A/N: As with Part I, I own nothing within the world of Exile/Avernum. That world and its places and people belong to Jeff Vogel and Spiderweb Software. Between the epilogue of Part I and this prologue, my explanation for why the heroes of Part I were unavailable for the great quests of Part II.
Exile is a state of being. An Exile is a person who has been expelled from his country. To exile someone is to declare that person an undesirable, a person who must leave and can never return. Exile is also a place, a place known by its inhabitants as Avernum. It is an enormous network of tunnels and caverns far below the surface world. The land of Avernum is kept alive and fruitful by powerful magic and the heat and energy of natural steam vents and hot springs.
For years, the Empire, undisputed master of the surface world, had used these caverns as the dumping ground for the unwanted. Men and women, skilled and unskilled, elderly and young children alike, were sent through a one-way teleporter into the caverns below. There, they survived, endured, and formed a society. They waited, and bided their time. They desired to return to the surface. They desired revenge. And they struck back.
The Empire had made the mistake of sending into exile several powerful mages who had become too inconvenient to keep around safely. They were a great help in building the nation underground, and waited for the chance for vengeance. Then, they had their chance. The strongest of them all, Erika, managed to teleport a group of adventurers to the surface, where they assassinated Hawthorne, the powerful and brilliant Emperor. Others used their skills to help the Avernum army defeat the evil slithzerikai and make a tentative peace with the remaining slithzerikai. Avernum was now safe from threats in the underworld.
The Empire realized, overnight, what a brood of vipers they had given birth to. There were two reactions. The first was sudden: nobody else was teleported below. The misfits of the surface were kept in prisons, rather than the caves. The second reaction came five years later, after it became clear that Avernum was surviving just fine without fresh people from the surface. The Empire invaded.
The first sign of trouble in the city of Spire came unnoticed, as the folk slept. Brother Theo awoke early, as was his custom, and checking the candlemarks, prepared the hour glasses for a new day. Across town, the companions of his traveling days slept. Brother Theo was still about his morning prayers when he heard what sounded like ... thunder.
Then, a small piece of the rock of his church's ceiling came skittering down, clattering against the wall and the floor. And then another.
With a roar, one hundred tons of rock came down on the city of Spire, flattening beneath the engineered cavequake the buildings and residents.
"Good work," said the dervish, watching the destruction through the special orb. Spies had told them that the assassins of the Emperor lived in this city, and now he would be able to report their deaths.
"Thank you, sir," said the young mage, fresh from his apprenticeship under Garzahd.
The Empire had struck back.