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LEMURIA

Half a million years ago the first and most glorious civilization arose on the Lost Continent of Lemuria amidst the blue vastness of the Pacific.

This was the middle of the Pleistocene epoch, a division of geological time which began circa one million BC and extended to about 25,000 BC. The continents of Eurasia, Africa and the Ameri cas were very different then. Mammoth and mastodon and sabretooth tiger fought for the mastery of the earth, while tall, stalwart Cro-Magnon man and his hulking, ape-like predecessor, Neanderthal man, fled from the remorseless advance of the towering glaciers. The age of the mighty reptiles was long over: it had ended with the birth of the Cenezoic Era seventy five million years ago.

But amidst the steaming jungles and fetid swamps and thundering volcanoes of primal Lemuria, the colossal saurians yet lived. They had come close to dominating the earth itself, and they would have trampled the first, small, timid mammals into the quaking slime.

But the Nineteen Gods Who Watch The World intervened. Seldom does The Unknown One permit the Nineteen Gods to influence the flow of time—only in moments of cosmic peril may they take action on the physical plane. But the future history of the planet trembled in the balance, and the unwritten chronicles of age upon age hovered in the mists of the Might-Have-Been. Thus the Nineteen Gods were permitted to act, and Man arose upon the earth to challenge the might of the Dragon Kings in war.

It is written in the age-old pages of The Lemurian Chronicles that this war lasted for one thousand years.

Man triumphed, the Dragons fell, and the Age of Men began. But, from beyond the Universe itself, the dark forces of Chaos and Old Night schemed and plotted against the Lords of Creation. Evil cults of demon-worshippers arose in primal Lemuria: dark druids sworn to the service of Chaos, who subtly undermined the nine young cities of the World’s West. King was pitted against king, and city against city, in ruinous wars. Soon the bright torch of that first civilization would be crushed out, and Man would descend into the red murk of howling savagery…