Status: Three Ages: the Shaping (some 6,000 years), the Coming of the Races (some 600 years), the Age of War (about fifty years). The campaign opens at the Bazaar, a few months to a year after the Third Age ended, as refugees from a thousand ruined villages pour in.
1 · The Gods
| God | Domain | Avatars — and where they are now | Peoples | Agenda |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atlas | Earth, war and conflict — a “heart of conflict” that softened at the sight of life | The Stone Talus — a walking mass of rock; founded the Bazaar, led the dwarves into Greenhaven; “the construction worker.” The Hollow Knight (first called the Doombringer) — an empty suit of obsidian plate; led the orcs to Glaive Port, abandoned them in disgust, now leads the harpies’ Sisters of Battle | Dwarves, Centaurs, Lizardmen, Orcs, Harpies, Halflings | War as steel on steel. Broke the crystals to take magic out of it |
| Svarog | Chaos, fire and the forge (“I’m the god of chaos”) | Ardora — a woman of flame, “the First Born of the Fire,” bathing in her volcano; inaccessible. Malakai the Messenger — a leper of Glaive Port who healed himself; old and decrepit, but alive | Fire Genasi (→ Frost Genasi), Goblins, Skjaldborg | ”My plan is to have no plan.” |
| Sylvanus | Nature, the wild, growth — and a great many cities | Sylvariel the Dragon — on Elaruun. Elyndra the Ice Angel, “the Angel of Vengeance”; beaten at Glaive Port, victor at the Underdark mouth; available for consultation | Water Elves, Ice Giants | Life spreading outward — and, lately, war |
| Astralis | Stars, art, song — “Arts and Stars” | The Silver One — featureless, silver, risen from Star Lake; whereabouts unknown. Karros & Kassander — a good dwarf riding a centaur; fighting in the south | Trenchborn, Humans, Deepkin, Spider People | Worshippers, by any means |
2 · The Story So Far
The First Age — The Shaping
The world was born in water and violence. Sylvanus raised an archipelago in the western sea — Sylmara — shaped it, and set permanent winds about it that drive any sailor away, so that the islands are almost impossible to reach. Svarog, being chaos, let chaos choose his place and struck the near-centre of the continent with something from the sky: a crater as deep as a canyon and perfectly round, riddled with tunnels and cavities and perhaps once far deeper than anyone now knows, which the races would one day call World’s Breach; around it he baked the land into a desert where no moisture survives. Astralis flooded a great region with lakes and at their heart set one shaped like a five-pointed star — Star Lake — and, on Sylmara, grew a bamboo like no other: waterproof yet hard and supple, with as yet no one to use it. And Atlas thrust five volcanic fingers up out of the sea — four fingers and a thumb, the palm beneath the waves — The Hand of Atlas.
Then the mountains rose. Atlas raised Sky Spear Mountain — a massif that climbs far higher than it spreads, terribly steep, its summit a stone spear piercing the clouds. Sylvanus raised a range of splitting mountains that isolate a region, with a single good pass through them. Svarog tapped a spring inside Atlas’s mountain and loosed the Slithering River down to a great delta on the coast. Astralis planted a coast that “looks unnatural”: a forest of obsidian spires some fifteen metres tall that makes the shore unapproachable and reflects light, day and night, casting an uncanny glow. Atlas answered Svarog by opening the other side of his mountain, so that a sister river burst forth and ran the other way into Svarog’s arid land — narrowing from a torrent to a wide stream and pouring over the rim of World’s Breach in one of the most spectacular waterfalls any race will ever see; that side of the crater is forever wrapped in mist, and the water never forms a lake but sinks through the fissured floor into the Underdark. Sylvanus added a huge lake and a river to a second delta near the unnatural coast. And Svarog froze the far waters into a Sea of Ice — sheets thick enough to walk across in the cold months, with a glacier — and, strangely, left a small warm sea enclosed within it.
Around 4,000 years before year zero, the land filled. Atlas set a Perpetual Tempest just south of the Hand of Atlas, rising out of the sea — hurricane winds, wild storm, forever. It is the Right Eye of Atlas, and with the ring-mountain lake it makes the pair. Sylvanus cracked the earth where the sky-stone had struck into the Gorge of the Titans — not a river canyon but an open wound reaching the sea, so that the sea flows into its lower end and mingles at its foot. Svarog set a small island, pleasant and green, in the middle of his warm sea: Long Harbour. Astralis laid a swamp that thickens into true forest, hot-and-wet turning merely wet, with tar pits in the marsh. Atlas stretched a vast steppe from the interior to the sea — the Eternal Steppe — and raised hills beside it, reaching toward Sky Spear. Sylvanus grew jungle on the great southern island. And when Astralis said there wasn’t enough fire, Svarog raised a volcano on the northern island and named it Ardor.
