Imagine a world where humans, elves, dwarves, mosaws, faeries, katties, gryphons, dragons, Wolves, and other fantastic creatures all live in harmony and cooperation. Castles, great centers of learning open to any who wish to take part, dot the land. By combining their knowledge, all species are able to prosper and new advances are being made at an astonishing rate in the areas of magic and technology.

This is not the Zelon of today. Long ago, that was the way things were, but now it is only a pleasant memory. Today, the species are for the most part isolated, and there is often an atmosphere of distrust when two species do meet. The castles, while not entirely abandoned, are only a shadow of what they once were.

What happened to cause these changes? This is a very complicated subject, made more difficult because each group remembers what happened differently, and places the blame elsewhere. However, based on a combination of records written at the time, and a study of many versions of what happened, there are some things that we do know.

One of the first things to happen, sometimes considered to be what set everything in motion, was an explosion that killed many and decimated an entire region. Little is known for sure—we no longer know who it was who built the disasterous device, or why, or even if it had a magical or technological base, but it sowed a seed of suspicion and distrust. Even if the explosion was accidental, which it is believed to have been, the idea that it could be used as a weapon caused widespread panic, and started the seperation that we see today. This was about a thousand years ago.

Since then, things have slowly but surely been getting worse. For example, the castles remained largely unaffected by the friction between species that the rest of the world felt. As recently as 500 years ago, the castles still welcomed everyone, no matter their species. However, since then, they have become more and more centered around humans. Less than a hundred years ago, the occasional elf was still admitted. Now, no non-human has been (knowingly) admitted to a castle in perhaps fifty years.

These days, most species either want nothing to do with humans, or actively resist everything they do. Humans tend to act without considering what their actions will do to everyone else, perhaps because they now have so little contact with non-humans. The territory that is run by humans has drastically increased, and the language now most widely spoken, Common, is a version of one of the human languages. Beyond the resentment of everything human, the other species for the most part have very little contact with one another, leading to more misunderstandings. It has gotten to the point where a group consisting of a mosaw, two elves, and a kattie would be looked upon very suspiciously.