Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time" is set in a fictional post-apocalyptic world, with a medieval society. In the world, a system of magic, known as the One Power, is divided into a male half (saidin) and a female half (saidar). 3,000 years before the series, the world was a high tech utopia. When humanity tried to find a magic that both men and women could use, they encountered the Dark One, a Satan-like being able to corrupt human nature and the natural world. A war between the "Light" and the "Shadow" (the Dark One and his followers) ends with the Dark One being imprisoned with saidin. He corrupts it from within his prison, however, driving male users of the Power insane. They use their power to destroy civilization and geography in what is known as the "Breaking of the World". The era before the Breaking is later remembered as the "Age of Legends", since much knowledge was lost, and many common feats of that time seemed miraculous to the characters of the series.