Part 1 - The Golden Age

It is dark in the sundered land. Even by day there is a shadow that lies over everything. The sky is never clear. Thunderous rain clouds loom constantly overhead and when they aren't spewing forth torrents of rain, they threaten. The sundered Land; a vast tract of desolate war ravaged space bounded on all sides by an impenetrable void. A land savagely torn from it's native planet and made a playpit for petty demons and gods to wage their cruel and petulant wars. A land where the inhabitants eek out a miserable and brutal existence and where death is around every corner. It wasn't always so of course. The native peoples had no name in their language for the planet they lived upon. Why should they? They had not related the land to the notion of a rock spinning through space. They lived and worked on the land and the land they called Araya. Araya – a smallish sub-continent straddling the upper and lower hemispheres: blessed with long hot summer days, plentiful rainfall and very mild winters.
 
The Arayans were a peaceful people living a predominantly agricultural life in small towns, villages and hamlets throughout the land. Yet they were not an ignorant people. They had science, cities, roads, sewage systems, books and schools. They had three key cities Dul-Ashbur, Dul-Arkos and the capital Dul-Raya. Dul-Raya was indeed a worthy capital, characterised by tall majestic stone buildings built on the backs of slaves in a less enlightened age. Slavery itself had been abolished two centuries earlier when the tyrant dynasty of the Desudians was finally overthrown in a peoples revolt that led to the creation of the semi-democratic ruling council.
 
This then was the golden age of the Arayans. A time they often looked back on and fervently wished they could return to.