Twelfth Age: 1 October, Year 2012

Evil threatens the Elder Gods' perfect world. I hear the anima crying in pain at the actions of the Magikoopa Assembly and the Lux Aeterna. This evil, which the world never experienced since the events of the Seventh Age, seeps from its eternal abyss, once again threatening peace and prosperity.

I feel the evil. I feel it rob the universe's lifeforce. I feel the misuers gaining substantial powers they do not deserve. These events need to end, else great and terrible events will come to pass.

The Wands were made to balance each other through the formation of the Quartet. Throw off this balance, and evil will infiltrate the Wands. The Quartet must be reformed before the start of the Thirteenth Age, else the world will be plunged into another tumultuous dark age. The apocalypse.

For anyone seeking refuge from the sickening forces of evil: establishing a healthy Quartet should be your top priority. You are the last hope for this great planet. You are the last hope even for the universe. Your will and power are vital to mending this despicable abuse.

Please seek refuge at our refugee camps. Do not participate in any infighting until your area has a functioning plan. The developing war between the Wand of Light and the Lux Aeterna will only lead to mutually assured destruction.

With hope and respect,

Rosalina, Oracle of the Cosmos

Desert Land's harsh autumn winds blew throughout the Koopahari Desert, and the sandy air offered a painful relief to the Sun's piercing rays. The visibility outside decreased from the distant mountains of the horizon to barely outlining an object within an arm's length.

Amid the sandy plains' deteriorated conditions, an underground bunker thrived. Electricity lit the subterrestrial hallways while elevators carried their passengers and cargo between the multiple dungeon floors. Air filters throughout the bunker cleared the hideout's gunky air, replacing it with a cool breeze from the ceiling.

The Ourania emergency shelter—the most lusted shelter among the Landlords—constituted the stunning bunker network. Although owned by Bowser, the League leadership made visits to the apparatus more than the Koopa King himself. Half the League leaders even debated whether Bowser knew of its existence. He never mentioned the place outside of Council meetings, nor did he show any sentiment toward the location.

Toadette's no exception to that belief. She layed on her private quarters' bed—a tad TOO soft for her liking, but nothing to lose literal sleep over. She focused her thoughts from the down-feather bed to the occurrences around her. Although the shelter didn't require her leadership until next week, she's uncomfortable with Council's figurative atmosphere—it's more nauseating than anything taking place outside. She figured they all had good intent, but she couldn't brush off how sinister their plans became, especially crashing the economy.

She wanted to stick to Altruistic's original purpose: helping people in dire situations. Not be involved in a power-grab. For that reason, she decided to run Altruistic operations from the bunker.

Toadette grabbed her MIDST and attempted to activate it, but the system failed to respond. She sulked; either the storm's too bad, something must be wrong with the system, or something's up with the Complex.

A soft knock on the door snapped the troubled mushroomer from her thoughts. She summoned the visitor in. A small, rainbow-haired koopa stepped in, his MIDST in one hand and a platter of frosted homemade desserts in the other.

"Hi there, Lemmy!" she smiled at the koopaling.

"Good morning, Toadette! Here's some cinnamon rolls Tayce T made!" He placed the desserts on the nightstand by Toadette's bed.

"Tayce T, hmm?" Toadette stated, "Then they must be good. I can even smell the cinnamon and the cream! Thanks, Lemmy! How's the farming going?"

"Right now, we have the bottom ten floors reserved for growing food. The temperatures are cooler down there, just enough to cool down the sunlamps and conserve the plants' water contents," Lemmy replied, "Currently we have a surplus in wheat, so the kitchen menu items are wheat-based. Cinnamon rolls, bagels, pancakes, vegan pizzas..."

"Vegan pizzas?" Toadette gagged.

"We can't have any animals; they'd take up too much room and resources, and they're tougher to control compared to plants."

"We should at least have a refuge area that produces powdered milk. People won't get their full nutrition from plants alone," Toadette said.

"We're trying to grow plants that do, like olives for the fat and super mushrooms for their milk. The mushrooms should be harvested in four weeks."

"The olives are only three years old; they'll take another year to fruit. We need something until then for fat."

"We can't rely on animals being a constant source," Lemmy shrugged, "We can see if Wario will do dairy? His area's based on an old farming community, so he should have the resources. Have you tried calling him?"

