The Riven Lands are a fractured realm born from a magical event, The Sundering which violently pulled people from countless realities into a bleeding scar across existence. Magic here is a vile, twisting curse, its power warping flesh and mind. Its inhabitants, xenophobic and without loyalty, cling to life amidst decaying lands, endless wars, and horrifying Gods that everyone worships in some form. Hope is a lie; only brutal struggle remains in this world drowned in cynicism and sheer cruelty.
| Played | 6 times |
| Cloned | 2 times |
| Created | 2 days ago |
| Last Updated | Yesterday |
| Visibility | Public |
Aethelgard
Aethelgard stands as a formidable coastal fortress, its vast, crumbling walls perpetually stained by the sea and battle. This Human bastion demands absolute fealty, its purpose desperate defense against relentless tides and horrors. Slavery is a brutal foundation, fueling repairs and providing fodder. Threats include constant assaults from gargantuan sea monsters and rogue tides, insidious malevolent spirits clinging to shipwrecks, internal dissent, and environmental decay. This grim realm is locked in a ceaseless struggle to preserve its desperate order against a world determined to break it, its populace forever bound to the crashing waves and the terror they bring.
Bile-Reef Anchorage
Bile-Reef Anchorage is the sprawling, reeking capital of The Serpent's Embrace, a treacherous Country built upon layers of barnacle-encrusted hulls and rotting docks. It serves as the primary pirate hub, raiding base, and dark pact center for the Blight-Touched and Cunning-Paws who rule, with Humans forming the bulk of its crews and populace, and Shifterkin operating as insidious infiltrators. Its purpose is the ruthless acquisition of resources and power through unceasing piracy. Threats include violent turf wars between pirate crews, often erupting into bloody street brawls. Mutinies among brutalized Human crews are frequent, swiftly and cruelly suppressed. Sea monster attacks directly impact harbor defenses, while localized outbreaks of blight from deep pacts infest districts.
Blackwood Thicket
The realm of Thornwood is a sprawling, decaying expanse known as the Blackwood Thicket. This forest is a tangled maze of gnarled, ancient trees whose branches writhe like tortured limbs and whose leaves are a perpetual, sickly brown. A chilling, mist-shrouded quiet clings to the air, and the very ground is a treacherous mix of hidden roots and thorny undergrowth. The thicket serves as a natural, bewildering fortress, its silent paths and camouflaged enclaves hiding the Elf settlements. It is also their grim resource hub, a source of blighted flora for their poisoned arrows and the resilient wood for their snares. However, this land is an active threat. Pervasive environmental decay and insidious undead are constant dangers. The ancient tree spirits, angered by predation, are a silent, malevolent force, actively seeking to ensnare and petrify intruders. The thicket is a constant reminder of the price of survival in the Riven Lands.
Blight-Scarred Wastes
Sprawling across the interior of a larger island, the Blight-Scarred Wastes are a desolate, twisted landscape where the land itself is a manifestation of ancient, raw agony. The soil is infertile, a sickly grey-purple, and gnarled, diseased trees rise like skeletal fingers. Patches of earth pulse with faint, nauseating glows where "magic writhes in the deep, twisting flesh into obscenities." Its function is a horrifying example of uncontrolled corruption, a vast, open wound bleeding into itself, where grotesque mutations roam freely, a testament to the land's unending suffering.
Blighted Grove of Aethelgard
On the high bluffs of Aethelgard, where the coastal winds are at their most brutal, a grove of blighted, thorny trees clings to the rocky soil. Here, a unique variety of Fester-Sprouts grows, its bulbous, grotesque form thriving on the salty air and the constant reminders of death. Interspersed with the sprouts, Grave-Lichen grows on the skulls of the dead, its purpose is to create a narcotic that numbs the populace's despair, a vital tool for keeping a desperate military dictatorship from unraveling from within. The work here is a grim, wind-swept task of harvesting the fester-sprouts for bioweaponry, tending to the lichen, and defending the grove from the desperate and the mad who seek to consume the narcotics.
Bloodcleft
Bloodcleft is Crimsonhold's grim, central fortress, a city literally built upon layers of conquered foes. Its Human populace lives under the absolute rule of a ruthless dictator, driven by ceaseless conquest. Defeated populations are processed into broken legions or victims for dark rituals. The city's primary function is to serve as a command center for military campaigns and a hub for the torture and breaking of wills. Threats include constant fear of the tyrant's sudden purges leading to pervasive paranoia, vengeful ghosts of executed rebels haunting specific districts, demonic infiltration of noble houses for localized corruption, widespread drug abuse among weary citizens seeking escape, and brutal underground fight clubs where wills are systematically broken.
Bone-Hook Anchorage
Bone-Hook Anchorage is a crude, fortified outpost and fishing town carved into a rugged inlet where Thornwood's gnarled forests meet the sea. Its purpose is brutal survival and the relentless harvesting of mutated sea creatures and forest abominations. The town's dock, The Jagged Quay, is built from rough-hewn timber and reinforced with the bleached bones of colossal marine beasts. You'll find rough, scarred Elf hunters sharpening bone-hooks and skinning strange hides. The town exports monster parts, blighted fish, and potent, wildland-foraged poisons, while importing crude weapons and basic necessities. Threats include massive sea monsters ambushing fishing vessels, forest abominations making incursions directly into town, internal disputes over prime hunting grounds, and bands of desperate, hostile Human raiders from the plains.
Bone-Silent Sanctum
Bone-Silent Sanctum is Silent Sepulchre's somber capital, a city built around vast, ancient burial grounds. Its Darakhul dedicate themselves to preserving morbid knowledge and spectral remnants. Individuals serve as bone harvesters and silent guardians. Threats include relic-induced madness spreading through the populace, crypt-guardians turning rogue and preying on the living, ritualistic murders for bone harvests within the city, sentient skeletal constructs rising from city vaults to attack, and curses affecting specific families or districts.
Breach-Watch Post
Breach-Watch Post is a grim, fortified outpost clinging to Aethelgard's outer coastal defenses, where a strategic river meets the sea. Its vital purpose: a forward scouting and early warning position, extracting basic resources. The town's river mouth landing constantly reeks of salt and fear. Grim-faced Human conscripts and scouts maintain unending vigil. Watchmen scan churning waters, officers shout commands, weapons scrape. Work involves grueling coastal patrols, deciphering sea-borne prophecies, or grim recruitment drives to bolster Aethelgard's ranks. Threats include sudden assaults from sea horrors, ambushes by raiders, and the psychological toll of ceaseless vigilance, where relaxation is fatal.
Cinder-Grip Landing
Cinder-Grip Landing is a harsh, perpetually grimy landing town for Ironfast, situated where a black, sediment-choked river meets the sea. Its purpose is to serve as the primary supply line for Ironfast's industrial capital, funneling raw materials and new conscripts. The town's dock, The Smelter's Quay, is a massive, soot-stained structure built from raw iron and rough timber. You'll find grim-faced Human overseers driving endless lines of laborers, hauling colossal carts of ore and blighted timber. It exports raw mineral ore and crudely processed metals, while importing fresh conscripts, meager rations, and specialized tools. Threats include frequent industrial accidents on the quay, abyssal horrors emerging from the river, organized worker rebellions among its brutalized populace, and pirate raids targeting supply vessels, causing desperate skirmishes on the docks.
Cinder-Scourge Steppe
This arid plain is perpetually blanketed in a fine, dark ash that chokes the lungs and smothers all life. The land is not a place of natural rock and soil, but a sterile, grey waste, scarred by the raw power of Vesperian rituals and arcane experimentation. The wind carries a fine, toxic dust that can drive a person to madness, and the ground is littered with the petrified remains of failed experiments and the withered bones of ritual sacrifices. It serves as a grim ritual site, where Tiefling priests conduct their most horrific ceremonies and test their grotesque creations. The threats here are relentless. The very ground is a curse, and the air is a poison. Ash-Wrought fiends, twisted creatures that are born from the corrosive atmosphere, roam the steppe, hunting anything that moves. The ghosts of mutineers and victims of the brutal pirate code are a constant, mind-rending presence, and the corrosive dust can slowly erode a person's will and sanity.
