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The Outgoing established a School of Mantras, which stressed long and laborious development of magic skills through the use of mantras and constant self-improvement. The Remaining ones established a School of Alchemy using which methods they could get much faster results although their magic was not as powerful and depended on the availability of alchemical substances. In time both schools started to use the methods of the opposing group to a certain degree. The carelessness with which some of these mages used their newly-acquired skills destabilized the precariously delicate magic web made by the Weaver so that the door to the External World which he all but opened was again destroyed. The Weaver refused to join any of these two warring sides and went to live in a desert like a hermit perfecting his magic skills and hoping someday to weave a pattern of mantras resistant to external disturbances and interference.
Years went by. Children were born who had never seen the External World. And with the war between the two factions always on their minds and other troubles, people started to forget their original homeland and with their memory to lose their former human appearance. What's more, those who were born in the Sphere lived only 500 years instead of normal 1000 for the original settlers while the third generation lived only 60-80 years - exactly the same as people in the External World. Thus, after a thousand years of its existence only a handful of original inhabitants remained alive in the Sphere - all of them powerful mages.
By the time of Transformation there were several cities and quite a large number of smaller settlements in the world. Each city and settlement was run by one of the two hostile groups. The Remaining ones were affected by the horrors of Transformation more than others since they intentionally tried to erase all the memory of their former habitation in the External World. Humans were turning into mythical monsters - the creatures that never really existed on Earth but whom medieval people nonetheless feared. The first lycanthropes and dragons appeared in 1005 by Sphere time (only 83 years after it was made by Earth time). People also were turning into gnomes, elves and mermaids. The people-turned-monsters left the cities for the surrounding forests. At first they did not attack humans, but as the transformation went deeper and they forgot not only Earth but also their former way of life in the Sphere, humans became their enemies and these monsters started to raid and lay waste human cities and settlements.
There came a time when virtually all the territory of the Sphere became occupied by monsters with humans confined to the very edges of the disk. Finally, both the Outgoing and the Remaining ones awoke to the danger and united in their fight against the monsters. The allied forces won back nearly half of all the territory. To nail down this success, they broke off part of Hyperion held by humans and suspended it at a height of about a kilometer above the rest of the disk. Thus, in 1015 was created the second continent - Helios. Its area was only slightly less than the area of Hyperion. The humans who remained down on Hyperion continued to suffer from the depredations of the transformers.
This war was the first successful cooperative effort of the two opposing magic schools. However, the relief it provided to humans was only temporary. Very soon transformations started even on Helios. In addition, the most powerful monsters from Hyperion, who knew the rudiments of magic, were able to climb even to Helios. A group of alchemists supported by the top nobility conspired against King Valentine who they believed was unable to rule and defend the world. They met in secret and using alchemy again split Helios in 1025. The newly formed continent was named Rodos and its new ruler King Katon proved even more faint-hearted than his predecessor. He was panic-stricken and ordered an immediate split of the new continent as soon as the first dragon appeared there in 1031. However, due to a mistake in calculations, the magic went wrong and only a little portion of the continent was broken off while the King together with a group of his mages who performed the magic were killed.
The new island was called Feb. For twenty years only anarchy reined on the four continents of the Sphere. Gradually the monsters filled all the continents. Humans were crowded into a few small cities separated by wide stretches of wild, monster-infested territory. In 1051 a little-known baron Leon managed to unite under his command the troops of several human settlements on Helios. His war campaign was very successful - in just 5 years he had all the main cities of the Sphere under his control driving the monsters out.
Then, the second (and the last) council of the Outgoing and the Remaining mages was held and Leon was unanimously elected the King of the Sphere. The council also adopted the constitution of the Sphere. According to that constitution the King was to have as his advisors the two most powerful mages from each of the two magic schools. Leon, just like his predecessors, ordered for a piece of land to be broken off from Feb. The new little island was named Leon in honor of the new King and a magnificent royal castle was built there which survived even to our days. The separation magic was again far from perfect. Together with the intended result there was another one, totally unexpected. A part of the oldest continent Hyperion separated from the main body and descended below it. Luckily, it was populated almost exclusively by monsters. The monsters multiplied on Haron (the new island) so rapidly that very soon the island became totally unfit for human habitation. Leon's successors used to expel outlaws to the island.
