What's there to know about the great aether wars? Not much that really matters anymore. Both sides lost, and the world was cast into chaos. Originally, the whole continent of Yeura was ruled by two royal families. The House of Roses ruled the northern half of Yeura, and the House of Thorns ruled the south. By definition, it was a monarchist government, but each house had a parliament of elected officials as well, but let’s not get into the inner works of their politics, as both houses have long been destroyed.
The two houses had an old grudge for longer than anyone can remember. No one knows what started it, but most speculate it was just a personality conflict. The House of Roses being a bit environmentally conscious and artistically cultured, and the House of Thorns caring more about practicality and functionality rather than aesthetics. Whenever they'd actually work together, after all the bickering was out of the way, the end product was a beautiful combination of functionality and elegance. How unfortunate that it ended this way.
As for what lead to the war in the first place, the answer can be summed up to one word - Aether. A wonderful new energy source capable of transforming the entire world into a better place. The incredible properties of aether could be used to cure any disease, power magnificent machines, and perhaps even bring humanity together once and for all. It is refined and processed from certain, very rare, meteorites. Coincidently, the refinement process was one of the last innovations the two houses worked on together. Things were going fairly well until one day the largest aetherian meteorite smashed right into middle of Yeura. Although it was technically within Thornian jurisdiction, the House of Roses claimed that the area had originally been part of their territory and demanded half of the meteor. Naturally they refused, and things just got worse and worse.
The war wouldn't truly start until 5 years after that incident. The straw that finally broke the camel’s back was one day when a diplomat from the north went missing. The House of Roses claimed it was an act of terrorism by their southern neighbors and declared all-out war. No one really knows what happened to the diplomat, but does it really matter anymore?
Things got gorier as the war went on. The new aether powered weapons caused destruction on a scale far larger than any war before it. Near the end, both sides were running out. Both sides were frantically working on alternative aether sources. House of Thorns (henceforth HoT) was working on a replicator. It was a fairly slow process, but over time they would be able to cultivate atherian properties in normal stone, however the House of Roses (henceforth HoR) was working on a worm hole.
HoR planned on launching a probe into the asteroid belt and opening a worm hole to harvest aetherian particles in that manner. Had they succeeded, this would've definitely been the most efficient manner of aether harvesting. As an added plus, having worm holes would've been nice for domestic uses as well. Although it looked good on paper, this endevour would be the undoing of Yeura.
The first field test of this technology was a bit of a covert ops mission. A HoR spy snuck a wormhole canister into the HoT aether supply house. The idea was to open the portal, have the reinforcements from the other side help them steal all their aether, retreat, and close it up. Things were going smoothly until the portals destabilized mid heist. Perhaps it had something to do with transporting that much refined aether through a wormhole that is essentially made of aether. Either way, it bloody blew the hell up, and the rest of society with it, from both sides of the portal.
Not a single inch of Yeura was untouched by the blast. As far as survivors? There was a handful of boats and zeppelins and even a large submarine called Nemo that were far enough away from the mainland to survive the destruction. The problem is that the land was scorched by 'magical' energy. Edible plants no longer grow anywhere. Everything has been tainted by aetherian radiation.
The majority of survivors, however, come from the Moley Colonies. When HoR began making plans for their portal heist field test, there was a rich humanitarian, Edmund Moley, who caught wind of this. He gathered the best minds from both houses and began to dig down into the earth with enormous aether powered drills. When they were about out of fuel, they dug a large main cavernous area near an aqueduct. Once out of juice, they began digging their new home and fortifying the cavern for the potential impact.
A few ventured to the surface to check the damage, and their reports were so devastating that none dared to venture back up for quite some time. Every couple years or so, a moley will get cabin fever so bad that they just have to go check and see for themselves how things are faring up top. Some even came back with horrible mutations! In the past 20 years, however, the mutations have pretty much come to a halt, and surface wanderers can go scavenge the wastes as they please.
The Moley Colonies
Most Moleys have spent their entire lives underground. As such, most have a pale complexion. Another side effect from the lack of light is the irises from most of the inhabitants eyes are very faded and nearly white. There are a few exceptions, of course. Anyone who spends most of their time up top regains most of their color, but such adventurous spirits are often are not welcome back to the dark safety of the Colony. Although the radiation is no longer a major threat, most inhabitants still fear the outside world, and fear that anyone whose been outside might bring some of that danger back with them.
As far as the structure of the colony itself, the deeper you go, the older the structures. Since their drills have long since had any aether to run on, the colonists found it easiest to simply expand upwards whenever more room was required.
Life in the colony isn't exactly a big underground picnic. They must continually dig for any source of fuel they can find - coal, oil, geothermal, whatever will keep the ever so dim lights on. Because of this, the entire colony is filled with twisting tunnels that often lead nowhere. This might be a problem, except that there are never any outsiders visiting to get lost.