Corpus Spire
Corpus Spire is the grim capital of The Charnel Choir, a chilling city of transformed flesh and bone. Its purpose is to serve as the heart of ritualistic transformation and the propagation of their blight doctrines. Threats include uncontrolled mutations within city districts, where transformations go horrifically awry, creating new abominations. Localized outbreaks of engineered plagues sicken the populace, and cannibalistic cults secretly form, preying on the weak. Mutated fauna infesting the city's vast sewer systems pose a constant danger, while internal purges by high priests against perceived impurities frequently consume citizens in agonizing displays of ritualistic torment.
Crimsonhold
Crimsonhold is a blood-soaked, aggressive Dictatorship, its foundations laid upon conquest and brutal subjugation by a single, ruthless Human tyrant. Its purpose is unending expansion and the merciless enforcement of its dominion. Slavery is integral, with war captives used as labor or for brutal rituals and sacrifices. Threats include constant retaliation from other kingdoms, vicious internal power struggles among its ambitious elite, and demonic entities drawn to their pervasive bloodshed who demand increasingly horrific tributes. Vengeful spirits of the slain also plague their battlefields, adding to the realm's pervasive dread.
Darakhul Ossuary Fields
A gaunt, silent ossuary where the Darakhul priesthood of consumption communes with the visceral, unholy craving of their empire. The walls are lined with skulls, and the air is filled with the low drone of mournful chants and the rustle of bone dust, a perpetual requiem for the damned. It is also a place where Death-Veil Fungus grows, feeding on the lingering anguish of the dead. The purpose is to use the fungus to commune with the unquiet spirits of the Archipelago and to interpret their mournful pronouncements. Here, Wight-Wheat grows in fields tainted by powerful necrotic magic. Work here involves harvesting the blighted crops for ritualistic consumption and fighting off the unpredictable manifestations of uncontrolled undead and violent spiritual backlash from ancient entities.
Debt-Shore Market
Debt-Shore Market is a grim outpost on The Endless Exchange's periphery, a collection of processing pits and crude pens on desolate tidal flats. Its chilling purpose: to collect and initially process individuals consumed by debt or captured, destined for The Churning Spire's grim economy. The mud-choked tidal flats are active with barges processing new "arrivals." Kitsune overseers drive exhausted Human and Elf laborers. Work involves processing raw biological matter, sorting salvaged goods (personal effects of the condemned), or preparing individuals for transport. Threats include sporadic raids by scavengers, localized illness outbreaks, and a pervasive sense of utter futility, watching new arrivals join their ranks.
Deep-Gloom Landing
Deep-Gloom Landing is an austere, perpetually cold landing town carved into the base of one of Stonegaunt's immense, dark mountains. Its purpose is to serve as the gateway for expeditions into the abyssal depths and to process grim geological discoveries. The town's dock, The Obsidian Berth, is a stark, black stone pier stretching into an unnaturally still, dark sea. You'll find stoic Shadar-kai overseeing silent Human laborers offloading strange, luminescent minerals and grotesque, petrified samples from deep-earth expeditions. It exports rare minerals and petrified biological curiosities, while importing specialized mining equipment and minimal sustenance. Threats include stone-born monstrous incursions from deep tunnels into the town, unstable ley lines causing localized tremors, reanimated petrified guardians attacking from within, and crushing claustrophobic despair that affects the populace.
Deep-Stone Bastion
Deep-Stone Bastion is Stonegaunt's austere capital, a city carved from immense, black stone, housing Shadar-kai who dwell in deep, lightless caverns. Its purpose is grim contemplation and the guarding of ancient, perilous sites. Individuals are compelled into backbreaking labor or as living sacrifices. Threats include stone-born monstrous incursions from beneath the city, unstable ley lines causing localized tremors within its walls, reanimated petrified guardians attacking city districts, the crushing weight of the deep leading to widespread claustrophobic despair among its residents, and restless spirits haunting deep tunnels.
Despair-Feast Grounds
Every major settlement in the Anarchist State features a sprawling, open ground where the most desperate and brutal acts occur. It's here that the misery of the populace is thick enough to taste. These "Despair-Feast Grounds" actively draw "monstrous abominations" who feed on concentrated sorrow and chaos, making it a perilous place. "Insidious corruption" festers visibly, and the sheer suffering can spontaneously manifest as localised outbreaks of bizarre, violent madness among the desperate populace.
Dirge Dominion
The Dirge Dominion is a chilling Theocracy where Grave Whispers and Blight-Touched priests collaboratively administer a realm steeped in ritualized decay. Its purpose is to shepherd all into a grim acceptance of the world's rot, preparing both land and populace for ultimate, horrifying transformation. They worship deities of pervasive corruption and unavoidable oblivion, seeing pain as a pathway to divine understanding. Slavery is integral, with victims of any race—including terrified Humans—subjected to agonizing, ritualistic torments, used as living vessels for spreading blight, or forced into macabre labor among ancient crypts. Threats include unpredictable undead manifestations, widespread insanity among their populace from constant exposure to decay, and relentless purges from outside forces who view them as absolute abominations.
Dirge-Stone
Dirge-Stone is Mournsong's grim capital, a city built amidst ancient crypts and bone-strewn plains where Darakhul commune with the unquiet dead. Its purpose is to extract knowledge and power from the deceased, guiding souls to their grim rest, or twisting them to serve. Individuals are used for ritual sacrifice and brutal labor. Threats include uncontrolled undead manifestations breaching city barriers from surrounding crypts, prophecies of mass demise causing widespread panic among the populace, plagues from disturbed crypts sickening the living, and the constant drone of the dead leading to pervasive apathy.
Discordia
A vast, tormented Anarchist State less a nation and more a swirling vortex where the Cinder Archipelago's myriad miseries churn without a governing hand. Here, Humans, Tiefling, Elf, Kitsune, Darakhul, and Shadar-Kai are crammed together, their racial hatreds igniting constant, open warfare between desperate factions. Its existence is bleak survival, maintained through brutal self-reliance and the ruthless exploitation of all resources and beings by whoever wields temporary power. Slavery is rampant and opportunistic, where every race enslaves others for labor, perverse rituals, or raw sustenance, with no central authority to impose limits or law. Threats are pervasive: ceaseless inter-racial violence is the norm, monstrous abominations drawn by the concentrated despair thrive unchallenged, and insidious corruption festers. Every shadow hides a new tyrant or a fresh betrayal in this microcosm of the Riven Lands' ultimate chaos.
Echo-Nexus
Echo-Nexus is Veilwatch's disorienting capital, a city of constantly shifting architecture where Kitsune agents master espionage and identity manipulation. Its purpose is to control the flow of vital intelligence, shaping narratives, and leveraging secrets. Individuals are compelled through psychological conditioning and identity theft. Threats include targeted assassinations of influential figures by rival spy networks, localized outbreaks of madness from mind-rending phantasms, severe psychological breakdown among Kitsune from identity loss, cults forming around bizarre new identities within the city, and entities that feed on discarded personalities.
Echoes of Entrapment
A realm of Still-Hunters hidden within the Bleak-Shale's misty forests and dark caverns, ruled by a secretive matriarchal council focused on silent manipulation and information control. The area is marked by shifting settlements camouflaged with silk traps and observation points, where psychological slavery and subtle control dominate.
