Welcome to the After.

It’s been many years since the apocalypse rocked the Old World, and destroyed almost every living thing on the face of the Earth. The last few survivors, minds eroding from radiation, banded together in small groups and living out their unusually long lives trying to breed a sort of humanity back on to the face of the planet. Many of the resulting offspring turned out mutated, and thus was born the many races of men. They spread over the landscape, reforming small parts of civilization.

Around them, the earth crusted over and rose. It covered over the Old World buildings, capping its pores and settling itself on top of what was old, growth spreading on the new soil. Barely anyone remembers the old days, and those who do are so insane no one bothers talking to them. Society is mostly spread out, some in settlements, many of them nomads. The few bastions of civilization have thick stone walls to keep the mutants out at night, and to keep the power inside.

Magic flows through the veins of the lucky few, the odd changes brought about by radiation manifesting themselves through reality-altering powers. Psionics bless those who have them with incredible mental abilities offset by eventual insanity, escaped by few. Everything is touched by a kind of alteration, animals mutating and changing in strange new ways, dormant things come to life.

This is the After Era.

A young man is born to a powerful family on the verge of beginning their own safe haven, and when he is of age he receives a letter from the Capital, informing him that the great uncle he never knew he had has given him the estate he never knew existed.