PRELUDE

Given a long enough time, everything turns to dust and ashes. Memories fade, storytellers die, and legends go untold. Paper crumbles and circuitry rots. Given enough time, even the strongest myths can become mere ghosts in the deep places of the world.

Five-and-a-half thousand years have passed since the days when the VALAR gathered the shattered remnants of humanity and brought them to Meridian. So much has happened in that time that no one – not even the immortal watchers of the Istari – can know all of it. In these days, perched at the precipice at the end of the Third Age, much of Meridian's history has fallen into legend and rumor.

And thus, it may come as no surprise that the shadows of Meridian's past may well be its undoing. More than a thousand years ago, much of civilization cracked apart in the Days of Fire. An unspeakable evil, the synthetic being known as Brainiac, made war against the disparate peoples of the world. Cities fell, green lands burned down to deserts of black glass, and countless millions died. Whole peoples and cultures disappeared in the conflagration. Pushed to the brink of annihilation, only a lucky stroke allowed humanity to strike back and defeat Brainiac once and for all.

. . . At least, that's what the legends say. Few if any mention the ultimate weapon that Brainiac used to subdue and annihilate everything before it. Very few speak directly of the One Ring.

The final remnant of a dark technology older even than the Istari, the One Ring was both the source and agent of Brainiac's power. From its design, other rings were forged and given over to the lords of the world – three to the Prefects of the Transcendent, seven to the Taskmasters of the Delvers, and nine to the knights, kings, and barons of the Geneborn. One by one, the keepers of the rings succumbed to Brainiac's will, their flesh and souls corrupted until they were little but wraiths beneath its command.

Even fragmentary history can reveal key details. In the final battle, the forces opposing Brainiac did indeed have many moments of great luck and greater bravery. A Geneborn prince severed the One Ring from its master; in the ensuing chaos, the tide of battle turned and Brainiac's armies were destroyed.

But . . . then what? The One Ring, already a whisper in a storm of legends, vanished. No tales detail its fate. Some say that Marth, the prince who led the final charge, destroyed the foul weapon and scattered its remains from a peak high in the Mountains of Madness. Others assert that he gave it over to the technomancers of the Istari, to be locked away until the dying hours of the world. And yet others claim that Marth kept it for himself, using its power to build his noble house into a mighty empire.

No one can say for any certainty. And the truth can sometimes be much stranger than spun fictions.

Now, Meridian is a bizarre and haunted world. Thousands of years of warfare, plagues, and the rise and fall of nations have taken their toll. Between the domes of great cities, the wilderness is littered with the detritus of ages. The splintered descendants of humanity tend only to their own affairs and have little to do with one another. Most ignore the portents rising in the east, beyond the Coal Straits and the Mountains of Madness. On the charred continent of Coludor, the abandoned forges and factories of Brainiac have begun to glow anew. Mutants gather in ever-greater numbers. The winds smell of salt, iron, and fire. Wise men speak of acid rain and black snows.

Though Meridian has forgotten, and its owner has no idea of its true importance . . . the One Ring stirs.