Faith's Deep
Faith's Deep is the spiritual and administrative capital of The Sunless March, a city shrouded in perpetual gloom. Its purpose is the absolute enforcement of theocracy's dogma and the interpretation of their Gods' abyssal will. Life is strictly ritualized, with every action dictated by unwavering dogma. Threats include heretical cells operating in secret tunnels, undermining obedience with forbidden whispers. Psychological breakdown among citizens from perpetual darkness and incessant indoctrination is common, leading to silent madness. Ritualistic abductions of non-believers for sacrifice fuel widespread terror, while disease outbreaks from crowded, unhygienic living conditions constantly plague its populace, testing their faith.
False-Light Enclave
False-Light Enclave is the unsettling capital of The Shadow Weave, a sprawling Country of deceptive appearances where its architecture constantly subtly shifts, never quite solidifying. Governed by a Rigged Democracy where Shifterkin agents manipulate Human populaces and Cunning-Paws informants, its purpose is total control through unseen means, shaping narratives and extracting secrets. Threats include rampant counter-espionage by rival powers infiltrating its districts, the psychological toll on its populace from pervasive lies and constant identity theft, and terrifying mind-rending phantasms that manifest from concentrated deception, driving citizens to madness within its very core. The pervasive illusion makes any true uprising almost impossible.
Flesh-Warp Warren
Flesh-Warp Warren is Malcoria's abhorrent core, a city of constantly shifting, organic architecture where the Tiefling relentlessly pursue unnatural growth and bio-engineering. Its purpose is to breed and control corrupted life, weaponizing plagues and engineered abominations. Countless lives serve as living materials and unwilling subjects. Threats include monstrous creations turning rogue within twisting districts, localized outbreaks of engineered plagues sickening the populace, decaying undead rising from mass graves within city limits, citizens suffering agonizing, spontaneous mutations daily, and gangs of twisted individuals preying on the weak in dark alleys.
Forgefall
Forgefall is Ironfast's industrial heart, a city perpetually choked by the smoke of its vast foundries and the clang of hammers. Dominated by Human mining guilds, its purpose is the relentless extraction of ore and the mass production of weapons. Countless individuals are forced into backbreaking labor in the suffocating mines and roaring furnaces. Threats include devastating industrial accidents claiming lives daily, abyssal horrors emerging directly into mine tunnels within the city's confines, widespread toxic industrial blight sickening the populace, brutal gang warfare among rival mining factions, and desperate worker rebellions erupting in specific foundry sectors.
Ghoul's Gulch
Ghoul's Gulch is a somber, perpetually dim town nestled in a desolate valley where a sluggish, black river flows into the sea. Its purpose is the grim processing of bodies for Mournsong's Darakhul theocracy, and the collection of morbid resources. The town's dock, The Styx Strand, is a cold, narrow pier stretching into the still, dark water, perpetually shrouded in a fine, chilling mist. You'll find silent Darakhul overseeing Human laborers moving shrouded barges laden with cadavers. The town exports bone-dust, preserved organs, and ritual reagents, while importing burial shrouds and tools for embalming. Threats include uncontrolled undead manifestations rising from the river, ghoulish scavengers preying on the populace, spiritual backlash from angered entities during rituals, and localized plagues from disturbed graves.
Gloom District
The Gloom District is a somber, perpetually dim sector within Discordia's Contested Sprawl, where civil war's clamor recedes to a muffled drone. Dominated by Gloom-Striders, its purpose is a weary vigil and preservation of fading wisdom. Buildings here, woven from dark wood or shadows, are perpetually shrouded in unnatural mist. The air hangs heavy with profound sorrow and chilling stillness. You'll find gaunt Gloom-Striders moving quietly, lost in contemplation or tending scattered lore remnants. This district serves as a grim archive of the Riven Lands' agony. Threats: pervasive melancholy causing Gloom-Striders to succumb, shadow creatures manifesting, preying on the weak-willed. Human or Cunning-Paw factions launch incursions for relics. Blight-Touched or Shifterkin agents exploit profound despair, weaponizing sorrow. Violence from adjacent districts constantly threatens to shatter its fragile peace.
Gnarled Hold
Gnarled Hold is Thornwood's fortified heart, a grim city deep within the Archipelago's most treacherous forests, its crude structures blending into the oppressive canopy. This Elf stronghold survives through constant ambush and evasion. Captured individuals are used for hunting, tracking, or as expendable scouts. Threats include monsters breaching crude city defenses from the forest, internal feuds over dwindling hunting spoils, ancient trees possessing individuals who stray from central paths, undead rising from shallow graves within the Hold's perimeter, and organized banditry preying on inner districts.
Grimwatch
Grimwatch stands as Aethelgard's sprawling, beleaguered capital, its immense, crumbling walls perpetually pounded by the sea. This Human city funnels all regional resources into its desperate defense, acting as a fortified hub for military conscription and the relentless forging of arms. Countless souls toil in its ceaseless repairs and armories, their lives a perpetual grind. Threats include rampant desertion among conscripts leading to local disorder, insidious malevolent spirits clinging to its salt-worn docks and barracks, localized famine causing widespread riots and looting in specific districts, and the structural collapse of old defenses due to perpetual neglect. Its purpose is to endure, at any cost.
Grindstone Descent
Grindstone Descent serves as the primary mining hub and population center of the Stone-Wrought Dominion, a vast, echoing city carved directly into the living rock. Its purpose is the relentless extraction and processing of the earth's dark resources. Life here is a constant, grinding toil. Threats include district-level power struggles between Deep-Crawler clan enclaves, often erupting into brutal skirmishes in the tunnels. Rampant drug abuse among exhausted workers, fueled by mind-numbing minerals, is a pervasive problem. Localized cave-ins frequently trap or bury residential sectors, and sentient mining equipment, cursed by overuse, occasionally turns hostile, consuming its operators. Subterranean cults dedicated to obscure earth spirits secretly form among the brutalized populace, plotting silent defiance.
Human District
The Human District is Discordia's grim, besieged mega-city sector, a sprawling expanse of cramped tenements and makeshift barricades reeking of desperation. Its purpose: a defiant bastion for its Human populace, clinging to survival through sheer brute force and unyielding vigilance. Life here is a constant grind, defined by queues and fear. You'll find gaunt citizens and harsh patrols amidst crude workshops and shadow-drenched markets for essentials. Threats are relentless: raids from Blight-Touched or Cunning-Paw districts seek resources. Localized starvation forces acts of cannibalism. Rampant gang warfare erupts among Human factions over dwindling supplies. Internal tyranny and corruption crush dissent. Reanimated corpses frequently infiltrate, used by unseen forces. Pervasive psychological decay gnaws at every soul. This district endures, a grim testament to human tenacity in endless, brutal urban conflict.
Ironfast
Ironfast operates as a harsh Oligarchy, controlled by powerful Human mining guilds and forge masters. Its purpose is sheer, grinding productivity, transforming the Archipelago's grim resources into weapons and tools. Slavery is endemic, forcing thralls into backbreaking labor in sunless mines and oppressive foundries. Threats include frequent mine collapses and industrial accidents, abyssal horrors from the deep earth awakened by their ceaseless digging, organized worker rebellions against the ruling elite, and the ever-present danger of elemental beings of stone driven to wrath by their exploitation.
Ironhold Summit
Ironhold Summit serves as the bleak capital of The Sentinel Peaks, a monumental city carved into its very heart. Its purpose is to command the Crag-Born Dictatorship, control vital mountain passes, and oversee massive construction projects. Threats include localized rockfalls directly impacting city sectors, causing immediate devastation. Violent clashes between labor factions erupt frequently over harsh conditions, adding to the daily grind. The psychological toll of constant obedience to the ruling Crag-Born leads to silent defiance and self-harm among the populace. Drug abuse from consuming potent mountain minerals is rampant, and the ghosts of crushed laborers are said to haunt construction sites, causing madness among new recruits.
