History of Cylinder Book 1 - Prolog
If there was a heart of magic in the endless multiverse, it would be Cylinder. Magic permeates and radiates from everything in Cylinder. The sphere of Cylinder, and particularly the 4th planet of its solar system also called Cylinder, are conduits of vast unexplained magical potential. Universes found through the phlogiston and planes of existence traveled, Cylinder still stands apart and unexplained as different in a magical sense. On the planet Cylinder, there is a continent that shares its name. This harnessable magical potential, the powers still unexplained though evident, has caused endless years of turmoil and war across all Cylinders that share the name. These times were largely ages past and the future has brought a “relative” peace to Cylinder. Now an age of storytellers write and publish works that are enjoyed world wide. This has created scholars and records, and in a speaking chamber in Deheath the Elven Republic’s largest information repository, a gnome scholar prepares for a lecture about the fall of the Giant and Dragon Empires and the unveiling of his first book. With a wave of his hand, Berlin throws open the shutters of the classroom. Books jump and flutter past the windows toward the living library, shifting wildly between birds and books struggling in the last leg of their journey. Cantrip enchantments months old written by patrons of the elvish historical library carry them through endless miles of the vast Cylindrical planet of Cylinder. The white and green structure is covered in pine trees that hold together the smooth marble blocks that have been lifted into place and held by the trees like living mortar. The elven scholarly university is not the largest on the planet, but its creation marked the start of the common calendar as this was the place where elves and gnomes really rose from their beginnings into a modern society. Or at least that’s what the gnomish scholar, Berlin Merlin McCerlin, told himself. He is standing in the halls of greatness and soon he would leave his mark on the world. The stories he tells are old stories, ones that have been discussed and retold a thousand times over the past 3000 years since the world nearly ended. Scars still remain of the world long lost and nearly forgotten except by those few archeologists that Berlin was proud to be one of. These stories that Berlin was retelling, were some of the first documents ever brought to these halls that keep a record going back to the start of modern history and Berlin meant to give them new life for the whole world to enjoy, to tell them in a way that hadn't been done before. Sure he had to inject “some” artistic license to fill out the story, but this was ok, because this story is based on true events from the planet Cylinder, from long, long ago.