Around 3,000 years before year zero came the first living things. Atlas made an avatar: between the hills and the mountains stood The Stone Talus. Sylvanus set two mountain lakes whose rivers merge and run down to a great delta, with jungle about its lower reaches. Svarog answered Atlas with an avatar of his own: in the volcano Ardor lives Ardora, a woman made of flame. Astralis covered the shores of a small peninsula in coloured sands, “and there is a reason for it.” Then Atlas commanded his Talus: lightning gathered at the spear-tip of Sky Spear and struck the Talus, and the pieces that fell became proto-dwarves. So the Dwarves were made, who named themselves The Children of Stone and went to live where dwarves live — inside Sky Spear Mountain — and among them, because Atlas is a god of war, arose a sect of warriors with crude stone weapons: The Stone Defenders. Svarog would not be outdone: Ardor erupted, and the glowing stones that fell were quickened by the chaos-energy of the cosmos into the Fire Genasi — burning humanoids, evil, who also claim the name Children of Stone (who came first is a matter of dispute). Obsessed with bloodline, they keep a small order of those descended from the very first: Ardora’s First, their nobility. Astralis gave the Fire Genasi a gift: where the volcano punctures the earth, vents roar like organ-pipes — “the first sound your race ever heard was the earth playing its organ.” And Astralis seeded Star Metal into the rock of Sky Spear (and near the volcano) — the dwarves can see it like anyone else, but they also feel it glinting in the fissures, and it is one reason they never left the place they were born.
c. 2,000 years before year zero. Atlas spread a great desert across the south-east; with Svarog’s arid crater-land it became the Obsidian Desert — not merely black sand, but sand of ground obsidian, volcanic glass. Sylvanus’s avatar appeared on Elaruun — Sylvariel the Dragon — and Sylvanus made the Water Elves: skilled, neutral, spreading through the islands along the cold currents, the bamboo letting them build rafts; their first order are The Explorers, who mean to find what lies on far unknown shores. Svarog grew a forest that is not a forest: where dry northern air meets southern damp, cut by a mountain, a wood of towering giant mushrooms of enormous diversity — Fungorn — where strange things happen. Astralis raised the Marble Mountains on a peninsula: regular, almost geometric forms of marble. Atlas commanded the Talus again, and above the star-metal deposit the dwarves built Kharag Duun, “the foundation of the mountain,” taking the deposit as a sign that the powers had made a home for them; they worship the Talus and the one who made him. Sylvanus finished the southern island: all of it jungle. Svarog raised the Black Mesa above the desert — a maze of flat-topped mountains and a canyon, one bank of the river far above the other, the wind from above forever dusting them black. Astralis laid the Great Plains — soil so rich that whatever you plant is up the next day, watered from below. Atlas, watching what the Talus had made and what Astralis had made, felt his heart of conflict soften, and drew a river to feed the plains: The River of Life. Svarog made the tip of his peninsula a fiery land of geysers and hot, spitting mud. And Astralis wrapped a whole coast in eternal fog — you cannot see the hand in front of your face.
c. 1,000 years before year zero, and the end of the Age. One day a shape rose out of Star Lake — humanoid, though there were no humanoids yet, silver, with no face and no sex: Astralis’s avatar. Atlas raised two enormous cliffs with a gap between them, and the sea ran in to fill an inland sea between the two peaks — The Twins. Sylvanus made the far end of the world hilly and bitterly cold — snow, ice, the pole: the Frozen North (the silver avatar wandered there and was snowed on). Svarog carved the Badlands — razor-sharp limestone karst where ancient rivers washed everything soft away, leaving blades of stone, pits and sinkholes; an avatar can cross it, ordinary folk barely. Astralis fixed the sky above Star Lake: always clear; nothing can cloud it, only wind. Atlas raised a near-perfect ring of mountain (he drew the circle drunk) with, instead of a summit, a rift holding a deep lake at enormous height — the Left Eye of Atlas (the Right Eye is an earlier work of his). Sylvanus set a small island of beautiful forest far in the north-west: Nyravel. Svarog set mountains and a glacier above a great north-western bay — the Svarog Glacier, melting for years now from a warmth out of the north, pouring hundreds of streams into rivers and tarns and calving bergs into the sea; it may be what carved the bay. Then, as Astralis walked his coloured shore, strange beings came out of the sea: where the lower half of a skull should be, tentacles; skin iridescent like the inside of a shell; few, and reproducing by rituals not even they fully understand. Other races call them the Trenchborn. They are evil. Their order, Echoes of the Void, senses that sound, dance and colour together can reach their ancestors — whatever that means — but does not yet know how. Atlas raised walls of almost perfectly flat stone from the ground, as if someone had built a natural fortress the size of a country, with natural gates and arches — The First Fortress. Sylvariel moved among the elves: a party of Explorers who reached a far place turned inward and became secluded xenophobes — evil — who want only to be left alone: The Last Tide. And along the fog-bound coast Svarog raised the Misty Mountains, which fall sheer into the sea like Velebit; no great city will ever stand there.
So ended the First Age.
