very little is revealed about the history of the spellbinder's world. at some point in the distant past, a disaster befell the planet, leaving their land surrounded by a wasteland where nothing can survive. they refer to this disaster as "the darkness," and the ancestors of a group called the marauders (raiders who live on the outskirts of their society, bordering on the wastelands) are blamed for the past catastrophe. it is later learned that the ancient spellbinders were the ones actually responsible for the disaster, brought about by their own intellectual arrogance and desire for increasingly powerful weapons. paul, the visitor from our world, speculates that "the darkness" may have been the result of a nuclear winter, although this is not further elaborated upon. regent correon, with paul's help, discovers an ancient book that describes an experiment of the ancient spellbinders that went horribly wrong, but this book is destroyed by ashka before more can be learned.