History: The Silver Millennium
The modern mage believes the world they know is how it has always been - man advancing upon little, incremental knowledge. They believe that this, the present day, is the highest point in history for magic and technology both. To the modern mage, the Age of Magic is supposed to be allegory and fable. It was anything but.
It was an era of miracles; a shining age of magic and wonder, where all the many worlds were bound together. It was an age lit by the miraculous light of the Silver Queen, Serenity, and her court on the Moon; where the demon kings were kept in cages and trotted out for the amusement of the Silver Court, and the lords of darkness could only snivel against the infinite majesty of Serenity.
In the Silver Millenium, the world was so different from our own that recounting all the ways would be pointless, perhaps even impossible. Magic lit up every corner of the worlds, and great powers held even the many far-flung mystic realms close to the Earth, and allowed even the planets that the modern day sees as barren husks to support flourishing life. But in this era of magic, there was little to protect the world but more of the same. There was no need for Pretty Cures, for Pretear, for miraculous powers to bestow strength on the heartful.
And so, the world was ended by a darkness that magic could not tame.
It began when a HiME from Mercury wished for her new husband's favor - to ease her world's burden of solar fury just a fraction, to improve their harvests forever. That wish set in motion an inescapable tide of events. The solar demon, Metallia, escaped into the world in the single heartbeat of a window in which her bars were weakened; and she sought out a woman of the Earth, Beryl, whose jealousy toward the Silver Princess was only matched by her ambition to have the Earth Prince and his kingdom as her own.
And so Metallia and Beryl, together, dragged demons from Hell, summoned the Desert King on his planetary throne. They brought forth the denizens of a thousand corners of darkness, and together, they marched. They shattered the links that held Earth and the Magic Worlds close together. Mars was reduced to sand; Venus, choked with clouds spawned by its own defiance. Earth's armies quailed when its own generals betrayed them. In time, even the Moon fell; The Earth Prince dead, the Moon Princess refusing to face a world without her love, and the Silver Queen battered and exhausted. Serenity knew her only choice was to change everything.
With her life and work burning around her, the Queen acted. Raising the Silver Crystal high, Queen Serenity invoked its miracles and rewrote the very foundations of the world. She wished that the darkness be banished from the Earth, lost amid the chaos of thousands of worlds; knowing that although Earth had fallen to their manifold might, the many worlds should be able to withstand them scattered.
She wished that the world henceforth be freed from the terror of magic; not that that power disappear, but rather that only the strong of heart and will be privy to it. This, she did to prolong the coming peace; the new world would be lesser by far, but only those with the strength to face a world of magic would even be able to find it.
Finally, she wished that wherever Darkness appeared, there be Light to face it in kind; and by this, she gifted all the many places of power and sacred treasures, all the spirits of the worlds and the engines of Hope, to give strength to those destined or heartful enough to answer the world's cries for a champion.
With that, the Crystal was spent; it shattered, and as it enacted the Queen's final wishes, it ushered all the many fallen souls into a new age. At the last, the Queen burned her very life in the Crystal's divine engine to bring about the greatest miracle of all:
A new beginning.
For more information, please see: History: The Dark Ages, History, Magic vs. Miracles, Serenity's Miracles, Theme Primer, Theme