The Second Age — The Coming of the Races
It began as the First Age did: with a stone from the sky. But this time it was catastrophe. Svarog dropped a smaller meteor (some two megatons) on the First Fortress at the very moment the dwarves were migrating into it, and blew it open with terrible loss; an entire dwarven order that had split off to go ahead was wiped out. The dwarves remember it as their great wound, the one that only hardened them. The Time Keepers would later date all time from this: year zero is the falling star that landed far in the west with a great roar. Then the gods went looking for worshippers. Astralis concluded that the only way to multiply the faithful was to do the opposite of everything he’d made so far: the most basic, featureless beings — but many, who breed easily and gladly and spread. They named themselves Humans: neutral, born on the Great Plains along the River of Life, their first order one of pure survival and peace — The Cradle — having met no one yet. Atlas made the Centaurs on the Eternal Steppe, which is perfect for riding: neutral nomads, but with a small evil order of priests, The Purebred, who hold that the union of beast and man makes them superior to every other race. Then Sylvanus changed the world: in four places floating crystals appeared in the air, and in time the races will learn that these are what fuels magic. Magic had entered the world. And Sylvanus founded a first city for his secluded elves: Nerathis.
The years around year 100 were the busiest yet. Svarog’s avatar founded Cinderforge, the Fire Genasi city on the northern island. Astralis went among Atlas’s centaurs and made The Time Keepers: a women-led order who found that by watching the sky they could align their cycles and rituals — and who, watching the night sky, drew the first maps of the world and made the first calendars. The dwarves left the Bronze Age: they learned to meld magic from the crystals with star metal, becoming smiths whose creations blend the two. Out of the Frozen North Sylvanus brought the Ice Giants — good healers — whose order, The Hands of Elyndra, learned through the crystal there to channel healing magic. The Fire Genasi, living among geysers and steam vents, discovered engineering and invented steam power. In Fungorn Astralis raised a new people from the mixing of dwarf explorers and Trenchborn explorers: short and stout, with bearded tentacles — the Deepkin — whose shamans, The Bent Eye, eat the mushrooms and build non-Euclidean structures no one has yet seen; the story goes that whoever sees one goes absolutely insane. Atlas made the Lizardmen in Sylvanus’s jungles on the southern island: evil, wholly tribal, ruled by Atlas’s First — the nobles, each of whom became so by killing every sibling from his own clutch of eggs. Sylvariel slipped among the lizardmen and founded a sect of usurpers of magic who want every crystal for their sons: The Arcane Fang. Svarog founded, in Cinderforge, The Cinderwing Cartel — Fire Genasi who build steam-driven airships and set out to explore the world. Astralis founded, among the water elves, The Astral Chord: they discovered that the special bamboo, bent and poured just so, gives tones so beautiful they stun any listener not used to them; the instruments must be made in complete silence, and the notes were learned by watching the stars. Atlas’s Talus raised a wonder in Kharag Duun: the Magical Forge, fed with magma from the mountain’s depths. And Svarog commanded his Cartel to build a vast trade network across the continent — and to see off any competition.
c. year 200. On the southern island Sylvanus gave the lizardfolk a “city” — not a city but a chain of jungle villages, a civilisation of the Amazon. The Cinderwing Cartel, trading far and wide, came to the island that sits amid the ice floes bridging Jungle Island and the mainland, where a splinter arose: after a mutiny on an airship they renounced fire, embraced ice, and lost their cinder to the cold — the Frost Genasi, on bad terms with the Cartel’s centre. Astralis had the centaurs beat roads across the world, marking their progress with waystations — highways that will outlast a thousand years, with bridges where rivers were hard to cross; the roads pull them toward particular places (one called Starlight, one the swamp country where they found an ink for longer-lasting maps, one far away from which no one has yet returned), and in places the road simply stops and vanishes. Atlas made a second avatar: out of the sands of the Obsidian Desert an empty suit of obsidian plate stood up — The Doombringer (later called the Hollow Knight). Then Sylvanus closed the sky: The Skybreak, magical storms that prevent all flying travel — the knowledge is not lost, but nothing may fly. Svarog raised the Goblins out of the cliffs of the Twins — evil raiders whose priests are The Marrow Munchers. Atlas raised the Orcs in the desert — living for glory and war, with their order of warriors, The Sandborn. And Sylvanus opened the Underdark.
Around year 300 — the Void Glance. Astralis opened a ley-line portal — a brief glimpse into the void, felt across the whole world. Its epicentre was near the Twins, and everyone close to it was marked by how they met it. Those within the crater’s radius simply ceased, taken into a cosmic horror that left nothing to bury. Those who watched it with their own eyes lived, but carry ever after a sickness the world would name the Void Glance: they see everything in broken, multidimensional angles no one else can follow. And those far enough that the event reached them as sound alone — among them a band of humans — found patterns in what they had heard and set those patterns down as hymns: dissonant, terrible choral music that stops a listener where they stand. They became The Star Chorus, and their mission is to teach it to anyone who wishes to learn. The goblins, whose mountains lie nearby, were simply among those caught — nothing special marks them out. When it was over, the epicentre had been left as a crater in the shape of a five-pointed star — not a star itself, but bearing its shape, as Star Lake does. World’s Breach, far to the west, was untouched by it. Elsewhere in those years: Atlas advanced the orcs into masters of war beasts; Sylvanus purified the centaurs — they are now good; Svarog made the Skjaldborg in the sea; Atlas raised an army in the south-eastern desert; Sylvanus founded Greenhaven on the River of Life, mostly human; Svarog corrupted Nerathis; Atlas founded Coldspire in the cold north, stone and ice on a raised hill, though for which people is not known; and Sylvanus advanced Nerathis into a shipyard — warships of doom, for the secluded elves mean to rule the seas.
