Scholars have many vices. Possibly the worst among them is a tendency to describe the simple in unnecessarily complex terms, to dress the plain in the garb of false learning.
“The Conjunction of the Spheres” might serve as an excellent example of this. This name, so mysterious to a commoner's ear, could be replaced with a much simpler alternative: When the Worlds Collided. The phenomenon itself can also be explained in terms simple enough for a child to understand.
Imagine, dear reader, that our world is a ship sailing on a great sea. From its deck we can see other, distant vessels - those are the stars. These vessels each bear their own goods and their own crews. They usually pass us at some distance, barely visible specks, even viewed through a spyglass. Once every few thousand years, however, a storm breaks above this cosmic sea, a storm so strong it tosses the ships towards one another, making them sail cheek by jowl. Part of the crew of one ship can, at such times, move to another, and some of the cargo from one ship’s hold can spill onto a neighboring vessel. When the weather calms, the ships separate once again and sail their separate, invariably different ways.
The so-called “post-Conjunction beings,” namely monsters such as ghouls and basilisks, are precisely such passengers from another vessel. And we humans are castaways, flung against our will from somewhere far away onto a world previously inhabited by the Elder Races. Once here, we learned the arcane mysteries of magic, unbeknownst to us before.
Could the worlds collide once more? Perhaps. Can this cataclysm be avoided, or the opposite - hastened? Some scholars believe there are beings who have mastered this skill, who possess rare genes allow which some to seize the helm of our vessel and steer us… to safer waters, or to our doom.
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