Ironshatter City
Ironshatter City serves as The Bleeding Wastes' nominal capital, a perpetually contested urban hellscape. This brutal, frozen testament to shattered alliances and ceaseless civil war spans a vast complex of salvaged metal and fallen warriors' remains, constantly rebuilt by warring factions. Here, all ten races—Humans, Grave Whispers, Gloom-Striders, Deep-Crawlers, Blight-Touched, Cunning-Paws, Shifterkin, Crag-Born, Godscarred, and Still-Hunters—clash in brutal street-to-street combat, their hatred fueling the city's grim armory, forging blood-stained weapons from iron and bone. Threats are daily: constant street skirmishes between racial gangs, targeted assassinations plunging districts into chaos, urban abominations preying on the weak, resource blockades causing starvation, reanimated corpses used as combatants, and pervasive psychological warfare driving citizens to madness.
Kraken's Maw
Kraken's Maw is Serpentscale's sprawling pirate capital, a coastal haven built into treacherous cliffs. This Blight-Touched-led city thrives on piracy and debased pacts. Unfortunate individuals are used as forced crews and human shields. Threats include fierce mutinies among brutalized pirate crews, sea monsters attacking harbor defenses directly, drowned spirits haunting specific docks and ships, widespread drug addiction among weary sailors seeking escape from their grim reality, and smuggling of cursed artifacts leading to localized hauntings or madness in specific districts.
Leviathan's Gullet
The Leviathan's Gullet is not a landmass, but a vast, perpetually mist-shrouded depression in the churning sea, where the waters are unnaturally dark and still, yet subtly pulse with an unseen life. This area is the favored hunting ground of the largest, most ancient colossal sea monsters in the Archipelago. These behemoths can swallow entire ships whole, their abyssal hunger seemingly endless. Sailors tell tales of seeing impossible shadows beneath the waves, or feeling their vessels dragged down by unseen forces. The Gullet's purpose is a grim, living trap, a place where the unwary meet their end in the maw of a beast, serving as a chilling reminder of the scale of the terrors lurking beneath the surface.
Luminis Blight
Luminis Blight is Vesperia's chilling capital, a city of unsettling, decaying grandeur where Tiefling nobility delve into forbidden arcane experiments. Its purpose is the pursuit of ultimate power through twisted creation and controlled corruption. Unwilling subjects are frequently used for horrifying flesh-sculpting rituals and perverse pleasures. Threats include uncontrolled magical experiments consuming city blocks in bursts of raw power, fiendish manifestations appearing in private chambers, madness spreading through specific sectors as minds unravel, grotesque cults dedicated to self-mutilation flourishing in hidden corners, and mutated creatures escaping labs into city streets.
Malcoria
Malcoria is a chilling Dictatorship, ruled by a singular Tiefling master of flesh-crafting. Its purpose is to breed and control corrupted life, seeking dominance through foul experimentation. Slavery is central, with captives serving as living materials, unwilling subjects for horrifying grafts, or forced into painful transformations. Threats include their own creations turning rogue and inflicting widespread havoc, the constant risk of the blight they cultivate becoming uncontrollable, widespread disease and corruption manifesting as decaying undead forms drawn to their lands, and external forces seeking to eradicate their vile practices through bloody sieges.
Mire-Whisper City
Mire-Whisper City is Shadowfen's elusive core, a settlement cloaked in perpetual mist and built upon treacherous wetlands. Ruled by Elf elders skilled in illusion, its purpose is to create a labyrinth of false trails and hidden lairs. Victims are lured into endless, disorienting toil. Threats include swamp-borne plagues sickening the populace, illusions causing mass panic and disorientation among citizens, psychological erosion from constant unreality affecting sanity, unseen entities luring citizens into the mire, and rival illusionists battling for control of perception within specific city sectors.
Mirror-Gate Pass
Mirror-Gate Pass is a small, seemingly unremarkable town on Veilwatch's fringes, its buildings blending with the desolate landscape. Its purpose: a covert entry point and silent information relay for Kitsune agents. The town's small river landing is unobtrusive, disappearing once passed. You'll find ordinary Human and Cunning-Paw residents alongside disguised Kitsune operatives. The air holds pervasive surveillance. Threats include sporadic incursions by scavengers, localized psychological breakdowns from subtle manipulation, unexplained disappearances for those too close to truth, and internal suspicion bred by constant surveillance.
Mist-Maw Haven
Mist-Maw Haven is a deceptively serene fishing town built on stilts over the murky, illusion-prone waters of Shadowfen, perpetually cloaked in a thin, shifting fog. Its purpose is to harvest the unique, often monstrous, aquatic life thriving in the blighted mire. The town's dock, The Glimmering Marsh, seems to subtly shift beneath one's feet, its outlines blurring as if caught in a heat haze. Here, Elf fishers, their movements fluid and elusive, employ intricate, illusory nets that ensnare their prey without detection. You'll find strange, pulsating fish hauled ashore, alongside the hushed dealings of Elf brokers trading in unique toxins. Threats include powerful swamp monsters emerging directly beneath homes, illusions causing mass panic among the populace, pervasive swamp-borne illnesses, and unseen entities that lure individuals into the mire, making them vanish without a trace.
Mourn-Spire
Mourn-Spire is the grim, perpetually decaying capital of the Dirge Dominion, a sprawling city of black stone monuments and crumbling crypts, often overgrown with pulsating, blighted flora. Its purpose is to serve as the heart of ritualized decay and forced transformation, administered collaboratively by Grave Whispers and Blight-Touched priests. Life here is a constant liturgy of morbid rites, preparing both land and populace for ultimate, horrifying changes. Threats include uncontrolled undead frequently breaching city barriers from surrounding crypts, outbreaks of swamp-borne plagues that cripple the populace, the pervasive corrupting influence of the bog on sanity, and internal disputes over scarce, often tainted, resources that frequently erupt into violent skirmishes within its districts. The city itself feels like a vast, living charnel house, its decay a sacred text.
Mournsong
Mournsong is a grim Theocracy, its Darakhul priesthood communing with the unquiet spirits of the Archipelago and interpreting their mournful pronouncements. Its purpose is to extract knowledge and power from the deceased, guiding souls to their grim rest, or twisting them to serve. Slavery is morbid, with captives used for ritual sacrifice, as living anchors for spectral energies, or for brutal labor in bone pits. Threats include unpredictable manifestations of uncontrolled undead, violent spiritual backlash from ancient entities, constant raids by ghoulish scavengers, and a pervasive internal despair from constant exposure to death's finality.
Murk-Heart Bog
A perpetually shifting, pea-soup mist clings to the stagnant waters, where gnarled cypress trees twist into grotesque shapes and blighted lilies rot. The bog serves as a natural, bewildering fortress, its illusory mists and treacherous, sinkhole-ridden paths hiding the Elf settlements from outsiders. It is also their grim resource hub, a source of mind-bending flora for their illusions and the thick, pungent mire-mortar for their constructions. However, this land is an active threat. Pervasive environmental decay and toxic air are constant dangers. Deadly swamp monsters lurk beneath the surface, while the most insidious threat is the bog itself: ensnaring spirits of the fen that seek to bind souls to the mire. They manifest as alluring whispers and phantom lights, luring the unwary to their doom, leaving them as new, silent guardians of the Murk-Heart's treacherous depths.
Reliquary Reach
Reliquary Reach is a grim, quiet town located on a desolate coastline near Silent Sepulchre's vast burial grounds, dominated by a pervasive sense of antiquity and decay. Its purpose is the collection and processing of relics and remains from ancient tombs. The town's dock, The Stillwater Pier, stretches into an unnaturally calm, black bay, its pilings adorned with desiccated wreaths. You'll find silent Darakhul overseeing Human laborers meticulously cleaning and categorizing bones and artifacts retrieved from the crypts. The town exports bone-dust, ritual components, and ancient, often cursed, relics, while importing preservatives and specialized tools. Threats include curses emanating from unearthed relics afflicting townspeople, restless spirits haunting the docks, cults forming around newly found cursed objects, and raids by outsiders seeking forbidden relics.
