Word of interesting events spreads quickly throughout the diminishing world. Although travel is difficult, the approach of the Disjunction has spurred tens of thousands into desperate flight across the land, and the news travels with them.

"The Countess of Bronwyn and her Court call those who remain to convocation. The Countess in her role as Matriarch of the Gentle Death welcomes all those who seek to find aid and assistance to face their end as they deem enjoyable.

Come swim in the last waters of the Lake of Trine, come speak with those who seek fulfilment at the last and do so in peace with the others who journey to our Court."

- By Virtue of the Gentle Death

Cries of a caravan as they watch the pyre on which their children's bodies burn

“How is this fair!? How is this right!?”

“As the Disjunction consumes all that is ever more quickly, ever more ravenously; as the land quakes and the sky fractures; now we must endure this at the end!?”

“A plague the likes of which the world has never known.”

“It kills in days; the skin sloughing from the face of its victims as they choke upon their own humours. They scream in agony as their flesh burns and their eyes bleed.”

“It is only at the end that they cease their wails of anguish. Then in the final few hours they whispers; they whisper of the darkness, of things lost, of regret and above all suffering.”

“Is this what we earned for a lifetime of toil? Is this the price we must pay for the actions of those who fought a War we never wanted?”

Reality is disintegrating at an ever increasing rate as the end of all things approaches and tendrils of the Disjunction move faster than refugees can flee from them. What remains of humanity now congregates on the centre of the world and among these gathered masses the whispering plague now wanders, the night now filled with the screams of torment of the dying.

The night before the Convocation a blazing light explodes in the sky, as it dims your eyes can focus upon the source: whirling tablets of ruby, emerald, diamond, sapphire, every gem imaginable fill the sky. Slowly they spiral together, weaving in and out in a precise dance, before they slot perfectly together, merging into a single huge crystal, almost spherical from the impossible number of facets it possesses. Every facet draws the eye if you let you gaze linger and you can somehow see etched upon its surface impossibly dense writing in a thousand different tongues.

Suddenly the individual facets begin to neatly separate from the whole fly inwards, more and more, faster and faster, and the gem completely collapses into itself with a collosal sound as of a book being slammed shut, leaving a single figure sitting contemplatively in the sky. You think you see them look up and take in the world, and then they vanish.

Kassandra: verb. Meaning:

1. To Kassandra: to ineffectually inherit a position of great power, and manage it ineptly (obsolete usage).
2. To Kassandra: to bring order and chaos to a fractured country through ingenuity and vision (obsolete usage).
3. To Kassandra: to boldly drill through the dome of the heavens themselves to forge a new destiny for a people (old-fashioned usage).
4. To Kassandra: to unleash a horror upon the world (for instance, a new disjunction) through well meaning but disastrously counterproductive interventions; see previous definition (current usage).

Last edition of the Universal Dictionary of Meaning

Memoirs of Bloodtrooper, soldier for the Empire of Blood and Skulls

Day 3 of the City Siege:

We've almost cracked it, I can feel it. Our three battalions, one around each leg, are slowly but surely wearing down the morale of all those within. By keeping perfectly in step with it, we've made sure nobody has been able to leave. Ha! They're so scared, they're not even trying sorties. I give it about three more days before the gates are thrown wide open by the last starving survivors.

Day 4 of the City Siege:

What? What just happened? One minute, it was here, surrounded on all sides by our valiant legions, and the next… poof… gone. How could that have happened? We'd almost cracked them! Now the scouts are saying it's reappeared somewhere in the Erewhon, with the craziest light show ever. The desert around it is apparently covered in glassy scars…

I have no idea what we're going to do now… It seems somewhat pointless to keep laying siege to three bits of flattened countryside if the City isn't here any longer…

After the great siege the entire City simply vanished in a great eruption of oily black smoke, reappearing leagues away near the centre of the world

For from the Oak we come, and unto the Oak shall we return, all those by whose blood its Acorn is maintained. For he who gave his life for the Oak; in attempting to bring down those who, with fire, tried to take from us our Bloodsworth, our Life-plant, our Oak; he shall be remembered above all others. Sir Eglamore was a courageous and inspirational Knight-Warden, and he shall be hailed as a Martyr of the Oak until the Sprouting of Days and the Blooming of the New World.

That bastard Sebastian's going to catch it, though.

From an eulogy given over the grave of Sir Eglamore, Knight of the Varkal Oak.

Spreading up from the South, dozens of White-Robed priests, all that remain of the once great cult of the Eisotrophians, spread these words.

“Lost, all is lost. The bright walls of Astudan are shattered and broken. The power of the Radiant Son is shattered and destroyed. Only we few remain, our faith cut and bleeding from a thousand, thousand cuts.

The terrible words of Sebastian, Speaker of the Void, driving deep into our hearts, cutting away the flesh of our hope. His tongue is silver, is honey, is sweet blasphemy. So many thousands, so many thousands turned away from the worship of agony and suffering, from the worship of the Radiant Son.

Now, now, now, now the ranks of the True Church of the Void swell and swell, until the world is awash with their foulness. And always, always they bear the terrible words of their lord, their master, upon their lips.

Sebastian, Speaker of the Void, now speaks for not less than a third of all those who remain. Look upon him and tremble.”

