City Of Taste

 The city of wizards maintained a level of peace and quiet that anyone who had met a wizard would think impossible through a rather neat trick.

There were many areas of magic that could cause chaos with a small c through to ARMAGEDDON written in hundred foot letters made of burning gold, but all of them were not banned, or forbidden, or even blocked.

But they were all so... Tacky. Gauche. Artless. Unsophisticated.

Common.

And since wizards need validation more than they hated other wizards, peace was maintained.

Right up until someone developed a solid city-wide undetectable taste changing spell.

Final Breaths

Humanity came to an end thanks to zombies. But despite a lot of people thinking that would happen (and a few unwell people wanting it), it didn't go down how they thought.

Because as scary as shambling corpses rising from graves and the like is, humanity had a decent chance at stopping that.

But it turned out that you didn't need a full corpse to reanimate, nor did you need a brain, all corpse parts became zombified.

Including, crucially, every body that had been cremated and had their ashes released into the world, where they mixed with the air, and...

Time Dilation

The real problem was the lack of advancement in distress beacons.

I mean, look, losing a spaceship to a stable micro black hole, something that we didn't know existed until we stopped the problem here, that could happen to anyone.

And losing several more ships heading to the location of the distress beacon which was just past a point beyond the death zone line, that's distressing, no pun intended.

But it all worked out once the last ship broke down before the beacon and ran scans, but if beacon technology had improved over these decades, they'd have noticed the discrepancy!

The Duchy

The Duchy was the size of a small city and its immediate surroundings. And considering it was surrounded by four large, greedy, and above all influential empires, it surely should have been absorbed by one of them at some point, one way or another.

But it wasn't, it remained independent and unbothered. Most people assumed none of the empires wanted to be the aggressor, but in fact it was much simpler, that all the leaders knew what would be unleashed if it was attacked.

Until the lessons were forgotten, and it was invaded.

Sadly, the Duchy also forgot the lessons.

Modern Dark Ages

There's a somewhat infamous chart that is supposed to indicate technological advancement of humanity across the centuries with a giant chunk that flatlines labelled as the 'Christian Dark Ages' that supposedly delayed everything. Now, that chart is complete bullshit (Hey China and India and all the non-European parts of the world!), but I can't think that an actually accurate chart like that will show that this is a start of the chart going into negative territory.

But, of course, I'm heartened by the notion that if such a chart is brought into existence, someone is making it.

Hopefully not A.I.

100 To 1

I had the last hundred bucks in my hand as I ran through the casino, trying to work out how I'd explain this to her.

That's why I was distracted and stumbled, slamming my hand onto the table next to me to stop myself falling.

"No more bets!"

I felt a tug on my hand, as I realised I'd placed the bill on the 100-1 spot on the lucky wheel spin game.

I immediately began to argue that wasn't a bet, that it didn't actually count, right until the wheel stopped, and I flipped my argument around real fucking quick.

Magic Resources

The four main magic using races had a different viewpoint when thinking of magic as a resource.

The Dwarves saw it like any other material, they mined it, so they could refine it and then store it for when they needed to use it.

The Elves saw it as part of nature, and strove to keep it balanced with all things, as it should be.

The Humans just took and took and took, never understanding why it would run out for them at times.

And as for the Orcs, they saw it differently.

Literally, their eyes could see that spectrum.