"Unfortunately, I haven't, and I can't," Toadette sighed, "Lemmy, MIDST is down."

"Down?" Lemmy pulls out his MIDST, "Huh. It is."

"I was hoping it was my reception again, but the system itself isn't working, not just the network."

"Do you think anything happened back at the HQ? Anything bad?"

Toadette shrugged, "I hope not, but Council's been giving me a bad feeling recently. I don't like King Boo's leadership, to be honest. I always gave myself the excuse to go down here just to stay away. I try to be nice as part of my Altruistic calling, but there's a breaking point, you know?"

"Any reason why you don't like King Boo?"

"He's too secretive, and he feeds info to certain Council members while leaving the rest of us in the dark," Toadette bowed her head, "I've had informal talks about this with half of the Council members. Mario, Peach, Daisy, Yoshi, DK. None of them had info laid out to them like Bandy Andy, Bowser and the Magikoopas did."

"So, Council claims to be a unified body, yet old divisions remain?"

"You can say that," Toadette replied, "But I think it goes deeper. Bowser and Wario get grouchy every time someone new gets added to their towers, and I don't get why."

"Dad's always been like that. You saw how he was when I got accepted into HQ. Those actions make up half my life."

"He still gives me a strange feeling, but it could be because I never bonded with him."

Lemmy nodded before he took a cinnamon roll and bit into it. Toadette grabbed her own roll and repeated the action. Even with the little variety the shelter had, the rolls were spectacular and fresh.

"Damn, I love Tayce's cooking," Lemmy marveled, "With this food, I'm not going back to Ice Land for sure!"

"Right? They're amazing," Toadette added, "So, you decided on staying here?"

"Yeah. I'm not exactly loved in Ice Land right now," Lemmy shook his head, "They blame me for crashing the economy. So does much of the Mushroom Kingdom, even though I lost my billionaire status because of the HQ. Ironically, they also think I crashed everything. It's a rich man's game, I guess."

"What's going on with Ice Land?" Toadette questioned. She must be further behind in world events than she thought ever since her residency here, thanks in part to her malfunctioned MIDST.

"Ice Land is having major protests right now. It's pretty much a revolution, and it's apparently inspired by Junior," Lemmy sighed, "Rioters ransacked the UpNorth headquarters and factories, and I fear for my employees. They blame me and UpNorth for the energy crisis that caused the depression, as well as everything tied to both the Icelandian government and Peach.."

"What?" Toadette squeaked.

Lemmy shrugged, "That's what the news says."

"Lemmy…" Toadette drawled, her distress present in each syllable, "Something terrible happened with HQ. I guarantee it.".

"How?"

"Council would've quelled the protest by now. They're that authoritative. Junior's pretty much declaring war against Council if that's true, and they would never take that."

"Well... Uhh, what do we do then? Side with one of them?" Lemmy stuttered, "Junior hates our guts, while Council's plans are either misguided or straight-up evil."

"Remain neutral. Choosing between Junior and Council's like choosing to die from being burned or from frostbite."

"I choose the cold," Lemmy joked, resulting in Toadette cracking a smile, "But I get it. We should just stay here and remain neutral. The refugees are top priority."

"If what you said is true, we'll need a lot of food for the war refugees that will be headed here," Toadette said.

"I just don't wanna take sides. Junior disowned me; why should I take his side? The Sages only use me as their pawn; why help them?" Lemmy reasoned, "But they're the two most powerful forces right now."

"I mean, it's risky," Toadette sat up and leaned back on her pillow, "Lemmy, do you know what either will do if they found out we messed them up?"

Lemmy closed his eyes, "Can't be worse than what Junior did to me, or what Council will do. You know I'm not only kicked out of the Family, but Junior's threatening me with execution, right?"

"And what about the Sages?"

"Never trusted them. I don't trust people who need to crash the economy just to have their way," Lemmy shrugged, "Besides, Morton hasn't been acting like himself – like he doesn't want to do anything that he's doing. And I don't know who the other Sages are."

"I get you. Our purpose should simply be preserving the people through this apocalypse. I understand not taking either side – both sides only want power."

"Exactly."

Toadette hopped from her bed, her smile still intact, "But that story aside, we have some refugees that could be coming later this week. We need to get this place up and running officially. We both need to discuss how this leadership structure and hierarchy should work out."