c. year 400. Astralis’s second avatar appeared in the centre of the continent — Karros, a good dwarf, riding the centaur Kassander — and began to act. Atlas made the Harpies in the south of Sky Spear — winged bird-women, good — with their order, the Sisters of Battle. Sylvanus made a second avatar: Elyndra the Ice Angel, female, good. Svarog founded a human order, The Flaming Fist — good, and yes, founded by the god of chaos; no one knows why. Astralis founded Heart of the Plains, the human city. Atlas founded the orcs’ War Camps in the Obsidian Desert. Sylvanus founded Selvaruun, the City of Scholars, on Elaruun. Svarog commanded the humans to found Glaive Port on the eastern lake. Astralis advanced Greenhaven — the central city — with history and writing, and Atlas built a Library there. Sylvanus founded a human order of Settlers (good) to find a site for a sister city. And Svarog advanced Glaive Port into a defensive fortress.
c. year 500, the Second Age’s last years. Some hundred years remained before the Age closed. Atlas saw the centaur roads crowded and the sky closed, and filled the gap with a people who belong nowhere and everywhere: the Halflings, small nomad traders of the roads, neutral, and among them the Knotted Purse, an order of moneylenders. Sylvanus made the south-eastern desert grow crystals — small, obsidian-like, born of hot sand and dry air, that amplify magic; the first mines opened and they became very valuable. And the gods admitted that the four great crystals are not all of them: there are six, and where the other two lie no one knows — not even the gods. Glaive Port, the nearest walled city to the new mines and to the orcs, raised an army (Svarog). Astralis raised the Spider People in the southern mountains: some centaur-like on a spider’s body, some humanoid with extra eyes, ranked by how truly spider they are. They click and build vast silk webs; their order, the Threadspinners (Svirači na nitima), plays silk strings to speak and to pass on knowledge. The Doombringer raised the orcs a second army. Elyndra readied the Ice Giants — a defensive army of ramparts and self-defence. Svarog sent the grounded Cinderwing Cartel a prophecy: one of the two lost crystals governs portals, and they were to learn everything of portals, other dimensions and time. Then he made them masters of it: they found that shards of the first meteor — the one that made World’s Breach — make portal magic far stronger nearby, and that far from the shards it is almost impossible. Nobody knows what the meteor was. Astralis bound humans and centaurs in the Eternal Alliance, signed in the central city for shared prosperity and defence, and Atlas gave it a new, good sub-race of his centaurs: shapeshifting centaurs, who by ritual and magic can take human form for a while. He founded among them the Order of the Eternal Peace, sworn to keep the alliance from ever breaking, by any means necessary. In Glaive Port, in a time of fear, the ruler gathered pirates, prisoners and the worst scum of the docks into the Branded — necks burned black with hot tar — who defend the city’s river and sea by the dirtiest means there are: fire-ships full of people rammed into the enemy, plague corpses over the walls (Astralis). Atlas’s Stone Talus founded a city where the roads cross the river, with no walls at all: the Bazaar, one enormous market where halflings, centaurs, humans, giants and dwarves trade and caravans leave in every direction. Sylvariel founded the Elf Outpost on the coast between the jungle’s edge and the mountains. And Svarog had the Frost Genasi give up their igloos and build a real city on their island.
So ended the Second Age.
The Third Age — The Age of War
The First Age lasted some six thousand years, the Second some six hundred; the Third some fifty years. It was an age of armies.
c. year 600 — the fall of Glaive Port. The Last Tide, with their warships, raided every settlement along the rich northern shores and took a foothold (Sylvanus). The Genasi raised an army as the elven ships sailed past their island (Svarog). Karros and Kassander raised an army in Heart of the Plains (Astralis); the Order of the Eternal Peace, through the Stone Talus, called humans and centaurs to arms in Greenhaven (Atlas). Sylvariel built the Twin City to control the pass between two mountains — a fortress that exists only to make soldiers, where everyone in the region serves a year on the wall; elves mostly, and some humans. The goblins, walled out, sent their boldest to dig: the Marrow Munchers, smeared in slime from the fallen star as war paint, turned the mountains to Swiss cheese — raiding parties can pass, armies cannot (Svarog). Then the Doombringer, now called the Hollow Knight, led two orc armies and their war beasts against Glaive Port, and took it. No massacre, no pillage: curfew, martial law, a trading city still trading, its defenders gone partisan. It became the heart of a Great Orkish Empire in the making (Atlas). Elyndra answered by founding among the Ice Giants a good order for a counter-offensive, the Purifiers of Evil (Sylvanus). But the occupiers found city life better than the desert, and their ruling caste rotted into brutes (Astralis corrupted the city). The orcs who had stayed in the desert said that is not the way: they gathered the magic crystals of the sands and fused them into a great obelisk in their central war camp, the Final End (Atlas). And Sylvanus bound corrupted Glaive Port to the Last Tide in an Evil Alliance — the city, not the orcish race.
