My Submission for both this and next week:

(TLDR: Humans on earth are long extinct. Elves, dwarves, gnomes, orcs, halflngs, and goblins are looting the ruins of post modern society, studying them, and are on the verge of a new industrial revolution practically over night and very prematurely)

Earth persists after the fall of humanity leaving behind vacant cities and machinery waiting to be operated once again. Epochs pass. The ravages of weather and the growth of nature destroys and buries traces that this race once roamed the planet, but not all.

Time goes on and new sentient races emerge and build new society. Unlike the era of humans, whose domain over the Earth and its creatures ran uncontested, the world was shared by many distinct races of man. The elves emerge from the woods, the dwarves emerge from the caves, the gnomes burrowed from underground to the surface, orc-kin wandered from the frozen tundras in the north, and the coupling between races gave birth to the halflings and goblin-kind. All races were preyed upon great beasts of colossal sizes such as Dragons. The races of man agreed that they must co-exist to survive the ravages of the wilds. Thus formed the cooperative society of the great races of man.

Generations pass. Magic is discovered, the great races of man come in contact with the gods, and even the greatest of wild beasts have learned to fear the cities where men tread. Cities expand into nations while new cities emerge and do much the same. Great accomplishments and great wars come and go but never was there a doubt that civilization is the greatest wonder the world had ever seen.

This all changed when a caravan returned from the desert after wandering lost for months with the most unbelievable reports of finding the ruins of a mysterious city unlike any other. Many ancient ruins have been found before but those were the elven tribal camps, the barrows of the dwarven clans, and the mines of the gnomes. These were primitive but helped the races of man remember where they came from and stimulated studies of the origins of the world. The ruins found in the desert were not of any of the great races or any race ever seen before and they were not primitive. Quite the opposite. These ruins suggest that it is actually the great races of man that are primitive.

The first thing one notices about these cities are the numerous great spires. They touch the very sky and rival great mountains. The idea that there are many left standing suggests that these were not wonders of architecture and engineering, but the normal dwellings for these people. One can safely assume, many areas buried in rubble are where hundreds more of these spires once stood tall.

The first excavation was blessed with much of the ruins in excellent condition despite the passage of what might have been tens of thousands of years. To us, metal must be conserved for war efforts and other dire necessities. To these so called humans, metal is used frivolously. However, their most mundane metal working craftsmanship puts the works of the most talented dwarven smith to shameful mediocrity.

The human society seems to revolve completely around machines. Everything, from the tall spires down to the common street sign seems to incorporate some form of complex machinery of sorts. Most machines across the entire city are interconnected with twines of thin metal. We have deduced that energy travels across these twines which power the machines. Their sources remains uncertain to this day. However based on this very observation, we have progressed our very understanding of the flow of energies and its effects on metal. The arcane candles we use in our daily lives came from the experimentation of casting arcane energy from the Aura on one end of metal twine and having the magic project remotely across great distances on the other end.

We have found intact much intact literature. (Note: Much of the literature are perfect duplicates of each other. We believe that their books were produced by their machines and distributed widely across to every class of people. This suggests that even the lowest of commoner class was literate.) We are still at work in translating their writing, which is a very difficult because this was a race with numerous languages despite being a solitary race. Many languages are not very dissimilar to each other which makes the task very difficult. Despite our limited understanding of their written language, their books are often decorated with images of the most realistic detail. We believe these are not works of craftsmanship but of machinery that can capture what is seen and replicate the moment on paper.

We have learned much from these images. We know with absolute certainty what these people looked like, how they lived, their history, and even how many of their machines are operated given the proper energy. We have gathered details of many of their accomplishments and tragedies. We know that they have once lived very similar to how we live today and eventually advanced so far that they have built ships that can travel beyond the heavens to other celestial worlds. It is possible that remnants of this race have long abandoned this world to colonize other worlds and have never returned. Others make wild claims that our gods are humans living in the heavens. This claim is often debunked by the widely accepted theory that humans lacked the sense to feel and harness the arcane energies of the Divine Aura. In fact there is absolutely zero evidence of existence of magic in human society. Human religion did exist but open to many interpretations. The iconography and imagery of their gods from that of our own. There is no evidence of the existence of dragons either. These findings are in direct conflict our belief that dragons, the Divine Aura, and the gods have existed since the dawn of time. It begs questions as to who or what the gods really are.

We have learned much from these ruins and in less than a few years we have drastically changed our own society by emulating the technology and culture of the humans. This is a mixed blessing. Agriculture and irrigation has never been more efficient using advanced techniques. Our cities are well illuminated nightly with the casting of a simple cantrip on a single plate of metal. Our understanding of alchemy has been advanced hundreds of years ahead. We have implemented simple engines powered by magic on mills with great success. The smithing trade has improved its efficiency ten fold with machines that aid in the tempering process. A single team of smiths can equip an entire army in a week's notice. We are in the process of creating grand engines that can carry enormous carriages across great distances and at great speeds without the aid of a horse. We have also recently built a giant factory to manufacture goods at in mass quantities. It will revolutionize trade. With all of its advantages, we have all felt a widespread fallback. Wars are being waged over rights to explore different territories and hinterlands. There is much dispute with what to do with the knowledge of the human civilization. The popular opinion is to learn and imitate. The church's mages believes that the ruins should be destroyed and forever held secret. Their justification is not one of self preservation from being obsolete but an altruistic questioning of how is it that this great civilization came to a sudden end?

Nevertheless, the momentum is to seek out as many traces of human civilization as possible. Explorers and adventurers go outward and comb the world both on and under. Some have returned with advanced weapons and tools. Rumors circulate. A mere scholar once slayed a marauding giant with a sling that hurls a constant volley at great speeds with deadly accuracy. An operational humanoid machine construct with astounding intelligence and lifelike awareness is rumored to have been found, however its location and existence has been held with the utmost secrecy. Collected images have propagated a theory that humans commonly wielded weapons that can destroy entire cities in an instant. It seems that the more amazing their machinations become, the more terrifying their weaponry can be. Perhaps the Church is right on some marks.