Salt-Scourged Flats
The result of centuries of maritime blight and corrosive naval battles. The ground is a cracked, white-grey crust, littered with the splintered wreckage of countless ships and the bleached bones of victims. The air is thick with a biting, salty dust that chokes the lungs and corrodes metal. It serves as a grim training ground for Serpentscale's pirate fleets, a place where crews practice skirmishes and where failed mutineers are sent for brutal, public punishment. The threats here are relentless. The very ground is a curse, and the air is a poison. Salt-scoured abominations, twisted creatures that are born from the corrosive atmosphere, roam the flats, hunting anything that moves. The ghosts of mutineers and victims of the brutal pirate code are a constant, mind-rending presence, and the corrosive dust can slowly erode a person's will and sanity. It is a place of endless suffering and death, where the land itself is a grim monument to the brutal reign of the pirates.
Salt-Skull Haven
Salt-Skull Haven is a rough-hewn coastal outpost clinging to a storm-battered inlet in Serpentscale's territory. Its purpose: to supply tainted marine resources to Kraken's Maw and serve as a harsh proving ground for pirate recruits. The town's coastal landing is slick, groaning under loads. Tiefling overseers drive Human fishers to haul in monstrous sea life. The air reeks of salt, fish, desperation. Work involves mending nets of unusual materials, flaying monstrous carcasses, hauling heavy catches, or conscripting into temporary pirate crews. Threats include frequent minor mutinies, localized attacks by aggressive mutated marine life, and outbreaks of strange illnesses from consuming blighted resources.
Serpentscale
Serpentscale operates as a treacherous Oligarchy, controlled by a council of ruthless Tiefling pirate captains. Its purpose is unchecked plunder and the acquisition of cursed goods through maritime predation and dark pacts. Slavery is brutal, with captives used as forced crews, human shields, or sacrifices to appease malevolent sea entities. Threats include fierce naval warfare, colossal sea monsters, drowned spirits seeking new victims among their crews, and ancient demons of the deep demanding greater tribute, promising ruin if not sated.
Shadow-Thread Port
Shadow-Thread Port is Whispercove's elusive heart, a network of hidden coves and camouflaged passages where Elf's weave intricate webs of information and contraband. Its purpose is to control the flow of secrets and illicit goods. Individuals are held for their unique skills or have their wills subtly broken. Threats include beasts infiltrating hidden passages from surrounding wilderness, spectral guardians of specific caches reacting violently to disturbances, rival Elven kinbands engaging in escalating information warfare, pervasive paranoia causing internal betrayal, and violent sabotage of rival smuggling operations within city limits.
Shadow-Vigil Keep
Shadow-Vigil Keep is the grim capital of The Enduring March, a sprawling fortress-city carved into the living rock at the edge of the Blackwood Forests. Its purpose is a militant defense against the ancient horrors of the woods and a spiritual devotion to their grim faith, maintaining a dying order against the Riven Lands' pervasive decay. Ruled by a somber council of weary Human commanders and melancholic Gloom-Strider elders, advised by silent Grave Whispers priests, life is a constant, weary vigil. Threats include ceaseless attacks from forest abominations and uncontrolled undead breaching outer defenses, pervasive spiritual exhaustion among its populace from constant exposure to despair, and the subtle corrupting influence of ancient forest spirits that constantly test their sanity within city limits, sometimes leading to localized madness outbreaks.
Shadowfen
Shadowfen operates as a Theocracy, its guided by elders who interpret the shifting mists and subtle illusions of their treacherous wetlands, wielding deceptive power. Slavery is often achieved through deceit, with victims lured into endless, disorienting toil within the fens, their minds slowly breaking. Threats include pervasive environmental decay, deadly swamp monsters, the constant danger of their elaborate illusions being detected, and ensnaring spirits of the fen that seek to bind souls to the mire, leading to madness for the unwitting victims.
Shattered Spires
The towering peaks of Aethelgard are known as the Shattered Spires. Not natural, they are colossal, splintered ruptures where rock weeps gloom, scarred by the Sundering. They pierce a smoke-choked sky, riddled with lightless caves. The mountains serve as a crucial physical barrier, separating the coastal fortress from the blighted interior, and as a grim resource hub for The Cinder Archipelago, vital for repairing Aethelgard's walls. Threats include constant cold and blighted snows, which sap vitality and freeze unwary travelers. The mountains are geologically unstable, with frequent rockslides. Abyssal horrors lurk in the lightless caves, and petrified sentinels, animated by despair, stand on the desolate peaks, their touch turning flesh to ash. The Spires are a constant, chilling reminder of the price of survival.
Shifting-Bay Market
Shifting-Bay Market is a fluid, ephemeral market hub materializing along Whispercove's hidden coastlines, managed by Elven brokers. Its purpose: facilitate untraceable, illicit trade in information and contraband. The market's temporary coves are shrouded in mist. You'll find hushed exchanges over forged documents, whispers of blackmail, and glinting concealed blades. Work involves brokering deals for stolen secrets, acquiring potent poisons, or arranging discreet disappearances. Threats include sudden raids by rival syndicates, unpredictable tides trapping vessels, and overwhelming paranoia making every face a potential betrayer in this ephemeral market.
Silent Sepulchre
Silent Sepulchre is governed by a Council of ancient Darakhul elders, overseeing vast, morbid burial grounds. Its purpose is the grim preservation of morbid knowledge and spectral remnants. Slavery is common, with captives serving as bone harvesters, silent guardians for accursed crypts, or test subjects for disturbing rituals. Threats include relentless raids by outsiders seeking forbidden relics, curses emanating from disturbed graves, ancient entities of the crypt stirring, and the constant madness that threatens the Grave Whispers from their pervasive sense of death.
Sky-Shard Sanctuary
Sky-Shard Sanctuary is the secluded capital of The Veiled Apex, a city of towering spires carved into the highest, mist-wreathed peaks. Its purpose is to preserve unique knowledge and sacred sites, maintaining ancient Still-Hunter ways in isolation. Threats include assassination attempts by opportunist Cunning-Paws targeting key leaders, avalanches and massive rockslides directly impacting city structures during seasonal thaws, mutated mountain predators preying on outskirt patrols within city limits, and persistent internal discontent among lower-ranking Still-Hunters over the rigid hierarchy, simmering beneath the surface.
Sorrow-Furnace Village
Sorrow-Furnace Village is a grim, smoke-shrouded settlement nestled deep within Crimsonhold's conquered territories, its air heavy with charred bone and despair. Its abhorrent purpose: to process the dictator's war "spoils," transforming bodies into basic resources for Bloodcleft. The village's riverbank loading area perpetually bustles with barges filled with grisly cargo. Gaunt Human laborers, driven by overseers, feed skeletal remains and blighted timber into massive, roaring furnaces. Work involves processing charred remains, distilling grotesque oils from scorched flesh, or hauling supplies for the furnaces. Threats include volatile furnace-blight outbreaks, localized purges, and psychological torment from perpetual exposure to agonizing processing.
Spore-Blossom Reach
Spore-Blossom Reach is a small, unnervingly quiet town within Malcoria, where buildings subtly pulse with unseen life. Its purpose: grim cultivation of unique, blighted flora/fauna for Malcoria's Tiefling experiments, and processing resulting abominations. The town's river inlet landing is slick with foul, iridescent slime. You'll find gaunt Human and Tiefling laborers tending grotesque gardens, bodies bearing minor mutations. Work involves cultivating mutated plants, harvesting strange fluids, or assisting in "specimen" care. Threats include unpredictable mutations affecting residents, localized engineered blight outbreaks, aberrations escaping, and the psychological toll of constant exposure to grotesque processes, eroding sanity.