c. year 610. Among Glaive Port’s refugees in other cities rose a fanatical order of vengeful paladins, a god of suffering at its heart, recruiting among the poor — the only good orc is a dead orc. It believes itself the ultimate good and is, in practice, evil (Svarog). On the Last Tide’s island, generations of inbreeding cost the elves a whole generation’s shipbuilding — their raiders are small fast boats of twenty, and for a while there will be no new ones (Astralis). Sylvanus raised the Tree of Life on the plains just east of the meteor bay, the Gorge of the Titans’ sea mouth: a vast tree in a Lothlórien forest, the land around it fertile, and the strongest healing magic in the world. The Hollow Knight, disgusted that his war had decayed into corruption, abandoned the orcs and went to the harpies; the Sisters of Battle became holy warriors, sworn to fight injustice everywhere (Atlas). Elyndra led the Healers and the Purifiers to liberate Glaive Port and was decisively defeated. Her army was destroyed and she escaped; the pursuers burned part of the mushroom forest, the river was rerouted and the lake began to dry, and the battlefield became the Corpse Field of the Ice Giants (Sylvanus). The siege had lasted six or seven years; the giants had frozen the lake, fishing and trade died, and Glaive Port fell to cannibalism — Svarog’s avatar corrupted it again. Atlas founded an order of samaritans, of many races and bound to no city, who give up their possessions to help wherever there is ruin: the Shepherds. Sylvanus’s elves found the Tree and hid a city around it, known to no race: the Grove. Astralis allied the water elves and the Spider People — a Switzerland, both neutral, trading sea-lore for the paths through the Misty Mountains. The dwarves, idle for five centuries — since the Bazaar rose, c. year 500, selling star metal there —, looked at the chaos, declared themselves the first and best of races, and walled Kharag Duun twice over: the Great Wall (Atlas). And Atlas made the Bazaar untouchable — neutral forever, selling bread and bedrolls to every army; no one fights inside it and no one wants to destroy it.
c. year 620 — the Great Battle. Out of the burned mushroom forest spread a fungal plague: sterility in the acute phase, death untreated, passed by blood and saliva; worst in Glaive Port, then the Bazaar, then the island. The mushroom-folk, who breed by spores, are immune, and scholars think it the fungi’s own defence (Svarog). Heart of the Plains raised the Ballista Tower — too big to aim, with a range of half the continent (Astralis) — and the harpies founded Divine Strike to spot for it from the air (Atlas). Elyndra, wounded, built a city on the coast below the forest of peace; what remained of the Ice Giants withdrew to Coldspire, now rare, with few healers left. Glaive Port raised a third army, the Elf Outpost founded an order of marines for war at sea, and the dwarves raised an army of their own. The Grove turned to magical defence — no walls, but a forest that shifts and scouts who walk in circles, spreading as small strange places rather than growing (Sylvanus). Famine came to Glaive Port as the fungus took livestock, fish and crops, and a fourth army rose. Astralis gave the Fire Genasi the Ember Dancers, a sect of dual-wielding blade dancers. The Grove raised an army of water druids. Then Glaive Port’s four armies marched south for bread, against the Grove: the Great Battle of the Third Age. The druids confused them, their generals vanished — eaten by fungus or by trees — and with the Spider People they drove them out; the forest swallowed them. Fewer than half died. The rest scattered as bandits and marauders across a devastated wasteland, and the Grove survived, wounded. (The Fall of Glaive Port counts as the first great battle of the Age; this, the second.)
c. year 630 — the Shattering. The dead of the battlefield rose: the plague made them fungal zombies, mindless and leaderless, in every stage of decay (Astralis). The lizardmen took up arms (Sylvanus). In Glaive Port a leper healed himself and began to heal others — Malakai the Messenger, Svarog’s avatar. Karros and Kassander led the armies of Heart of the Plains and Greenhaven against the water elves on their land; it ended even, and became a standing War Zone where humans and centaurs fight elves without end. The Hollow Knight raised a second lizardman army (Atlas). Sylvanus sent the lizardmen through the Underdark against the Tree; the Grove’s misdirection held, its assassins killed their chiefs, and the lizardmen turned on each other. The Hollow Knight built them a second war camp, and they split into two warring factions around the Underdark mouth. Malakai founded the Mycomancers — humans, orcs, anyone — who command the fungal dead; they became Glaive Port’s ruling class, and the dead now patrol its streets without harming anyone (Svarog). The Deepkin, true mushroom-folk, raised an army, since raising corpses with fungus is a travesty and it was their forest that burned (Astralis). Then Atlas, disgusted that war had become druids and misdirection instead of steel on steel, poured all his power into breaking magic itself. One great crystal shattered — the one on the Last Tide’s island, chosen, it is said, by chance — and the rest cracked. The cracks are still spreading, slowly, like sand through an hourglass; one day there may be no magic left. The surge ran across the whole continent, and plants, beasts and everything living twisted into monstrosities. The world had no ogres before; now it does. Magic survives, but the nearer the broken crystal, the wilder it gets. Sylvariel decided the elves could no longer stay apart, and raised a water elf army against the lizardmen. Svarog, delighted by the chaos and annoyed not to understand it, founded the Mages’ Guild at the Bazaar, to study magic, write it all down, and buy up crystal shards, meteor fragments and curiosities. And the Stone Talus raised another dwarf army.
