7 Drungsleydale Memorial Power Facility
The DMPF stands where the Mundane city of Drungsleydale used to, before a spell of terrifying magnitude turned it into a glass-floored crater. Now this defiant hulk of a structure provides electricity to most of northern Albionus, and forms the centre of an extensive research complex, kept under a veil of total secrecy by the Mundane government.
2. UNDERSTANDING MUNDANIA
A Brief History[16]
You know much of the history of Mundania already: a world divided, with the bulk of humanity toiling away in brutish ignorance of the realm of magical bliss lying just under their noses. Meanwhile, an elite slice of the species, chosen via genetic lottery, enjoyed access to this other reality, as custodians of its wondrous bounty. It was a totally fair situation and should have lasted for ever.
Deathwish and Miller
The situation couldn’t last for ever. A sizeable faction of the Wizardes – the Dark ones – wanted to openly subjugate the Mundanes, while the ‘Light’ Wizardes simply wanted to manipulate them in secret and never share their stuff with them.[17] After simmering for centuries, this tension seemed certain to boil over when an ancient Crickledale aristocrat known as Baron Deathwish squared up to Beatrix Miller, a Greeblewhoz sixth former prophesied to be the champion of Light Wizardery. The seemingly inevitable conflict was averted, however.[18]
The paragraph Eliza has forced me to write[19]
All right, then. It wasn’t so much that the Dark/Light conflict was averted as made irrelevant by a much bigger crisis. Which was a bit to do with me. You see, around this time there was all sorts of rubbish in the press about my buying personal favours by selling guns to the Bison King on Mittelvelde. It was all a complete misunderstanding, but I was getting a lot of flak for the proxy oppression of Orcs and it was highly embarrassing. My solution was quite elegant: I made a public trip to Mittelvelde, found an underprivileged Orc that one of our freelancers had visited – Benedict, he was called – and offered him a scholarship, funded by my good self, at Greeblewhoz. I thought he’d love it, and the press would too.
It was all Benedict’s fault
Unfortunately, Benedict did not play ball. He made it to his first formal dinner before stamping demonstratively on his Wizarde hat and storming out. I tried to follow him,[20] but he’d gone straight to Chumbleton and portalled to the Mundane city of Drungsleydale. There, he went to a pub, climbed up on a table and told the crowd that on a nearby industrial estate lay a gateway to a world where the solutions to all humanity’s problems were being kept out of reach by a cabal of magicians. The crowd would have reacted in disbelief were they not being told this by an Orc. As it was, they went completely apeshit, formed a mob and rampaged through Benedict’s portal to burn Chumbleton to the ground.
The War
As magical boltholes were discovered all over Albionus, mob incursions spread like wildfire. The Wizardes were quick to retaliate, enacting magical guerrilla violence across dozens of Mundane cities. The Wizardes were outnumbered, but their mastery of portal magic – and their willingness to fight with fanatic Greeblewhoz-trained teenagers – gave them the upper hand. After two years of vicious fighting, things came to a head when Beatrix Miller was captured, imprisoned at Mundane central command in Drungsleydale and scheduled for public execution. Then the unthinkable happened.
The Girl Who (Crucially) Did Not Die
At dawn, as the firing squad lined up, Baron Deathwish himself came screaming out of the sky in a flying cauldron, leading a squadron of elite Dark Wizardes. Despite being Miller’s sworn nemesis, the Baron found the prospect of the Mundanes winning the war unthinkable. He threw a magical shield around the girl Wizarde right as the first bullet struck her chest – earning her the moniker ‘The Girl Who Did Not Die’ – and had his minions form a protective circle around her as Mundane soldiers rushed in.
The Atrocity
Outnumbered and faced with the certainty of death or capture, the Baron suggested a monstrous gambit, and the pure-hearted Miller reacted with horror. She begged the Baron not to go through with his plan, but he did it anyway: siphoning the younger Wizarde’s power and adding it to his own, the Baron unleashed a blast of energy that annihilated the city and its inhabitants. The exertion left both mages unconscious at the centre of the devastation, and when horrified Mundane reinforcements arrived, Miller and the Baron were captured.
Mundania Today
The Drungsleydale atrocity ended the war. The Mundanes couldn’t stand more losses on that scale, and the Wizardes couldn’t risk losing both their leaders, not to mention the hundreds of prisoners (wizoners?)[21] already incarcerated. A ceasefire agreement was signed, under the following stipulations:
Miller and Deathwish were to be locked away under the newly constructed Blacklox Prison.
All portals between Mundania and Whimsicalia enclaves were to be shut down, except sanctioned gateways in Lundowne, ending free movement between the magical and non-magical worlds.
99.9 per cent of the Mundane population were to have their memories of the war, and of the existence of Whimsicalia, magically torn from their brains,[22] with only a thin sliver of government figures and military personnel permitted to remember on a need-to-know basis.
Vague promises were made by the Wizardes about ‘sharing some of their stuff’.
It’s now been eighteen months since the ratification of the ceasefire, and peace has once more returned to Mundania. There are tensions, to be certain, and plenty of rumours of trouble to come, but while neither side has a strategic advantage over the other, the ceasefire endures.[23]
Climate and Terrain[24]
Albionus has a climate best described as underwhelming, and the landscape is mediocre at best, comprising spiderwebs of suburban sprawl and tracts of
