The Great Dry

Disbandment

The Great Dry was a cataclysmic drought that reshaped the entire continent. Rivers cracked into dust, lakes turned to sinkholes, and the sea itself receded by miles, leaving behind salt flats, rusted ship hulls, and forgotten coastlines. What was once ocean became desert. Fishing villages were stranded inland. Crops failed in mass.   In the northwest, survival twisted into desperation. With no crops and no trade, the isolated human settlements turned to cannibalism; first the dead, then the living. Entire cultures collapsed into blood cults, and the Painted Tribes were born in the shadows of drying riverbeds, their ancient fields now gardens of bone.   Far to the south, Cat-Lon’s Empire endured. Its weather-control systems and hydro-distribution networks, remnants of old-world tech, buffered the worst of the crisis — but only barely. The strain on infrastructure grew unsustainable, and water became more valuable than iron.   To combat the chaos at the empire’s fringes, Cat-Lon authorized the creation of the Hydraulic Knights — a militant order dedicated to the defense of remaining water sources, the protection of aquifer vaults, and the extermination of any threat to the empire’s fluid lifeblood. For centuries, these knights battled cannibals, pirates, and rogue wastelanders, often riding into the drylands on steam-fed walkers or sun-cracked crawler beasts.