c. year 640, and the end. Malakai raised Glaive Port a defensive army. Astralis, angry that Atlas would suppress magic, struck him in the eye: the Left Eye of Atlas collapsed on one side and its waters flooded the War Zone into swamp. The armies stopped knowing friend from foe, and men who had been killing each other hauled each other out of the quicksand. The dwarves, seeing humans become the dominant race, marched with the Stone Talus and took Greenhaven as its wardens — no massacre, nothing else changed (Atlas). Sylvanus hid a Lost City of Knowledge and History somewhere in the former desert: empty, dangerous, perhaps haunted, perhaps guarded by old machines. Its keepers recorded the whole unabridged history of the world, and it may know where the lost crystals are; no one in the world knows where it is. Ardora had Cinderforge’s scholars ring their cracking crystal with Pillars of Magic Harnessing, tall coils that catch the leaking magic and feed it to the city (Svarog). The Deepkin laid siege to Glaive Port, and it held: a siege without end (Astralis). Elyndra gathered an army to open a front against the lizardmen. Zombified Mycomancer agents slipped out of besieged Glaive Port in disguise to found Mycomancer cells that work in secret in other cities (Svarog). The dwarves became master diplomats, taught in their schools (Atlas). Elyndra and the water elves together took the Jungle Island’s Underdark mouth, and the lizardmen were broken but not destroyed (Sylvanus). The elves, who had always had it easy, grew arrogant and decadent, trampling the weak — the whole civilisation was corrupted (Svarog). Karros and Kassander came home from the front, found the dwarves ruling Greenhaven, and turned them to the honourable way (Astralis). But Atlas raised among those same dwarves a ruling caste, the Magisters, who now hold that dwarves are not only the first race but the best, and will do anything to stay in power. And the Age ended as it began, with a meteor. Svarog, god of chaos, let it fall where chaos chose, and it struck the mountain slopes beside the Ballista’s city and tore the glaciers off the highest peaks on the continent. The earthquake and mudslides broke the city, buried armies, made another swamp and a crater-lake, and cracked the Ballista. Sky Spear’s ancient ice split and drained, and the mountain is now porous — tunnels and caverns open where none were, and who knows what lives in them (Svarog).
Every Age begins and ends with the fall of a meteor of unknown origin.
— So things stand. The campaign begins at the Bazaar. —
3 · The world at the end of the Third Age
Where things stand as the campaign opens — a few months to a year after the last meteor.
- The Bazaar — neutral and untouchable, the one safe crossroads left, drowning in refugees. The Mages’ Guild buys shards and curiosities here, the Knotted Purse lends money, and the plague has already been through. The campaign starts here.
- Glaive Port — mostly human; orcs the nominal rulers, the Mycomancers the real ones, through religion. The fungal dead patrol the streets. Besieged without end by the Deepkin. The Branded still hold its waters. Malakai lives here, and its four armies went out and died.
- The Wasteland east of the Grove, along the road into the desert — Glaive Port’s scattered armies turned bandit, and fungal zombies rising from the battlefield.
- The War Zone — the swamp where the Left Eye of Atlas broke; humans and centaurs against water elves, forever.
- Greenhaven — dwarf-ruled; purified to the honourable way by Karros and Kassander, yet governed by the Magisters. Which wins remains to be seen.
- Jungle Island — the lizardmen split in two and at war with each other; the island’s war camps still stand, and the elves hold its Underdark mouth; across the water the remnants of the two armies that went through the Underdark camp at the mainland mouth, fighting each other.
- The Last Tide’s island — the shattered crystal. Wild magic and monstrosities; a decadent, corrupted elf navy that can’t build new ships for a generation.
- Cinderforge — harnessing its cracked crystal with pillars; the Cartel grounded, chasing portals and meteor shards.
- Kharag Duun — walled twice over, full of diplomats and star metal.
- Sky Spear — suddenly porous, with tunnels open that no one has walked.
- Everywhere — monstrosities; Mycomancer cells hidden in the cities; the cracks in the crystals slowly spreading.
4 · Magic, meteors and time
- Six great crystals fuel all magic, one per school. Four are known: Elaruun (the dragon’s island, behind the winds) · the Last Tide’s island — shattered · the Frozen North near Coldspire — cracked · Cinderforge — cracked, now ringed by the Pillars of Magic Harnessing. Two are lost — no one knows where, not even the gods. One of them governs portals. The Lost City may know. Which school belongs to which crystal is not known.