Stone-Wrought Dominion
A vast, echoing subterranean realm ruled by ancient Deep-Crawler clans, focused on brutal extraction of glowing ores and noxious minerals. Slavery of surface-dwellers fuels ceaseless labor amid constant threats from monstrous beasts, geological instability, and internal clan intrigue.
Stonegaunt
Stonegaunt is a Council-governed realm of austere silence, its Shadar-kai dwelling within immense, petrified structures and deep, lightless caverns. Its purpose is grim contemplation and the guarding of ancient, perilous sites, perhaps even forgotten portals or slumbering horrors. Slavery is practiced, with captives forced into backbreaking labor in stone-carving or as living sacrifices to contain horrors. Threats include monstrous abominations from the deepest earth, petrified sentinels animated by despair, constant geological instability, and creatures of pure geological malice drawn to their ancient sites, along with unwanted attention from restless spirits.
Sylvanspire
Sylvanspire functions as a solemn, living archive, its Shadar-kai enduring to preserve ancient knowledge and dangerous truths from their secretive, arboreal enclaves. Their grim vigil involves observing the world's accelerating decay, rarely interfering directly. Slavery here is a cold, spiritual imposition, with captives psychologically bound as silent thralls. Threats include a profound, racial despair internally, and dwindling numbers pushing them towards extinction. Externally, the Riven Lands' creeping corruption tirelessly seeps into their ancient, mist-shrouded forests. Rival kingdoms, especially desperate Humans and insidious Elfs, constantly seek to plunder Sylvanspire's unique, cursed resources or exploit its guarded lore, ensuring their vigil is one of ceaseless, agonizing struggle against horrors and savagery.
The Bleak-Shale Straits
This jagged scar upon churning seas is cleaved by the Iron-Fell Peaks—colossal, splintered rock perpetually cloaked in gloom, its face scarred by forgotten cataclysms. Their craggy slopes pierce the sullen, smoke-choked sky, riddled with lightless caves where ghouls feast and desperation breeds horrors. Below, choked, lightless forests sprawl, skeletal branches reaching into mist where the desperate hide. Vegetation clings like starved moss to dead rock. Twisted rivers, dark as spilled blood, carve venomous paths through desolate plains, draining into the perpetually grey, iron-tasting sea. Small, blighted outposts of crumbling stone, these island shards guard its fringes—conduits of the land's deep corruption, where dark rites for grim survival defy howling storms. Ruined watchtowers stand as skeletal sentinels; every shadow holds a whisper of ancient evils, and the very ground feels cursed, soaked in forgotten, human despair.
The Bleeding Wastes
The Bleeding Wastes are less a Country and more a perpetual battleground, a brutal, frozen testament to shattered alliances and ceaseless civil war. Here, all ten races—Humans, Grave Whispers, Gloom-Striders, Deep-Crawlers, Blight-Touched, Cunning-Paws, Shifterkin, Crag-Born, Godscarred, and Still-Hunters—are locked in brutal, internecine conflict. Its central authority has utterly collapsed, leaving warring factions vying for dominance over its iron-rich territories. To survive, one must embrace profound depravity: treachery, betrayal, and cannibalism are daily realities. Slavery is rampant and savage, with each faction ruthlessly enslaving opposing races for labor or cannon fodder. Constant warfare consumes all, monstrous aberrations thrive, and unending paranoia gnaws at every soul. The very land trembles from perpetual explosions and conflict, reflecting the Riven Lands' ultimate despair.
The Blight Zone
The Blight Zone is a grotesque, sprawling district within Discordia's Contested Sprawl, its architecture a testament to pervasive corruption. Dominated by Blight-Touched, its purpose is the grim cultivation of unique, blighted flora and fauna, and relentless perverse transformation. Structures here pulse with unseen life, oozing corrosive fluids; strange fungi grow. You'll find Blight-Touched inhabitants, some with minor mutations, tending grotesque gardens of pulsating vines. Discarded abominations and failed experiments lie in dim alleys. Threats are intrinsic: unpredictable mutations affecting residents or growths turning hostile. Localized engineered blight outbreaks cause painful deformities. Abominations escaping containment prey on the weak. Human mobs periodically attempt purges. Cunning-Paws infiltrate for resources, and Grave Whispers contain undead, often clashing. The psychological toll of constant exposure to grotesque processes slowly erodes sanity.
The Blighted Grove
A solemn, mist-shrouded grove where the dead are left to be consumed by the Riven Lands' creeping corruption. It is not a place of mourning, but of grim pragmatism, a final act of defiance against the world's inevitable fall. The grove is home to a unique form of Grave-Lichen that grows on the skulls of the dead. It is also here that Death-Veil Fungus grows, feeding on the silence of the ancient, mist-shrouded forests. The purpose is to use the blight to absorb the memories of the dead and to add them to their living archive of dangerous truths. Work here involves the grim task of harvesting the blight, a task that can lead to madness and despair, and defending the grove from rivals and the creeping corruption that seeps into their ancient, mist-shrouded forests.
The Blighted Hollow
A clearing deep within the treacherous forests where the dead are left to be consumed by the savage nature of the woods. It is not a place of mourning, but of grim pragmatism, a final act of defiance. Now, the marshes are home to a unique and deadly blight. The Fester-Sprouts grow here, feeding on the rotting flesh of the dead, and the Madness Berries thrive on twisted, thorny vines. The purpose is to let the dead decompose and become one with the savage nature of the forest and to use the madness berries to break the minds of war captives. The work here is dangerous and deadly, involving harvesting the toxic fester-sprouts, gathering the mind-bending madness berries, and fending off the massive forest abominations and blighted beasts that stalk the territory.
The Blighted Pits of Ironfast
In the deepest, sunless parts of Ironfast's mines, massive pits have been carved out to cultivate blight. The suffocating heat and damp air are broken only by the mournful drip of polluted water from the ceiling, feeding the fungal growth. Here, Death-Veil Fungus grows in huge, sprawling colonies, fed by the constant trickle of polluted water. The oligarchs and mining guilds use the fungus to listen to the whispers of the earth, hoping to divine the location of undiscovered ore. In the most remote, waterlogged chambers, Grave-Lichen thrives on the petrified bones of overworked slaves, offering a glimpse into the final, despairing moments of those who died in the pits. The work found here is dangerous and dirty, ranging from tending to the fungus under oppressive heat to fighting off the mad ravings of the slaves who have consumed the crops.
The Blighted Sanctum
A sprawling, multi-tiered laboratory where the Tiefling priesthood cultivates blighted crops in unholy incubators for their vile, dark arts. The air is thick with the stench of decay and corrupted magic, and the constant screams of experimental subjects are a backdrop to the grim harvest. Here, Madness Berries grow on twisted, thorny vines, their iridescent glow a macabre beacon in the rotting soil. The berries are used to create a mind-breaking drug to make the enslaved docile and obedient. In the rotting soil around the twisted temples, Fester-Sprouts are cultivated, their oozing sores used for grotesque transformations and dark rituals. The work here is horrific and dangerous, involving capturing live subjects for experimentation, guarding the incubators, and fighting off the grotesque, mutated creatures that the blight inevitably creates.
The Charnel Choir
The Charnel Choir is a chilling Theocracy nestled deep within the Bleak-Shale Straits, its Blight-Touched priesthood obsessed with the sacred nature of decay and transformation. They worship a deity of pervasive corruption, believing suffering is a holy act. Their purpose is to spread their grim faith, transforming both land and flesh into twisted monuments. Slavery is integral, with captives of all races serving as unwilling subjects for flesh-twisting experiments, as living vessels for spreading blight, or forced into ritualistic torment to honor their gods. Threats include the proliferation of their own blight becoming uncontrollable, escalating madness from their dark devotion, constant incursions from Deep-Crawlers who view them as a grotesque food source, eager to purge or consume them, and monsters drawn to the sheer concentration of misery, all within the volatile geological confines of the Straits.
