Technology:

There was a time when invention was worshiped, when steam and steel were holy things. The world of The Lost Ages glowed with impossible beauty, engines that sang like choirs, towers that touched the clouds, ships that sailed both wind and lightning. Folk believed they had begun to conquer the unknown. But knowledge is never owned, only borrowed. When The Fall killed our old world, and The Great Schism after it picked apart its corpse, the same brilliance that gave light to the world became ruins poking about above the trees. Laboratories turned to smithies, airships that dotted the sky became extreme rarities, the dream of progress collapsed under centuries of hate. What had been our world's triumph became its greatest loss. What lingers now are echoes, dusty machines that hum in the dark, ruins that glow with fading light, relics that kill as easily as they are looked upon. The Scholar's Guild sends scavengers into those places, hoping to coax reason out of ruin, but every rediscovered marvel comes with teeth. Firearms that loose death faster than thought break hand that pulls the trigger. A tonic that heals wounds slowly poisons the blood. Still, people pay fortunes to own these things, believing power and death to be the same kind of luxury. Technology endures, yes, but it no longer serves its makers. It watches them. And yet, they build. They always build. Tinkerers light their forges, nobles fund expeditions, and the Guild whispers that one day they’ll restore what was lost. But the world has not learned, it only repeats itself in smaller circles. The relics of science dazzle and destroy in equal measure, as if mocking the hands that grasp them. For in Everwealth, progress is a prayer spoken to a god that no longer listens, and every new discovery is just another echo of the one that killed us first.