Just over two thousand years ago, the world we knew went through a cataclysmic Shifting. Henseforth dubbed "The Shift". A terrible chain reaction of earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic activity effectively reversed the land and water that we know today. What were once the continants and countries of the world were now oceans and seas. The water that surrounded them flooded the open space left by the quakes, most getting trapped below ground, reducing the world's water to land ratio to roughly 35% : 100%.

	There wasn't much in the way of warning signs, either. Just enough for best and brightest to get together and build what were dubbed "Arks"; massive transport vessels built for both durability to survive the quakes, and bouyancy to survive the floods. A testament to modern science and cooperation. Humans survived, more or less... with a fraction of their former population.

	We recovered rather well. Swiftly, with the help of the Arks' hoarded resources and manpower, cities were re-constructed and inhabited once again. Nations were reborn, and the world's power-scale was balanced... at least for a while...

	What nobody could have predicted, was that far far beneath the surface were hidden leylines of mystic energy. The life-lines of the planet. The veins of Gaia. These leylines being brought so close to the surface caused the world's ecosystem a dramatic change. People went feral, animals became sentient, and everything in between. Tales of folklore were coming to life. Myths were reality, legends were playing out before peoples' eyes.

	The fragile peace brought about by the need to re-build was shattered when certain regions of the world had tendancies to effect it's peoples' evolution in different ways.

	In Asia, dragons were re-born. Rainforest and wooded regions saw settlements of elves spread rapidly. In the rich new mountain ranges, mining colonies of dwarves started harvesting resources. The most common change, however, was the feralization of seemingly random people. Nearly one in three people went through a process of anthropomorphization, bringing out the feral side of entire civilizations.

	It took well over a millenia for people to settle into the new changes, and adapt life to fit around them. In the end... we did it. We survived. We rebuilt. We persevered. We were forever changed, but... that isn't always a bad thing.

	The current year is 2011 AS (After Shifting). Some semblance of normality has been around for a long, long time, and people have begun to get complacent once again...

	Trouble, as always, is starting to brew...