The Charnel Reefs
A labyrinthine expanse of razor-sharp, bleached coral and barnacle-encrusted shipwrecks, The Charnel Reefs are a breeding ground for the Archipelago's most grotesque, mutated creatures. The water here is a sickly green, thick with biological effluvium and strange, luminous growths that cling to the submerged wreckage. Abominations with too many limbs, pulsating sacs of poison, or chitinous plates like rusted armor slither and slither through the coral, preying on anything that enters their territory. These creatures are often the result of uncontrolled magic bleeding into the ecosystem, or the horrific byproduct of Malcoria's escaped experiments. The Reefs serve as a chilling natural hatchery for these blighted horrors, making passage through them a guaranteed struggle for survival.
The Charnel Thicket
This forest is a living laboratory of flesh and blight, not a natural wood. The trunks of the trees are gnarled and thick, resembling petrified bone and sinew, their leaves a sickly, purplish-grey like stretched, necrotic skin. The ground is a soft, spongy mess, littered with fungal growths that pulse with a faint, corrupted light. The thicket serves as a testing ground for Malcoria's vile experiments; unstable flesh-crafted horrors are released to live out their wretched lives. The threats here are relentless. The air is thick with infectious spores, and the ground is a toxic stew of blighted ichor. The horrors that roam the thicket are monstrous chimeras, creatures that are a grotesque amalgamation of different body parts. The most insidious threat is the forest itself, a living, breathing laboratory that spreads its blight with every breath.
The Churning Spire
The Churning Spire is the chaotic core of The Endless Exchange, a sprawling, ever-expanding bazaar where Kitsune factions profit from every secret and transaction. Its purpose is the fluid exchange of information, goods, and identities. Individuals are stripped of identities and used as anonymous laborers. Threats include rampant market-district gang warfare for control of trade, abominations birthed from discarded emotional essence roaming alleys, information-triggered assassinations targeting key brokers, ritualistic kidnappings for perverse profit, and widespread drug abuse among merchants and laborers seeking escape.
The Cinder Archipelago
The Cinder Archipelago is a storm-shattered sprawl of jagged isles where fractured kingdoms fester behind rusted walls. Sea-winds carry the reek of drowned gods. Once ruled by ancient vampiric overlords whose appetites consumed nations, each isle clings to a crumbling, blood-stained crown—feuding through poison, massacres, and debased pacts. Magic writhes in the deep, twisting flesh into obscenities and devouring sanity. Pirate fleets, born of starvation, serve kings; kings serve ancient curses. Truth's more lethal than gold. No heroes survive—only forsworn exiles, blood-witches, and damned oathbreakers. Illicit markets thrive on desperation: slaves whisper depravities, alchemic drugs numb despair, cursed relics bleed dark power, and forbidden knowledge promises damnation. Trade routes choke with spies, body parts, and hungry sea monsters. Temples hide bone-dust remnants. Every throne's built atop vile betrayals. The tides don't just shift—they bleed, thick and red.
The Contested Sprawl
The Contested Sprawl is Discordia's grim, sprawling mega-city, a perpetually contested urban hellscape. Here, six distinct racial districts—Humans, Grave Whispers, Gloom-Striders, Blight-Touched, Cunning-Paws, and Shifterkin—are locked in ceaseless civil war, their hatred unleashed. Its purpose: desperate survival through brutal internal conflict, each district ruthlessly seizing resources. The city, a testament to shattered alliances, is constantly rebuilt from debris and fallen remains. Threats: constant street skirmishes between racial gangs, targeted assassinations, resource blockades causing starvation and cannibalism, monstrous abominations unique to districts, reanimated corpses as combatants, and pervasive psychological warfare driving citizens to madness. This endless internecine conflict consumes all, its ground trembling from incessant battle, reflecting ultimate despair.
The Cunning Domain
The Cunning Domain is a labyrinthine district within Discordia's Contested Sprawl, its winding alleys and hidden rooftops a testament to elusive survival. Dominated by Cunning-Paws, its purpose is ruthless self-preservation through opportunistic raids and intricate information brokering. Here, swift figures move through shadows, their eyes constantly darting for vulnerabilities. constant skirmishes with Human or Blight-Touched gangs over territory. Shifterkin infiltration seeks to steal information or identities. Grave Whispers might manipulate their dead against them from adjacent sectors, or Gloom-Striders observe from hidden alcoves, their melancholic presence subtly draining resolve. Intense internal paranoia among kin-bands leads to swift, silent betrayals. This Domain thrives on chaos, its very existence a knife-edge dance of cunning and cruelty, where every shadow conceals a hidden agenda.
The Endless Exchange
The Endless Exchange functions as a sprawling, chaotic Oligarchy, its Kitsune families and influential individuals profiting from every secret and transaction. Slavery is a core institution, with captives stripped of identities and used as anonymous laborers in its vast, illicit trade of information and goods. Threats include constant betrayal and violent power shifts, possessing spirits drawn to the raw desperation, creatures born from discarded identities, and the constant risk of truth itself becoming a lethal weapon in the volatile markets.
The Enduring March
The Enduring March is a stark, melancholic Country, a vast stretch of blighted plains and grim forests where Humans and Gloom-Striders forge a desperate, enduring alliance. Grave Whispers also find a morbid purpose here, providing knowledge of the dead. Its purpose is grim survival through unwavering vigilance and the preservation of fleeting remnants of order amidst the rot. Governed by a somber council of weary Human commanders and ancient Gloom-Strider elders, they share the burden of observation and defense. Slavery is harsh but pragmatic, with captives of any race forced into arduous labor clearing blight, acting as expendable scouts against forest abominations, or serving as silent guardians in watchtowers against encroaching despair, all for the sake of their fragile pact.
The Fields of Ash
A vast, open expanse where the soil is eternally black with the nutrient-rich ash of countless ritual pyres. Under the ruthless command of human overseers, this vile and corrupted harvest is tended by thralls who are literally forced to sow their own disease. The air here is thick with a cloying, sweet stench of decay and the low moans of the sick. Here, Wight-Wheat grows in fields tainted by powerful necrotic magic, its black stalks drawing sustenance directly from the cursed ground. Interspersed throughout are grotesque patches of Fester-Sprouts, its oozing sores used for both gruesome rituals and as a virulent bioweapon to be used against their enemies. The fields are a living symbol of Crimsonhold's unending expansion and merciless dominion. Work in this area includes guarding the fields from rebellious thralls, transporting the blighted crops to the ritual sites in the city, or fighting off the plague-ridden creatures that the sprouts inevitably attract.
The Flesh-Forge Mires
A sprawling, grimy laboratory filled with bubbling vats and rusted hooks, where a Tiefling master experiments on corrupted life. It is a terrifying workshop where new horrors are born and life is simply raw material for foul creations. It is also home to a unique form of blighted crop. The Wight-Wheat grows here, and Fester-Sprouts are cultivated. The kernels are used to create a highly nutritious, but disease-ridden, paste for the living thralls. The purpose is to keep them alive for as long as possible, a twisted form of medicine that has horrific consequences. Work here involves capturing live subjects for experimentation, guarding the mires from the horrifying creatures that the blight inevitably creates, and harvesting the blighted crops for new, horrific rituals.
