On the surface of the Earth the year is 2014 AD. The world goes on, as it always does, albeit, slightly less smoothly than in earlier years.
Oil is more expensive than ever, as the Middle Eastern War, between the United States, Iran, and the Arab League over rights in the territory of the crumbling Iraqi republic, with the United States protecting oil interests in the area, the Arab League protecting the rights of a member state and Iran taking measures to protect its borders.
In Europe, the Serbo-Kosovan war expands, as Macedonian and Hungarian peacekeepers join the fray. In short the world, with a population of 7 billion, is bigger than ever, and too preoccupied to take notice of a man who has been assumed dead for three years, since his disappearance on the night of his eighteenth birthday.
Under the surface of the Earth, the year is 415 by the calender of Sandwich. It is a golden age, a time of unprecedented peace, with the Council of Seven, representing diggers, gnawers, crawlers, spinners, nibblers, fliers and Humans, acting as a symbol of unity and equality for the races of the Underland.
Only one realm among the myriad territories of the Underland has not pledged allegiance to the council, the cutters. However, seeing that an aggressive move on their part would bring nothing but a humiliating defeat, they grudgingly recognize the other realms sovereignty, at least in public.
In the kingdom of the gnawers, King Ripred the Peacemaker is lauded as the greatest for many generations, not a warmonger, not an expansionist, not even one with a great desire to ascend to the throne, simply one who saw that the gnawers would go down a road to self-destruction if yet another bloodthirsty maniac joined the line stretching through their history.
In the land of Regalia, it is the fifth year of the reign of Queen Luxa, and the third of the reign of King Gregor the Warrior. The city of Regalia has recovered from the scars it suffered in the war of the Prophecy of Time and the earlier ones of the War of the Prophecy of the Grey. The city was now, for the first time in generations, building anew instead of simply reconstructing the old.
However, there was one matter, one black spot, in this age as gold, that stood out as clear as a single light in the dark.
The Nibblers.
Despite nine years since being forced from their last territories, the Nibblers still live in refugee camps outside the great cities of Regalia, Tarsus and the Fount. Thirty thousand beings living in the open.
The council is now desperate to find a place for them to go. Now there are to look in the places where no known Underlander has searched before.
And this is where our adventure begins.