Once, in a time of strife and woe, three wise men from different places convened. Disaster loomed on the horizon, and the world looked to them for guidance. For in their troubled times, who could help them but their elders?

The first, who’s face was etched with the many smiles and laughs of his time spoke first. “Perhaps we should make the people happy! There is nothing a smile cannot fix.”

“No,” said the second, whose eyes brimmed with kindness. “We should help together, be kind to one another. The people have become harsh, and that has brought us misfortune.”

“Kindness will not save us,” the third interrupted, dressed in the fineries of ancient traditions. “We have strayed from the codes that built all of us up. We must embrace tradition to save the people!”

As they deliberated, the disaster loomed closer and closer, before sweeping everyone away into nothing. The elders in charge spent so much time deliberating they couldn’t see the problem beyond what they had experienced, and fell to it.

In which, time repeats itself again. War on a scale we couldn’t comprehend threatens to overwhelm us, and here we are faced against three elders who should be wise enough to help guide us through these rough and difficult times.

One tries to persuade and smile his way through, a beam of Sunshine against the dark.

Another leads with parables and kindness above all, trying to do what he can

A third, wreathed in mask, history and order that screams the tradition of the luchador.

In all of you, I see the danger that you present. Clinging onto the skills you learned when Arcadia was just our world, when the knowledge of more didn’t threaten to consume us all. You try your best to do what you think is good, but everything’s changed. The standards you used to hold are crumbling under the rotten foundations that we’re all experiencing.

Can a smile wipe the blood of Ollie and the kids off your hands Sunshine?

Will kindness undo the damage that Doom did to you and your mother before dying?

Can tradition save you in the face of the monster that you’ve invited into your home Dragon?

Because that’s the world we’re facing. Monsters in the form of men and women hunt and kill without ease. Death around every corner. And despite everything that you have done, everything has still gone on. Lives haven’t been saved, misery hasn’t been defeated, and we all pay the price for what’s about to come.

For in a new world, it’s the young and adaptable that make it through. Change comes easier to those that can bend and shift. That’s the one thing that wisdom can’t do. It’s earned from experience, and in the face of something new it falls.

And the old fall to the movement of the youth. Time and disaster favor those that can swim, and all fossils can do is drown beneath the waves of time and disaster.