You wake in a strange room.

Your clothes are foreign and the walls are covered in objects from a different world.

You don't know where or when you are, or if you're still dreaming.

There are footsteps in the hall.

Jumping up, you race out of the room and into the streets.

You have just entered the Twilight Histories.

I want you to imagine a nation in its golden age.

It is a mecca of architecture, art, music, and literature.

Its universities are full of philosophers, historians, and scientists, and the museums house

wonders from around the world. This nation is in its golden age, but that is all about to end.

A war like no other seen in history will murder a generation and leave its widows, grandfathers, and children in poverty.

These stunned survivors use broken pianos as kindling to boil water.

They're surrounded by marble and stone, yet all they know is hunger.

This happened to the German nation in the early 20th century.

They were going through their golden age when Beethoven, Wagner, Schubert, and Brahms were

common names.

But then came the meat grinder.

Four million German men and their allies were buried during the Great War.

Another eight million were wounded, many in horrible ways.

Those whose minds were ruined by shell-shock will never know.

How many of these men would have become artists or scientists?

What great music don't we have today because the composer was killed?

...