Six Months Later

Mark jumped to the top of a watch tower and looked to the north. The bulwark they had established to deal with the periodic zombie incursions was holding fine and he jotted down his findings on a note that he handed to a nearby owl.

“I still can’t believe they actually set up an owl post. Crazy Potter nerds.” Mark mumbled to himself as the bird took off with it’s precious cargo. Mark took a moment to enjoy the view. Winter was pretty much here, at least for the Forest. All the various biomes had been named, and while nothing was particularly cool about being the ‘Forest’ it at least made it easier to talk about what was going on. Mark sighed. He really thought the ‘Great Ice Wolf Beast Woods’ was a much cooler name, but everyone else had been such a killjoy.

Still, they had come a long way. Houses had been reclaimed, and fences built. Looking at the perimeter of Camp Randall he marveled at the changes. The school and church, plus all the houses inbetween, had been assimilated into a giant walled community. Mark remembered hearing that their population just crested eight thousand last meetup. Between Mountain Lake Point, and Southwatch, that brought their numbers up to around sixteen thousand for the area.

Mark looked to the north again to confirm things were quite and then glaced over to the mighty Rocky Mountains to the west. They hadn’t been able to push into the mountains at all, nor get past undead horde dealt with, or even make it into the city yet. Who knew what was going on beyond their little microcosm. Well, Jocelyn probably knew, but she apparently had to take some oath of silence about some stuff in order to get more access to the system. It was worth it though. With the better control, higher levels of Technomancy, and actually being able to get regular messages from the admins, it had been a world of change. They were working on getting another major update out, and once that hit, they would totally be able to spend their advancement points. Mark could hardly wait. Those zombie parasite things were going to be toast when he powered up.

Mark thought back to Update Day. It seemed strange to him that people had declared a holiday around something he did, but it was kinda cool too. The crew that dove into Pirate Pete’s lair had gained more than a little infamy, but after a few days of celebrity, things had more or less went back to normal. Normal, except now people had hope. Mark pulled up the note that had started it all off and took a deep breath as he re-read the message.

[To the people of Earth. We are so very sorry. We tried our best to prepare, but the best laid plans are nothing in the face of the cosmic level changes that swept over us. We are the Admins, and we tried to prepare the world to navigate this disaster. Many of you know that magic and monsters are now part of our world, but few of you know that it was this way in aeons past. We, through happy accident, learned of the history of the world. We discovered that there was a cycle. Every thirty thousand years we enter the influence of Mana, only to be cut off thirty thousand years later. We do not know the source of this energy, but we do know that as we move in our spaceship, Earth, we regularly and predictably come into contact with it. Magical civilizations rise and technological ones fall as we shift paradigms and the laws we thought we understood shift underneath us. We learned the end of the era of technology was coming, we thought we could somehow bridge it. The System, this thing you are reading, is the culmination of decades of efforts. It allows our technology that we've developed to function in a world that emotions and feelings govern. Without the stability of physics, there can be no advancement of technology. We hoped that our digital computational abilities, something we believe had never been developed by human civilizations prior, would allow us to bridge this gap. We didn't make it in time though, and we failed to anticipate how quickly the Mana Wave would come. Thanks to the heroic effort of many, we have stabilized the system, and will continue to work towards the betterment of mankind. We can now communicate more freely with everyone, but there is a limit to what information we can push out. Our focus will be on helping humans adapt to mana, and providing avenues for you to utilize mana efficiently. Over time, we hope to provide access to more scientific based technology. So far, we have configured Ability sets that optimize human access to mana, and we will continue to expand their scope and capability. We hope that our efforts will help keep humanity thriving these next thirty millennia. We will post monthly updates on our progress and soon our Help system will be online. We are crushed by the loss of so much life, but are hopeful that those who remain will persevere. Good luck.]

Yup. Still tons of work to do, but Mark knew they were up for it.