Nightfall
The world of Toril was once a green-blue world.
Now, it is a radioactive ruin.
The continents are covered in wreckage, mud, and soot.
The oceans are filled with mud and debris.
Great storms of what look like electricity roar up continually from hundreds of places, where radiation is at it's fiercest.
On the continent of Kara-Tur, the last undevastated continent on the planet, there are still trees growing and animals and birds.
However, there are no people - the people of the Eternal Empire left for Chorazin long ago, giving up on their homeworld, giving up on hope.
Perhaps that is why the birds are silent, and the animals are staying in their dens.
Perhaps that is why the tree leaves are all drooping and turning grey.
Or perhaps it is the fact there is little sunlight.
One could blame it on the Mists - all of Realmspace is now shrouded in a deep gloom, with endless banks of mists rolling back and forth.
No Spelljamming or even starship travel is possible through the imprenetrable gloom.
Were anyone there to feel it, the Mists would feel cold, dreadfully cold, sucking away life and hope and light.
The atmosphere of Toril is filled with debris, also, from the nuclear barrage.
The atmosphere has turned from emerald green to a sickly greenish-black, through which the sun - still shining strongly amidst the encroaching Mists - struggles in vain to light and warm the ruined world below.
Selune is unharmed, it's forests and cities intact.
Yet there also, a deep and impregnable gloom has shrouded all, and the people of Selune have gone - they followed the order of the taraakians and vacated their homes.
As it is on Selune, so it is on Luna.
The Scro Star League is gone, and the people of Luna with them.
The great city of trade stands empty, and even the rats have gone into hiding, frightened by something.
The forests, meadows, and seas of Luna are all deathly quiet. Something is coming, something is happening, and all the animals, birds, and even the things that live in the deep feel it.
Something is coming.
Something, unlike anything that has ever come before.
There is an ingathering of evil magic.
An ingathering of evil magic such as Realmspace has never before seen.
An ingathering of magic that beggars the mightiest magics ever thrown here, makes the great wars of the Second IR look pitiful in comparison.
Little candles spring up on the trees of Luna and Selune.
Little purple candles, their light ghastly to look at, the odor unspeakably foul.
The candles touch the rocks, the buildings, usurp the faint glimmer of the waters.
On Toril, the purple candles gleam on shattered rock, on piles of debris, on puddles of mud.
A faint tremor is noticeable across Selune, Luna, and Toril.
This faint tremor, is steadily building.
The Weave, is shaking.
The Shadow Weave, is trembling as force beyond comprehension is pouring into it.
In hundreds of Crystal Spheres outside of the IR, the defenders battling the Red Pudding, the Red Goo, watch in amazement as it falls back.
On world after world, it falls back, retreats, then starts to disappear.
The defenders cheer, and advance on the Red Goo, but now it is retreating so fast they cannot keep up.
Suddenly, the Red Goo - the entirety of Sollir's attack - is gone.
Across hundreds of Crystal Spheres, a mighty cheer goes up from billions of throats.
Those who are more wise, scratch their heads, and cast divination spells, to find out what is happening.
The response they get, causes them to stop smiling instantly.
Nor are the taraakians smiling.
They can physically see the Weave shaking, feel it in their bodies, and they see what is happening, and what is going to happen, all too clearly.
The taraakians look frightened - I know that sounds difficult to believe, but they hide their fear from those in the Kevellond League.
The taraakians are frightened.
The taraakians, know what is happening, and they cannot stop it.
As Vaeregoth stands, and utters his proclamations of fear and emnity against the taraakians, a ruddy red light spreads across the terrain of Athas.
It is as if Athas were stained with blood.
The trees are covered in blood, the desert floor is a sea of blood.
Red ruin covers the rocks and the canyons, drenches the cities in gore, outlines the great towers in ghastly glory.
Yet all this is only an illusion - everything passes slowly back to normal.
- - -
The Loch-Nar, a shining green gem the size of a basketball (at least, right now it is) shrugs off the silly, pitiful 11th Level Attacks and 11th Level Assaults of those who thought themselves capable of hurting it.
Then, it strikes back to kill - a 12th level Attack that, had it not been blocked - would have destroyed the Kevellond League.