- The cracks are spreading, like sand through an hourglass. Magic survives, but grows wilder the nearer you come to the broken crystal, and the surge twisted living things into monstrosities across the continent.
- Desert crystals — small, obsidian-like, grown in the south-eastern sands; they amplify magic and are mined. The desert orcs fused a great many into the obelisk called the Final End.
- Portals — possible only near shards of the first meteor (World’s Breach); nearly impossible elsewhere. The Cartel has mastered them. The second meteor’s site (the First Fortress) has not been investigated.
- Meteors — every Age begins and ends with the fall of a meteor of unknown origin. Three have fallen: World’s Breach (Age I), the First Fortress (Age II), the Ballista’s mountain (end of Age III).
- The Skybreak — magical storms close the sky; nothing flies.
- Time — years are counted from year zero, the fall of the second meteor on the First Fortress. The First Age lasted some 6,000 years before it; the Second some 600 years after it; the Third about fifty years, ended by the third meteor c. year 650.
- No moon yet, so no tides.
5 · Peoples
| People | Creator | Home | Alignment | Orders & sects | Now |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dwarves (“Children of Stone”) | Atlas | Kharag Duun, inside Sky Spear | Neutral | The Stone Defenders; the Magisters (evil ruling caste, Greenhaven) | Magic + star-metal smiths; the Great Wall; master diplomats; rule Greenhaven |
| Fire Genasi | Svarog | Ardor / Cinderforge, northern island | Evil (“like the Fire Nation”) | Ardora’s First; the Cinderwing Cartel (grounded; portal masters); the Ember Dancers (dual-blade dancers) | Steam engineering; harnessing their cracked crystal |
| Frost Genasi (sub-race) | Svarog | The island amid the ice floes between Jungle Island and the mainland | — | Splinter of the Cartel | Built a real city |
| Water Elves | Sylvanus | Sylmara; the Elf Outpost; the Grove | Corrupted — decadent (the druids’ stance unknown) | The Explorers; the Last Tide (evil, xenophobic); the Astral Chord; marines (Elf Outpost); water druids (the Grove) | War Zone; foothold on the north shores; Underdark mouth on Jungle Island; lost a generation of shipbuilding |
| Trenchborn | Astralis | The coloured shore | Evil | Echoes of the Void | Mysterious |
| Humans | Astralis | The Great Plains and everywhere | Neutral | The Cradle; the Star Chorus; the Flaming Fist (good); the Settlers (good); the Mages’ Guild; the Mycomancers (evil, Glaive Port); the vengeful paladins (evil in practice) | Most numerous; the dominant city-builders |
| Centaurs | Atlas | The Eternal Steppe | Good | The Purebred (evil supremacists); the Time Keepers | The roads; the Eternal Alliance with humans |
| Shapeshifting centaurs (sub-race) | Atlas | The alliance’s lands | Good | The Order of the Eternal Peace (Atlas’s) | Can take human form for a while |
| Ice Giants | Sylvanus | The Frozen North; Coldspire | Good | The Hands of Elyndra; the Purifiers of Evil | Broken at Glaive Port; now rare, withdrawn to Coldspire |
| Lizardmen | Atlas | Jungle Island | Evil | Atlas’s First (sibling-killers); the Arcane Fang | Split into two warring factions; lost one Underdark mouth |
| Deepkin (dwarf × Trenchborn) | Astralis | Fungorn | — | The Bent Eye | Immune to the plague; besieging Glaive Port |
| Goblins | Svarog | The Twins | Evil | The Marrow Munchers | Tunnels through the mountains; raiders |
| Orcs | Atlas | The Obsidian Desert | Desert orcs: good but fanatical · Glaive Port orcs: corrupted | The Sandborn | Took Glaive Port and rotted there; their four armies died; the desert keeps the Final End |
| Skjaldborg | Svarog | The sea | Good | Keepers of the sacred starfish | Hundred-year metamorphosis into shore-wrecking monsters |
| Harpies | Atlas | South of Sky Spear | Good | Sisters of Battle; Divine Strike | Holy warriors against injustice, with the Hollow Knight |
| Halflings | Atlas | The roads | Neutral | The Knotted Purse (moneylenders) | Nomad traders; everywhere |
| Spider People | Astralis | The southern (Misty) mountains | — | The Threadspinners | Allied with the water elves; helped save the Grove |
The Skjaldborg. Sentient crabs of extraordinary hardness who worship and farm a single species of starfish and live on the algae that grows around them. Every hundred years, when the stars align, some of them shed their shells and swell into vast maddened things — near-impenetrable carapaces, tentacles, extra eyes and mouths — and come ashore to destroy everything in their path.
