The Time of the Old Ones lies so deep in antiquity that no human record recalls it, known only through the star-carved plaques of the Lizardmen and the crumbling temple-cities of Lustria. In that primordial age the Old Ones descended from the heavens through great polar gateways, beings of such power that mortals could only name them gods, and set about reshaping the raw world to serve a design of cosmic scale.
The Old Ones ordered all things. They shifted the very orbit of the world, kindled its two moons, and seeded the continents with life sculpted to purpose. To tend their works they created the slann, mightiest of mages, and the saurus, tomb-cold warriors bred for war. Lesser servant-races followed, each fashioned to a role in the Great Plan whose ultimate aim remains sealed within the slann's dreaming minds.
Beneath their guidance the world flourished in an order it would never know again. The elder races were nurtured toward wisdom, the young races guided from afar, and the temple-cities blazed with an arcane brilliance that lit the darkness of a savage world.
But the polar gates were the linchpin of everything, channels through which the Old Ones travelled and worked their magic. When those gates failed in a catastrophe beyond mortal reckoning, the golden order collapsed, and the Great Plan was left forever unfinished — a broken blueprint the slann would spend eternity struggling to complete.