The Loch-Nar does not discriminate in it's strike - it strikes at the Union of Oerth, the fools (from it's point of view) who summoned it, just as hard as it strikes at Hazen and the Angels.
However, between it and the Kevellond League stand the taraakians in their full might.
Golden power intercepts the green light, deflects it, closes around the Loch-Nar, forcing it to retreat.
The Loch-Nar issues a barrage of green bolts, like it was a machine gun.
The taraakians counter with massive golden bursts.
This battle is visible, from every part of the Kevellond League.
The 12th level magic being thrown back and forth causes agonizing pain for all those who can work magic or are psionic, in Greyspace.
Those within the Domain of Hope, are not affected, and feel no pain, but they can clearly perceive the battle through the Weave.
So can anyone else, who bothers to look up into the sky, which is filled with explosions, with green flashes and brilliant golden light.
In all the uproar and clamor, the trembling that begins goes briefly unnoticed.
On the world of Oerth, outside the Kevellond League, the sun shines down on a world shrouded in the same impregnable gloom that covers all of Greyspace.
Only in the Kevellond League is the sky clear, the sun bright.
Now, the world of Oerth begins to tremble, and the rotten purple candles spring up worldwide, ghostly and eerie, sickening to look at.
The shaking brings dust down in the Underdark, rings the bells in the great cities of the Flanaess, causes rockslides and avalanches in the mountains.
In the Domain of Hope itself, no candles appear, and there is no trembling.
However, a bluish haze appears on the horizons on all sides.
The magic protecting the Domain of Hope is waxing, drawing up all it's strength to protect itself, from the assault it perceives is coming.
On Krynn, Mina and her Knights left long ago, travelling to the Kevellond League as ordered.
Most of the people of Ansalon, Taladas, and Krynn's other continents went with them.
Most of the people of Krynnspace, terrified of the deep, impregnable gloom of the Mists, and the eerie purple lights springing up, and the trembling of the ground under their feet, went with Mina.
Those that remain, such as Betrem in the Great Library of Palanthus, watch in increasing alarm as the bookshelves rattle, the steeples and towers shake, dust rises from the floors, tree limbs rock back and forth, and ever the candles of purple multiply and spread.
- - -
Eventually, far later than in Realmspace, the shaking, the lights, come to Mystara and the Hollow World.
The people that remain there look on in amazement as the grim candles and the ominous shaking are felt, and most wonder if the Immortals are about to war with each other again, as they did long ago.
Those that remain, of course, are those who refused the taraakian order.
Which is to say, most of the people of Mystara.
Since the Immortals did not heed the taraakian order, it would appear this had a ripple effect, and most of the people of Mystara did not heed it either.
In Chorazin, the first tremors start.
Work on the new world halts, suddenly, abruptly, as those engaged in this magical endeavor feel the Weave, the Magic itself, trembling.
They feel the awesome ingathering of evil magic.
An ingathering of evil magic that they have never felt before.
Not even Iuz has ever felt anything like this.
Were Vecna still around, he would say that he has never felt anything like this.
On Oerth, the Blood Waste starts to shrink.
It shrinks, the Red Goo withdrawing from the borders of Celene, from the borders of the blackened Domain of Greyhawk.
Rocks and great broken pieces of the world's crust appears as the level of the Goo drops.
First it drops slowly, then it drops very rapidly.
Like a pot filled with boiling water where the water is nearly gone, the surface of Oerth reappears rapidly, the Red Goo disappearing at an astounding rate.
Until it is completely gone, and only the broken spars of bedrock, the badlands, that were the Welkwood and Wild Coast, remain.
However, these spars are shaking.
The whole world is shaking.
Still the Ingathering of Evil continues to build.
On Athas, the candles do NOT appear.
On Athas, there is no shaking.
In the Crystal Sphere that holds Athas, the Mists are as deep as elsewhere, but the Ingathering of Evil is not felt.
Since magic has been nullified on Athas and in the Crystal Sphere, this place does not feel the Ingathering.
It is even possible it will not be affected by the Ingathering.
The Seers cannot tell, when questioned.
