There were, perhaps, many ways to have stopped what happened in the centuries after the fall of Galifar. Perhaps with more direct aid, the Kalashtar of Adar could have prevented the Quori from building the devices across all of Riedra which allowed them to manifest themselves in Eberron. Perhaps if the Druids of the Reaches had maintained faith with the Gatekeepers instead of turning to other traditions, they would have had the strength to close the doorways that the Inspired had opened. Perhaps if the wizards of Arcanix had been more convinced of their own power, and less desperate, they would not have attempted to free what was bound in Khyber in hopes that two great evils would destroy each other. Perhaps if the peoples of the Five Nations had been more vigilant, the cults of the Dragon Below would have been destroyed, and there would have been nothing for them to find and use to succeed to some degree. Perhaps if the wounds between Aundair and Thrane had ever been fully healed, Aundair would have heeded the warnings the oracles of Church of the Silver Flame had sent.
But it had happened, and as great evils fought each other and the great heroes that tried to stop them -- the Kalashtar died to the last, as did the last of the Gatekeepers. The armies of the Five Nations. By the time the Keeper of the Flame sacrificed himself to bind the last, all of the old peoples save for humankind were reduced to tiny, isolated communities or destroyed entirely.
And though that was well over a thousand years ago as of this writing, only humanity has truly risen from the ashes. But the great magics that were unleashed in that desperate struggle are almost entirely lost. Bards songs no longer command power, the spellbooks of the wizards of the Arcane Congress are lost, and there has not been one born with powers of sorcery or any true or aberrant Dragonmark in over a millenia. Some who channel primal forces of good and evil still command as much power as they did in days long past, and the archivists claim with the proper focus any magic is still possible. But the days of magewrights by the scores working in the great cities is long past.
Fortunately, the minds that once would have turned their thoughts to arcane power have persued other endeavours in our time. We have no airships or bound elementals in our time, but we do have rails of iron and steam along the routes the lightning rail once ran, and steamships are reclaiming the seas. Telegraph lines may not be as fast as speaking stones are supposed to have been, but they are no less a wonder. And while mankind's enemies need not fear fireballs, they must take our canon and and muskets into account.
One would think, in an age of such wonders, none would seek out those great evils that remained bound through the cataclysmic end of the last age. But there have always been those who seek shortcuts to power, and those who seek to cheat death. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to stop them.
