Era of Diamond Dust

The **Era of Diamond Dust** was a thirteen-hundred-year time period that marked the end of the War of the Crystals, the reign of Praeliorian Empress Esper Aznaré, the subsequent reconstitution the Praeliorian Empire, and the dismantlement of the once powerful Dremirian Alliance and reformation into the smaller Dremirian Council.

## History

### Origins: The End of the War

War weariness on both sides of the thirty-year conflict left the Praeliorians and Dremirians in an indefinite standoff for centuries to come.

Praeliorian Emperor Ranza's final act as Sovereign was placing a curse on Praelior and its moons, which he casted by absorbing the life force of nearly all Praeliorians against the ongoing war, and by using the remainder of his own life force. Sentinel Eniphesta Aznaré, the Empress Consort and Ranza's wife, tried effortlessly to prevent the casting of this powerful curse, but doing so costed her life, and she died in vain having not stopped Emperor Ranza before he died and held their entire ancestral legacy hostage.

This curse subsequently and unofficially ended the war, and Ranza's firstborn Esper Aznaré took on the title of Sovereign.

### The Broken Mind of An Empress

Initially, Empress Esper tried desperately to reverse her father's dying curse, sympathetic to all the lives that were lost over the course of thirty years. At first, the effects of the curse were largely unseen, and so the Empress was left in the dark on how to break a seemingly invisible curse. But not too long after, the Praeliorian moon of Pluvia began to slowly die, with all its plentiful gardens turning into dead, barren grasslands. This also had an adverse effect on Pluvia's Sentinel, Grand Duchess Crimson Aznaré. It was not long until the effects of the curse were also seen on Praelior, with the rainbow grasslands of the shining planet dying off, turning the planet into a barren shell of its former self.

Empress Esper and Grand Duchess Crimson attempted to break their father's curse. Unfortunately, all attempts proved to be futile, and in the end, they costed Crimson her life. Stricken by extreme grief and war trauma ever since she was but ten years old proved to break Empress Esper's psyche. Esper's guilt and pain manifested itself into solace in her lonely position of power. These feelings of suffering endured by the Empress would have driven her into complete madness, and so she felt as if she had no other choice but to embrace the curse, in order to stop the suffering of her people from continuing any further and to save her own sanity.

Empress Esper extended her lifespan and kept herself alive through the use of powerful magic, allowing the feelings loneliness and confusion to warp her thinking and fester into true hatred over the course of over a thousand years. Esper was forced to rationalize her hostilities against the Dremirians as the only way to protect Praelior. Embracing her father's curse by honoring his wishes, albeit initially hesitantly, only fueled Esper's turmoil. Over an astronomical period of time, Esper had to convince herself that her decisions were righteous.

### Thirteen Hundred Years of Dust

The Dremirian Alliance, reduced in power, diverted its dying resources to the Dremirian Council that oversaw Dremirus and its moons. For the duration of the Era of Diamond Dust, Dremirus continued to stand their ground on a defensive front.

Under Empress Esper Aznaré's initiatives to destroy the Dremirian people and their domain, the Dreamer Worlds, imperial Praeliorians grew to truly resent the Dremirians and see them as lesser beings altogether. This hateful ideology costed the lives of countless Dremirians native to the Dreamer Worlds, thus earning the time period that emerged in the aftermath of the War of the Crystals an apt title: the Era of Diamond Dust.

Over the course of thirteen hundred years, inhabitants of the Dreamer Worlds lived in fear that they would be killed, shattered, and ground to dust by elite Praeliorian hunters seeking to destroy them. This fear was not unwarranted, as many Dremirians died in this effort by the Praeliorian Empire to honor the late Emperor Ranza's wishes. Their crystallized remains were ground to dust and scattered across the surface of Praelior to make the planet shine as it once did naturally before the War of the Crystals.

Dremirians who were not killed by the Empire were kidnapped and turned into servants for the Praeliorian nobility, which many saw as either a fate worse than death or as freedom from death. Countless Dremirians were enslaved in this practice, including the Dawns Annesidora and Moon.

Around the year 5927 ASA, relatively near the end of the era, the Praeliorian Empire formed an alliance with the Walrakians and the Algathans in order to better their efforts in destroying the Dreamer Worlds and Dremirians as a whole. Two embassy buildings were built in the capital city as a result of this alliance.