Following the fall of Astudan, another rumour emerges from the South, borne on the lips of refugees despairing for their sick and dying loved ones, or weeping for their own illness.

“The Healer is dead. For thirty years she walked the world, laying her hands upon the sick and the dying, granting succour to those who needed it. There was someone who looked to the suffering of the world and who said 'No', who would not let it be, who fought back.

The Healer is dead, in these, the last days of the world. Who could murder her? Who would kill hope? Who would nail her body to a tree, amongst the ruins of Astudan, so that all could see and despair?

A monster. A terror. A nightmare.

The Healer, Corin Gauss, is dead.”

A speech, intoned in the voice of many, by the construct that has arisen from Mover's Gulch and ruins of Tower 9

“Great men can’t be ruled.”

“We don’t want any great men.”

“Don’t deny conception of greatness. Destroy it from within. The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional. Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most inept – and you stop the impetus to effort in men, great or small. You stop all incentive to improvement, to excellence, to perfection.”

Don’t set out to raze all genius – you’ll frighten men, Enshrine collective thought - and all genius is razed.”

Since the last convocation the greatest women and men from all walks of life have been vanishing. From Countrylandtopia, great artists; from the Empire of Blood and Skulls, renowned strategists; and from the City noted horologists. From Mover's Gulch has emerged a construct of glass and gears; crystal orbs bound within it and filled with…flesh.

Word begins to spread amongst the thousands of refugees who travel across the land of a new organisation that is budding up in a hundred different places. This is a grubby bill poster which has clearly been passed through many pairs of hands.

“We are the Cooperative of the Gentle Death.

In these last few days of the world, we seek to facilitate the fulfilment of the final wishes of all those who would join our movement. There is only one rule of membership; one role which must be fulfilled before you may draw upon our resources to help you fulfil your last desire. You must aid at least one person with their final request.

We, each of us, have at least one final thing we would wish to do or to have before we die. The Cooperative of the Gentle Death extends its hand to take yours and walk with you whilst you look for it. Come, take our hand, and offer some last succour to those who seek it, that you, in turn may receive such. Be it the finest meal the world can provide; the opportunity to die fighting; the simple pleasures of another person, given and received; or just the comfort of someone to hold your hand as the world ends; the Cooperative of the Gentle Death will provide.

Come, take our hand.”

Words of a wandering Bard walking away from Kyrine

“They had gathered for some great ritual and as the music divine reached its melodious apex the sky was filled with golden light and a host of ethereal figures. From the clouds descended a man wreathed in auric fire, glorious to behold.

Yet even as the ritual began to swell to its final crescendo another melody joined it along with the sound of chanting. Chaos broke out as people began to fight and the great harmonies clashed against one another. At the same time my stomach cramped and I found myself on the ground spewing the contents of my stomach over the feet of the multitude.

In agony I heard a scream of fury from above as the golden figure began to call forth great waves of golden light that washed across the crowd making them simply disappear.

As the world filled with shouts, screams and Sorcery I fled.

The mumblings of an ancient seer wandering towards the Disjunction

“T'was a prophecy of old see, from aeons ago: 'she that sits up the Throne of Eyes shall see the end of all things'.”

“Now that ancient throne squats there mouldering in the wilderness. I seen it wi'mi own eyes.”

”…and I tell you what; it don't half look like it lies at the centre, at the last place of all.”

“Imagine that, to sit there as the last person alive and watch the unmaking of the world. T'wod be a sight worth seeing.”

“I hear it's the amassed wealth of the eastern nations of old. It was hidden in Emperor's drop for years and now they've been forced to move it.”

“How much gold?”

“Tonnes of the stuff. Wealth beyond all imagining. Diamonds as big as your fist.”

“Just lying about?”

“No. I hear one of the old Imperial princes is still guarding it. Rumour has it he's got bored of his loot though.”

“Bored?”

“Well what good is riches if you can't have a bit of fun?”

“Come to the Ark. Come for pleasure beyond measure.”

“Ride the void streams of the Disjunction in an Ark filled with the greatest lovers, the most sensual gratifications.”

“We offer you safety after the end in a vessel designed to withstand the darkness. We have filled it with all the aspects of indulgence a soul could ever want.”

“If you wish to leave this dull world behind we welcome you at the end to solace in ecstasy.”

• With this drill I shall pierce the heavens that so constrain us!
• The Radiant Son has never shone so brightly.
• Lord Dreadulous III has the greatest jawline in That Which Remains. Largely because he is now 30% jaw.
• Tycho Flyteworthy is NOT the God of Glory… or of anything else for that matter
• Tyhco Flyteworthy will be the God of Glory.
• The Behemoth will usher in a new age of tyranny! Destroy the Behemoth!
• The Darkness is not the Darkness but rather the light; go into it.
• Madame de Beers is engaged to be wed to Mordeon, Lord Dreadulous
• The world is ending. What's left to care about?
• Gah - brain dead!
• Glory, Glory, Hallelujah…
• I'm a floating skull
• There is a godshard in that golden skull.
• If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team
• Acorn soup.
• There is a fourth godshard.
• But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain!
• Nobody cares that i've got rust all down the joints of one side of my body do they? Brain the size of a planet and awesome power and all they want me to do is stop treading on villages. I ask you . . . its not easy getting peasant out of your boot soles.
• All three sherds have been attuned.