Little by little human population of the Sphere adapted to their circumstances and there were almost no new cases of transformation. In that way - without any new transformations but torn apart by never-ending wars and conflicts Ц humans lived for hundreds of years. The Weaver whose life was now drawing to a close even though he was an original settler and a powerful mage, spent most of his time in a kind of cold sleep or hibernation with metabolism almost at a standstill so that he did not grow any older. He remained in total seclusion and away from the main cites for hundreds of years. His magic powers were great, he was more powerful than all the rest of the mages put together. But still he could not weave a door out of this world because there was some mysterious magic in the world, which interfered with all his efforts.
However, the Weaver always remembered what the ancient Lokashastra said about the World of Sorrow:
The existence of the World of Sorrow is divided onto 3 stages:
Еits first stage of existence, continuing for 1000 years of its own time is the stage of development and revelation of all its inner properties. And indeed it was exactly after 1005 years of its existence that the Sphere was finally formed and started to transform its inhabitants.
Еthe second stage, lasting for 6000 years, is the stage of stability. True, at that time there was no development at all and even the population remained at exactly the same level.
Еthe third stage, lasting for 1000 years, is the stage of destruction. The Sphere will destroy itself and all of its inhabitants, it will first harden and then die killing everyone within and causing a wave of disasters in the External World.
So, the Weaver had prepared for the destruction stage. He had been hoping that this stage so full of dangers and disasters would provide him with yet another opportunity for opening the door back to Earth since the destruction must also affect all the mages so that their magic wouldn't interfere any more with his weaving. In 6800 he went into hibernation to wake up after 200 years of sleep just before the beginning of the Destruction phase.
Destruction of the illusory world
In the year 1934 Earth time the Sphere began to crumble. At first, the effects on the External World were almost unnoticeable but the majority of conflicts and disasters that have happened since then, including the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, were caused by the destabilizing influence of the World of Sorrow. Naturally, the Sphere itself has also been suffering from a wave of disasters and calamities. Despite all the efforts of the mages more and more humans were transformed into monsters, it became so bad that even mages themselves were not immune from such a fate. The decline went slowly but inexorably, within 800 years nearly all the cities were destroyed, the countryside was teeming with hordes of unimaginably horrible monsters, which fought each other continuously. The magic now was used only very rarely. The King kept his thousand-year-long rule over the Sphere but his power was very much weakened.
In the year 7824 Sphere time, the Weaver finally succeeded in creating a link to the External World. This link or door was very imperfect and only very sensitive electronic equipment such as computers were able to detect the extremely weak signals coming from the Sphere. To make this very unreliable link between the Earth and the Sphere more secure, the Weaver created several portals in different locations within the Sphere.
And because the space was now clear from interfering magic, the Weaver was able to make an important discovery not mentioned in Lokashastra: the woven illusory world had several Nodes. What a Node looks like the Weaver was unable to establish but he learned that control over one of the Node gives you an enormous power over a large portion of the Sphere and further, if you find and undo the Master Node you can painlessly unravel the whole fabric of the illusory world and return all of its inhabitants to their initial state, i. e. back to the year 1346. On the other hand, control over the Master Node is a great danger and temptation insomuch as it gives the person who controls it an absolute power over the Sphere. Using this power you can even extend the life of the illusory world by multiplying the wave of disasters and catastrophes on Earth. Perhaps that was why the Nodes were not mentioned in Lokashastra at all.
The Weaver has realized that he won't be able to find the Master Node alone and used his Portals to ask the residents of the External World for help. By that time only 140 years remained to the final collapse of the Sphere, which must occur in the year 2014 Earth time. What has happened to the Weaver since his appeal, we do not yet know.
Using the discovered programming code, Nikita's programmers were able to open and maintain a kind of communications portal to the world of Sphere. Although it's impossible to establish a physical presence in the Sphere, nonetheless we can see what happens there and even influence the events through the illusory objects which are automatically created by magic. The Sphere is represented on our screens very imperfectly since the capabilities of our computers are limited. One of the Weaver's requests he sent to us in his writings is to provide access to the world of Sphere to everyone who wish to help. Perhaps somebody will be able to find the Master Node. And we hope that it will be the person who will use the Node to unravel the fabric of the illusory world not to establish his dominance over the Sphere...
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