Mages and Magic
It was the time of the mages and the magic, of the herb ladies and the witches, of striving against a world running downhill toward a chaos of Power against Power.
In those days, as in these, many had forgotten the legends of the original magician who stole the Branch of Power from the Unicorn Clans who had kept it - key to their power - hoarded and secret. The first magician used the Branch to create the first Staff and thereby the first Clock, releasing magic, and the means to control it, into the worlds of men.
It is said that somewhere in the depths of the Large Continent there are still these things: the magician's hut, of stone cunningly piled; the Clock which stands behind each and every device of man; and the Branch cut for the first Staff and which converts the Power of worlds into the Power of Life.
One tends to believe only in what one can lay hand to. So it is with common folk, so it is with magicians. Belief in things measured and ground and distilled is much easier to hold down the centuries than belief in a Power that flows in all one sees. Thus the Clock was revered among the learned magicians; and the Branch dwindled from solid reality to legend to childish superstition…