The Ontoclysm

In other timelines, the whole of ancient history was stable. Sumerians and Akkadians lived in the Near East, ancient Minoans lived in Greece, and China was around for thousands of years before the first iron ingot was forged.
In History A, however, none of this was true. Nothing before 535 is certain due to massive reality quakes, shuffling of the deck of time. The best historical records of this timeline begin around 535 CE: The Plague of Justinian in the Byzantine empire, the China's Wei dynasties beginning a civil war, and the American states of Teotihuacán and Maya collapsing. While storms, cold and famines rolled across the globe, the timeline shifted—some civilizations disappeared, like Tocharians and Garamatians, while some appeared from seemingly nowhere, such as the Avars and Uighurs.
Although the cold-fronts were mundane, the quakes were paranatural—the result of the Anunnakku influence, or lack thereof. The mass subconscious of mankind was untethered, and reality slipped with it.
In 1888, the British Museum launched an expedition to the Tigris River to make some sense of their muddled timeline. Upon digging, they learned that fact was much stranger than fiction, and the cave-crawling horrors that emerged from their dig became the force by which the Duncorne Foundation was galvanized.
== References ==
* GURPS Horror: The Madness Dossier, p.5
Category:Setting Concepts