Lemmy nodded, "You got it, Boss!"

"Since you're doing a fantastic job at it, I want you to keep monitoring the farms," Toadette requested, "Also, I'll take care of the Altrustic assignments and enforcement, but I need you to be in charge of settling in the refugees we receive."

"Got it," he confirmed, although scratching his chin, "Keeping track of room assignments will be a pain without our MIDSTs."

"We'll just use the notebook. We'll fill that up as the vacancies come."

"Fair enough," the rainbow-haired koopaling stepped towards the door, "I'm gonna start preparing. Thanks, Toadette!"

"No. Thank you, Lemmy," she smiled.

Other than the mad scramble toward Planet X's pipes back to Plit, the X-Naut Fortress remained undisturbed. Goombella, Kolorado, Kooper and Professor Frankly gather in the fortress's library, reading through the many books and manuscripts. A notebook rested before each Scholar member, each filled with jagged jargon summarizing their reads.

"Anything yet?" Frankly asked his former students. They each shook their heads.

"From what we know, the closest we've come to world conflict was during the Tenth Age and much of the Eleventh," Kolorado replied, "But scrolls from that period are quite hard to come by compared to the Eighth and Ninth Ages."

"Right," Frankly agreed, "One duty of the Sage of Light was to keep a full record of Plit's history, told from every side. However, no Sages survived past the Ninth Age, meaning everything after then will be told in a biased light."

"Wouldn't it be best to study the sides that we have?" Kooper questioned, "I'm sure the koopa record exists, right? What about the goombas', or the toads'?"

"Right you are, old chap! From what we know of the Corporeus Empire under Emperor Rex, it was an empire based on Light magic. Throughout the Tenth Age's early years, the preservation of history via light magic became a cultural practice—one used to rationalize the beliefs of that culture at that time," Kolorado stated.

"And with the power of Light decentralized, many biases manifested in these records," Goombella continued, "Wars started. Records were burned or desecrated, while others were shoved off as mere legends. Behaviors, entertainment and words once accepted in the Ninth Age became censored and discarded during the Tenth due to mass hysteria and the overhyped concern of 'evil'. The Tenth Age grew even messier as the Corporeus Empire suffered inner conflict, resulting in the Rexes being disposed of and banished. Eventually, Spirit magic replaced Light magic in its use and importance, effectively destroying their Light-based culture."

"And by the time the Lux Aeterna was rediscovered at the dawn of the Eleventh Age, all prior knowledge of Light magic was destroyed," Kooper concluded.

"It's always said that in order to destroy an empire, you destroy their history and their culture," Frankly added, "No mighty world power was destroyed from an invading enemy. They were destroyed from inner conflicts and skirmishes. That was their main weakness." The goomba pushed back his glasses, "And from that, the recorded history became unreliable."

"As we say in archaeology: written history is the world's largest fairy tale, primarily for that reason," Kolorado nodded, "It's easy to assume the worst out of an ancient culture if we compare our modern beliefs to theirs, but we don't learn about their culture nor how much we progressed in our beliefs if we do that. Instead, we have to build from the shoulders of giants. We find artefacts, then we try to jump into their shoes. Light magic made that easy, but we don't have that blessing for this time period."

"Right on, Prof!" Kooper exclaimed, "I'll try to find more stuff on the magikoopas during this time. I think that might play a huge role in all of this."

"I'll focus on the koopas," Kolorado replied.

"I'll do the mushroomers and the goombas," Goombella stated.

"And I'll focus on the Rexes," Frankly said, "Keep our discussion in mind as you read through their histories."

Greetings, and welcome to Book 2! Although not as focused on conspiratorial elements compared to Book 1, this story arc will have its fair share of lore and headcanon. Almost all of Book 2 will be war-related, including its lore. The events I will write have been inspired by many sources, including: the Cold War, current geopolitical conflicts throughout the world at present, the political environment in general (although a magic-based series, this does have subtle political concepts and messages) and the concept of the "Illuminati", "Lizard People" or other group said to run the world.

For those asking why I chose four sages rather than three, two, or six: From analyzing canon material, I felt the magic in the Mario World can be split into four types. My reasons will be a spoiler, so I will not post my thoughts here at the moment. Same situation for the Seven Mystics, which were only briefly mentioned in Book 1 but will play a role in Book 2.

Anyway, thank you for reading!