How It Came to Be

Long ago, the great civilization of D'ni fell, wrecked by inner discords difficult for outsiders to comprehend. At the height of their power, however, the D'ni had ruled a thousand worlds, worlds that they had built with godlike power and linked to through the creation of their wondrous, half-magical books, a craft perfected by the D'ni across the span of ten thousand years.

Last of the D'ni was Gehn, a child when his world collapsed. When his young wife died years later, he left his newborn son in his mother's care and returned to D'ni's vast caverns and fallen cities. The art of making books and worlds had been lost with civilization's fall, but somehow he would learn the ancient secrets and restore lost D'ni.

For Gehn, it was clear that D'ni's glory could only be restored by the rediscovery of the lost craft of the books, a craft which he could learn only through the painstaking piecing together of scattered, subtle clues and bits of lore sifted from the subterranean ruins of D'ni's fallen, empty cities. Perhaps, in that disconsolate desolation, he went a little mad. Or, perhaps, it was the tast he'd set for himself, learning how to write out the description of an entire world, line by line in the peculiarly precise and descriptive vocabularies of the D'ni tongue.

Creating entire worlds...
Eventually, Gehn returned for his son, and together they continued the exploration of D'ni. Atrus learned the craft of writing books from his father.