The Story Thus Far
Part 1: Awakening (Adventures 1–5)
The story began in the small Strykaran village of Cyrinth. The Harrowguard and Shadowbinder Vorek came to town and discovered that a young man, Nulk, carried magical potential. By the Sovereign’s law, they claimed him. That same night a statue at the center of town exploded and loosed an ancient voidreaver, the Ender of Days, and in the chaos Nulk fled.
The party was drawn into a voidscar, a wound in the world where reality fails, and fought their way through it. During the ordeal Donnil healed the wounded without knowing how. None of the Harrowguard survived. Shadowbinder Vorek did, and rather than take the group prisoner, he told them to go north. They went.
On the road they crossed a murderer who turned out to be a boy possessed through a wooden ring. The boy died and Donnil took the ring. They learned they were being hunted by dreadhusk, the villagers of Cyrinth transformed into monsters by the Ender of Days. A long pursuit ended at the city of Alder, where the party crossed a great river and escaped. Moving on, they met a Cyrinth survivor named Mir, and when they strayed too near the Plateau of Wyrk they were captured and taken to Wyrkspire.
Part 2: The Shard of Creation (Adventures 6–8)
In Wyrkspire the party found an underground resistance and aided it: they rescued a boy, sheltered its members, and when Shadowbinder Vorek Dravyn was disgraced and sentenced to die, they rescued him too.
Taken to the Veil Sanctorum, they escaped west into the Echoing Crest mountains, sheltered for weeks in the village of Varnholv, and faced the mountains’ horrors, including a hundred-foot giant. They fled into tunnels beneath the peaks and emerged onto a high plateau, where they found the Sanctum of Eternal Vigil and the monks who guarded the Shard of Creation. The party took the artifact and used its power to drive off the voidreaver Kane. Donnil began to see himself as a prophet of the Twin Gods.
Part 3: Tsar Noar (Adventure 9)
The party escaped Strykara at last and entered the green lands of Gallance. In the village of Perenne they found a demon at work, pulling the town into the nightmare realm of Tsar Noar. Trapped there for months, they witnessed the birth of the Headless Horseman and fought many evils before escaping back to Veylantia with hundreds of refugees. They turned southwest, toward Lumiere.
Part 4: Syvren (Adventures 10–13)
The march to Lumiere drew the constant assault of the Covenant, servants of Morithal led by the voidreavers Eclis and Sable. Unknown to the party, the scattered monks of the Sanctum had begun proclaiming Donnil across the world as the reborn Twin God Syvren.
They dined with Duchess Adrienne de Roussilac at Chateau Tear and discovered its paintings were prisons holding thousands; they freed the captives, fulfilling a prophecy of Syvren’s coming. In Rosemont, Nulk recovered a lost magical relic, a glove called the Sentinel. At last they reached the capital, Lumiere, where Donnil proclaimed himself Syvren and threw the city into chaos. Factions formed for and against him. Arch Prelate Laurent Chevalier set himself against Donnil; Queen Celestine sided with him. The radical Pyrric faction was born in fire. When Chevalier’s attempt to execute Donnil failed, the party uncovered the truth beneath the chaos: Eclis and Sable had engineered all of it to hide their plan to turn Lumiere into a voidscar. The party killed the twins and restored peace, and hundreds of umbral swore fealty to Donnil.
Part 5: A Paladin is Born (Adventures 14–17)
The Shadowbinders stole Donnil’s divine power and the Prism of Creation. The party reopened the Infinite Road and infiltrated the Veil Sanctorum, where they were forced to choose between recovering the Prism and saving their old companion Bria. They chose Bria. This was the test of compassion.
Guided by Syvren, they followed Thomas into Pelegor and saw a red dragon burn Maphenar. Seeking a way to wake the still-dormant Donnil, they sailed aboard Virelion’s Grace, survived a kraken and a dragon turtle, and weathered a near-mutiny when Nulk raised the fallen sailors and declared himself Vaelith. They reached the Isle of the Weeping Crown and claimed the Reliquary of Tears. This was the trial of obedience.
A fog carried them to Mirevale, a village trapped in Tsar Noar’s curse. Beneath its smiling faces lay the Chorus Husk, the Healer in the gold mask, and the rising Seam. The party killed the Healer and escaped as Mirevale was consumed.
They returned to find Gallance in civil war, three claimants besieging Lumiere and Queen Celestine compromised by magic. Donnil was anointed with the Tears and restored in body, though not yet awakened in power. After hearing each claimant, the party threw its support behind Duke Bastien Virelais, ending the d’Aurelle line and reshaping the realm. This was the test of wisdom.
Part 6: At Time’s End (Adventures so far)
The climb and the tear. The party traveled Pilgrim’s Way to the summit of Mt. Archia, seeking a divine seed stolen from Syvren. At the peak they found the shadowbinder Ylkran Drosvek suspended and barely alive, the seed floating between his open hands, and above him a black scar in the world that drank all light. They approached, and the scar pulled them in. All of them, save Sōn, who was left alone on the mountaintop.
Arrival at the end of time. The party was flung into a place of fire and ruin: Dawn’s Basin, the home of the luminar, ages hence, the sky an inferno and the whole vast structure dying. Some companions were gone (Sōn and Usef did not come through), and others stood in their place: Syvren, returned, and a stranger named Dolon, who spoke of an assault by the voidreaver Rashenar and his army, the Fractured. A message met them, seemingly recorded long ago.
The Philori Span. They found Dawn’s Basin overrun by Vurnaki, monstrous beings of molten rock and metal who had invaded to destroy it. Learning that the Philori Span helped hold back the Great Furnace (the sun), they chose not merely to cross but to purge the invaders and repair what they could. In a communications room, Nulk sent a message left unsent by a dead luminar named Bosol, and received a reply from a figure called the Architect. The reply warned that two of the Enemy walked the station: Rashenar, who moves through time, and a second, hidden. The party cleared the Span and restored it, then sought the Architect again, unsatisfied.
The Vault of the Made. Seeking proof of their strange tale, the party diverted to the Vault of the Made. There they learned the deepest secret of the luminar: they are a created people called Prismar, made rather than born, waking fully grown and taught in weeks. Every luminar who ever lived is recorded in the Vault, along with the names of their makers. On the oldest records, one maker’s name has been deliberately scrubbed from all history. In the Vault the party found Sōn, stored away after some past encounter with the Architect, and woke him.
The Architect, and the truth beneath the name. With Sōn returned, the party pressed to confront the Architect. Rashenar’s Fractured ambushed them as they left the Vault; they cut through and crossed the dying station to reach him, only to find him bound to his post and answering with riddles. Frustrated, they turned toward escape by sunwing through the Hall of the Sun, but Sōn pointed out a nearby chamber: the Architect’s workshop. Inside, the party learned the truth. The Architect is not who the luminar believe. He is Dr. Moor Ethal, and the man the luminar revere as the Architect, Mason Calder, is long dead. Moor took his identity. The discovery unlocked a memory in Sōn of a grave he had once found, confirming it. Among the workshop’s papers the party recovered a fragment of Moor’s notes describing a lattice that freezes ruptured regions of the world into permanent, changeless stasis.
Escape. With Dawn’s Basin breaking apart around them, the party seized what data crystals they could and fled. In the Hall of the Sun they found a sunwing and escaped moments before the station cracked and fell into the Great Furnace. Caius took the controls and brought them down toward the planet. From high above, the truth of the world came into view: Veylantia is now almost entirely voidscar, only a handful of regions left untouched. The party descends toward a dead world, carrying hard questions and a heavy suspicion, uncertain how, or whether, they can ever return home.