The century of the rising Blight

The century is the game’s own measure: only after the Source is quenched does the Keeper see that the infection “has stopped rising for the first time in a century”. So the whole world described here is a world at the end of that century.

In a century the Blight drank the lands dry where it reached deepest, and learned its chief property — to remember. It keeps the memories of the souls it swallowed, and so knows more about the world than anyone alive.