Backstory
Time Period Information
Realistically, the world was in very different places developmentally in 852 CE. But to get an understanding of the time period, please check out this link which will break down the time period into neat sections. Please look at the world history for the country where you plan to have your character living before writing your backstory section unless you plan not to reference a country at all. (Which we’re fine with. Keep to the general details of the Medieval Ages.)
Magic was an essential part of the lifestyle around the world. Most places used it to protect their homes, heal their wounded, and build their countries from the ground up. It was an energy source that was utilized in any way possible. Some people liked having magic in bigger cities and kingdoms. In other places, it was completely banned, which made healing and protecting their residents a lot harder than need be.
Competitions to find the most talented magical folk started with the promise of rather large and undeniable financial gain. Respected and highly ranked attendants filled rooms at first and eventually stadiums. Magic was so diverse that it really was only limited in the capacity of the user's talent and creativity. Many magical folk found themselves with offers to work for kings. Many also found themselves dead.
By 830, nearly two hundred magical beings had disappeared without a trace. Even the most skilled at scrying could not find them. Kingdoms began to lock their borders. Fear settled into villages. Brother turned on brother. And then, in 852, magic disappeared for good.
Disappearance of Magic
When magic disappeared, so did a lot of magical people and places. Entire kingdoms, buildings and all, vanished. There was no evidence of them having ever existed. Thousands of people were simply gone. And the world just went on without them. Even those very few that remembered what had been before struggled with the lack of concrete proof that it hadn’t all been some kind of dream.
It still felt like an obligation to write down and pass along what they had known life to be like before the green flash filled the sky. Those stories were vital to the future’s eventual acceptance of magic. There has always been a yearning for something beyond the now--whether it be the interference of gods or some straight up Hocus Pocus.
The world without magic grew like an untouched forest. Magical plants long thought to be extinct had replenished and spread across the globe. The long sought after Fountain of Youth refilled. Its waters cleared. Those that stumbled upon it never knew it for what it was--but it healed them. Monsters attacked at first and then retreated as to enjoy lives untouched by the human kind for the first time in existence.
Even while magic was unused by the world, it found ways to do incredible things without having ever been suspected.
(Except for that one time...but we don’t talk about that.)
Time Travel
There have been countless accounts of children under the age of five seeing shadowy figures around them, hearing voices, or remembering past lives. Some details have been so vivid that their parents have been able to piece together the information to figure out who their child claims to have been in a past life.
By age seven, those memories are almost all but guaranteed to be gone. Sometimes the information has been written down to bring up later. For most, it’s just a matter of moving on with a new identity.
Too many cling to the idea of the afterlife: a promised heaven full of treasures or a judgment before a god who determines a life to be worthy of Elysium or destined for the pits of Tartarus. Sometimes life isn’t about how good of a person you’ve been, but rather where you were when your life ended as you knew it.
When the magic disappeared, thousands of people disappeared with it. There were no records of their existence. History rewrote itself to exclude the holes that those people had left in families, feuds, and otherwise.
So...where did they go?
For some, it was a short journey to the next life. There are people who have bounced from life to life since magic disappeared. They might remember, briefly, the way a child can at the beginning before any recollection fades away.
For others, their lives have been dormant until now. Within the past 70 years or so, the most people have begun to reappear. And with each person that starts the process of awakening, the stronger magic seems to be growing.