6 · Cities & wonders
| Name | People | Where | Now |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Bazaar | Everyone | Where the roads cross the river (B) | Untouchable neutral market. Campaign start |
| Kharag Duun | Dwarves | Inside Sky Spear | The Magical Forge; the Great Wall |
| Greenhaven | Humans; dwarf-ruled | The River of Life | History & writing; the Library; the Magisters; purified by Karros |
| Heart of the Plains | Humans | The Great Plains | The Ballista Tower — cracked by the last meteor; the city broken by quake and mudslides |
| Glaive Port | Humans, orcs | The eastern lake | Orc-occupied, Mycomancer-ruled, besieged |
| Cinderforge | Fire Genasi | The northern volcano island | The Pillars of Magic Harnessing |
| Nerathis | The Last Tide | Nyravel, the forested island far north-west | Warships of doom; its crystal is shattered |
| Selvaruun | Water Elves | Elaruun | The City of Scholars |
| The Twin City | Elves, some humans | The pass between two mountains | A fortress that exists to make soldiers |
| The Elf Outpost | Water Elves | Coast between the jungle and the mountains (EO) | Marines |
| The Grove | Water Elves | Around the Tree of Life (T) | Hidden; magical misdirection; water druids |
| Elyndra’s coastal city | — | Coast below the forest of peace | — |
| Coldspire | Ice Giants (remnant) | The cold north | Refuge of the last giants |
| Frost Genasi city | Frost Genasi | Their island | — |
| Jungle villages; War Camps 1 & 2 | Lizardmen | Jungle Island; the two armies’ remnants at the mainland Underdark mouth | Two warring factions |
| The War Camps | Orcs | The Obsidian Desert | No armies left; metal; the Final End |
| The Lost City of Knowledge and History | — | Somewhere in the former desert | Hidden; the gods know where |
| The Centaur Roads | Centaurs | Across the continent | Wonders; waystations; bridges |
| The Tree of Life | — | The plains below the meteor bay | Strongest healing magic in the world |
7 · Gazetteer
Atlas — the Hand of Atlas · Sky Spear Mountain (now porous) · the Breach Falls · the Perpetual Tempest, the Right Eye · the Left Eye (collapsed; the War Zone swamp) · the Eternal Steppe and its hills · the Obsidian Desert (ground-obsidian sand) · the River of Life · the Twins · the First Fortress · the Bazaar.
Svarog — World’s Breach · the Slithering River · the Sea of Ice, the warm sea and Long Harbour · Ardor · Fungorn (partly burned) · Black Mesa · the fiery land · the Badlands · the Svarog Glacier · the Misty Mountains · the goblin tunnels · the last meteor’s crater-lake and swamp.
Sylvanus — the Sylmara Archipelago: Elaruun, Nyravel (with Nerathis) · the splitting mountains · the second delta · the Gorge of the Titans · Jungle Island · the mountain lakes and great delta · the Frozen North · the Underdark · the Tree of Life and the Grove · the Twin City · the Elf Outpost · the Lost City · the Corpse Field.
Astralis — Star Lake and its clear skies · the bamboo · the Obsidian Spires · the tar-pit swamp · the Coloured Sands · the earth-organ vents · Star Metal · the Marble Mountains · the Great Plains · the Eternal Fog · the Void Glance crater near the Twins.
8 · Events & catastrophes
| When | Event | By |
|---|---|---|
| c. 6,000 years before year zero | The first meteor — World’s Breach | Svarog |
| c. 3,000 years before year zero | The Talus shattered → the Dwarves · Ardor erupts → the Fire Genasi | Atlas · Svarog |
| Year zero | The second meteor blows open the First Fortress. Year zero | Svarog |
| Soon after year zero | Magic enters the world — the crystals | Sylvanus |
| c. year 200 | The Skybreak — nothing flies | Sylvanus |
| c. year 300 | The Void Glance — a glimpse into the void, near the Twins | Astralis |
| c. year 500 | Desert crystals; the two lost crystals revealed to exist | Sylvanus |
| c. year 600 | The Fall of Glaive Port — the first great battle | Atlas |
| c. year 610 | Inbreeding costs the Last Tide a generation of shipbuilding | Astralis |
| c. year 610 | The Tree of Life | Sylvanus |
| c. year 610 | Elyndra’s defeat at Glaive Port — the Corpse Field; cannibalism in the city | Sylvanus · Svarog |
| c. year 620 | The fungal plague | Svarog |
| c. year 620 | Famine in Glaive Port | Svarog |
| c. year 620 | The Great Battle of the Third Age — the Wasteland | Svarog vs Sylvanus |
| c. year 630 | Fungal zombies rise | Astralis |
| c. year 630 | The War Zone — an endless stalemate | Astralis vs Sylvanus |
| c. year 630 | The Shattering — one crystal broken, the rest cracked; monstrosities | Atlas |
| c. year 640 | The Left Eye of Atlas collapses — the War Zone floods to swamp | Astralis |
| c. year 640 | The Lost City hidden | Sylvanus |
| c. year 640 | The siege of Glaive Port — endless | Astralis vs Svarog |
| c. year 640 | The water elves corrupted into decadence | Svarog |
| c. year 650 | The third meteor — quake, mudslides, the Ballista cracked, Sky Spear porous. End of the Third Age | Svarog |