived in its wake. It is only through knowledge and empathy that we can piece together all of this that has been broken. These Whispers are a manifestation of the universe’s will towards being whole.
The Whispers appear in many forms: accounts by those who lived through history, speculations into natural philosophy, rhetoric that seeks to elucidate the unknowable, or art that gives shape to what the intellect cannot yet see.
The Listeners are acolytes who have dedicated themselves to chronicling these Whispers.