Exploring the Tone of the Mortal Sphere

The Mortal Sphere is a setting on the decline. The world hangs upon a precipice; while the eternally-cloned emperor Lorium-Rex seeks to subjugate anyone who would stand in his way, the lands outside of city walls are fraught with terrors, mysteries, and monsters. It seems destined that the mortal world is hurtling towards a dystopian future.
There are no Gods to save the universe from this fate. The saints speak of angels, devils, and spirits of the afterlife, but never a God. Whatever altruistic divinity remains in the Macrocosm was placed in the trust of the angels, but it is apparent that such power is loosed seldom for the benefit of Mortals. When it comes to community, churches stand not only as beacons of worship, but as gathering places for true devotees to channel the might of their prayer, however vain the effort might be.
Even the wise sages cannot be relied upon to thwart these dangers alone. Magic is an unnatural phenomenon, a power that Mortal hands were never meant to wield. Very few people are even capable of casting spells, and those who can often live lonely, exacting, lives far from civilized society. Most magical practitioners do not themselves fully understand the spells that they harness. The Colleges, though waning in influence, are the only authorities on the great art. Within the depths of their archival libraries, never-ending research is done to map the pathways of power, to divine the sources of evil, and to prevent the spread of the chaos and madness called Clash.
Even the greatest armies in this or any age could not wage a fierce-enough battle to disrupt this flow of destiny. The world is beset on all sides by threats both mundane and supernatural. Proud knights march to their doom in order to stem the flow of devils that surge from the Black Throne of Kael, but there is no end in sight to their sacrifice. Kings and Queens rally their forces in preparation for the western coming of the Empire of Lorian, but petty differences and unfettered ambitions prevent a robust alliance from emerging.
Fetchers are the key to tipping the scale, one way or the other. They are the instruments through which the major powers battle and compete. Rival fetching companies skirmish for control of ancient ruins rumored to contain artifacts of the elder days. Their foolish missions awaken old, slumbering things that ought to be left sleeping. Forgotten secrets lie dormant in the bellies of ruined complexes for centuries, only to be recovered by hands their creators least expected. Fetchers recover magic items, fetchers gather gold, and fetchers can fight monsters. They fight monsters, really, really well. For better or for worse, the actions of the Fetchers will decide the direction of fate: towards ruination, or towards utopia.