The Grave Quarter
The Grave Quarter is a grim, perpetually quiet district within Discordia's Contested Sprawl, bordering The Human District. This Grave Whispers-dominated necropolis comprises sprawling ossuaries, crumbling crypts, and silent processing houses. Its purpose: to serve as the city's grim morgue and spiritual archive, meticulously managing the dead and harnessing their morbid energies. The air here is thick with dust, ancient decay, and preservatives, punctuated by unnerving silence. Threats are intrinsic: Constant incursions from the Human District spark brutal skirmishes over fresh corpses. Uncontrolled reanimations frequently erupt from dense dead populations. Spiritual backlash from angered spirits haunts crypts. Localized plague outbreaks are common from morbid practices. Thieves plunder grim artifacts. Pervasive psychological decay from constant proximity to death gnaws at every Grave Whisper, challenging their sanity.
The Ledger-Fields
The Ledger-Fields A sprawling, chaotic burial ground where the dead are marked with their debts, each grave a ledger of a life spent in perpetual servitude. The air here is thick with a palpable sense of despair, and every shadow hides a potential betrayal. The purpose is to quantify and process suffering into capital, where the dead can still be used as collateral for debts. Here, Fester-Sprouts are cultivated, and Wight-Wheat grows in the cursed soil. The crops are used to create a bioweapon that can be used to eliminate rivals. Work here involves guarding the fields from rebellious thralls, fighting off the plague-ridden creatures that the sprouts inevitably attract, and defending the fields from the possessing spirits drawn to the raw desperation.
The Maw of Stonegaunt
A terraced cavern network, hewn into the deep earth in the shape of a colossal, gaping maw. Here, the bones of fallen Shadar-kai and other creatures are laid out on wide stone terraces, their intricate patterns serving as fertilizer for a single, horrifying crop. A thick carpet of Grave-Lichen grows on the polished skulls and fossilized bones of abyssal giants, absorbing their memories and adding them to the nation's living archive. The cavern is a grim, silent place, a morbid testament to Stonegaunt's grim pursuit of knowledge, where Death-Veil Fungus clings to the walls, feeding on the silence of the entombed dead. Work here involves meticulously harvesting the lichen, a task that requires absolute silence and focus, and mapping the dangerous, shifting catacombs in search of new bones to add to the grim collection.
The Moving Grave
The Moving Grave serves as the grim, nomadic capital of The Scavenger's Pact, less a city and more a sprawling, ever-shifting camp of scavenged tents, crude fortifications, and processing sites. Here, Humans, Cunning-Paws, Shifterkin, Blight-Touched, and Grave Whispers form a shifting alliance of brutal nomadic bands, united only by hunger and the pursuit of fresh carrion from battlefields and ruined settlements. Its purpose is bleak survival through constant plunder. Threats include relentless internal feuds between racial bands igniting bloody skirmishes, plague outbreaks from unprocessed carrion, monsters tracking the camp's movement, and the psychological strain from ceaseless motion and perpetual desperation. Its transient nature provides both defense and vulnerability.
The Scavenger's Pact
The Scavenger's Pact is a sprawling, loosely-governed Country, a volatile testament to desperate survival through predation and plunder. Here, Humans, Cunning-Paws, Shifterkin, Blight-Touched, and Grave Whispers form a shifting alliance of brutal nomadic bands, united only by hunger and the pursuit of fresh carrion from battlefields and ruined settlements. Ruled by a volatile council of the strongest warlords and most cunning kin-leaders, their "law" is cold pragmatism and brute force. Slavery is rampant and opportunistic, with captives of any race forced into desperate foraging expeditions or used as expendable shields in their endless skirmishes. Threats include constant retaliation from those they prey upon, severe internal feuds over dwindling spoils that ignite bloody warfare, and immense monsters drawn to their trails of conflict and carrion.
The Screaming Spire
Rising from the churning, storm-tossed waters like a jagged, black tooth, The Screaming Spire is a colossal pinnacle of basalt that perpetually funnels the Archipelago's most violent gales into a deafening vortex. The wind here howls with the agony of a thousand shipwrecks, creating a constant, earsplitting shriek that can drive mortals to madness. Its lower reaches are relentlessly pounded by colossal rogue tides, carving treacherous, unseen currents around its base that drag unwary vessels into crushing whirlpools. No vegetation clings to its slick, wave-battered face, only barnacles and the bleached bones of unfortunate gulls. It's said the Spire itself is a petrified fragment of a drowned god's fang, forever wailing its demise. Navigating within sight of this landmark is a death sentence; its function is purely to embody the raw, destructive power of the Archipelago's environment.
The Sentinel Peaks
A colossal mountain stronghold ruled by the Crag-Born, controlling vital passes and resources with unyielding force. Slavery is harsh and rare, reserved for the strongest captives forced into brutal labor or expendable roles. The ruling Crag-Born's slow decay threatens internal stability, while external threats include subterranean Deep-Crawlers, desperate human incursions, elemental monsters, ancient ghouls, and dangerous slave revolts.
The Serpent's Embrace
The Serpent's Embrace is a treacherous, opportunistic Country, where Blight-Touched and Cunning-Paws have forged a volatile, predatory partnership, with Humans forming the bulk of its pirate crews and enslaved populace, and Shifterkin acting as infiltrators. Its purpose is the ruthless acquisition of resources and power through unceasing piracy, coastal raiding, and dark pacts with unseen horrors of the deep. Ruled by a shifting alliance of ruthless Blight-Touched and cunning-paw kin-leaders, their "law" is fluid and self-serving. Slavery is rampant and brutal, with captives used for vile rituals, grotesque experiments, or forced into treacherous maritime labor and bloody raids. Threats include constant betrayal within their own ranks, fierce retribution from those they prey upon, and the unpredictable wrath of ancient sea demons drawn by their dark offerings.
The Shadow Weave
The Shadow Weave is a subtle, deceptive Country, its authority residing within a hidden, intricate network of Shifterkin agents who manipulate society through whispers and altered perceptions. While Humans make up the bulk of its populace, and Cunning-Paws serve as specialized scouts and couriers, they are often unknowingly living under a pervasive illusion of choice. Its purpose is total control through unseen means, shaping narratives and extracting secrets. Slavery here is the ultimate debasement, a brutal system of enforced cannibalism where captives are systematically consumed to sustain the Collective, overseen by the Shifterkin and Cunning-Paws who view all other races as grotesque, exploitable resources for their horrific ends. Threats include constant counter-espionage, the inherent psychological toll on the Shifterkin from perpetual deception, and sudden, violent rebellions by Humans who uncover the chilling truth of their masters.
The Shifting Sector
A disorienting, ever-changing district, its very architecture subtly twisting and blurring as if perpetually seen through a heat haze. Dominated by Shifterkin, its purpose is total control through pervasive illusion, shaping narratives, and extracting secrets. Here, reality itself is a fluid weapon. Its streets are a labyrinth where buildings subtly alter, and familiar features melt into new forms, making it notoriously difficult for outsiders to navigate. constant raids from Human mobs attempting to "burn out the fakes" or break the district's illusions. Blight-Touched agents attempt to corrupt Shifterkin forms, causing agonizing, permanent mutations. Cunning-Paws constantly seek to break their deceptions for profit, and Grave Whispers from adjacent sectors might expose past identities, undermining their control. Pervasive identity loss and frequent psychological breakdowns among its own populace from constant manipulation are internal hazards, leading to a chilling erosion of self.
The Silent Necropolis of Darakhul
A vast, morbid burial ground and a silent city of bones, where the air is thick with the scent of rot and decay. The Darakhul priesthood views this place not as a graveyard, but as a grim pasture, a resource for their unending expansion. Here, Wight-Wheat grows in fields tainted by powerful necrotic magic, and Fester-Sprouts thrive on the rotting flesh of the dead. The purpose is to use these crops to feed the living who are too weak to resist the ghoulish transformation, a grim form of sustenance that turns them into undead thralls. The work here is a constant, morbid struggle against a dying land. Adventurers can expect to be tasked with guarding the fields from rebellious ghoulish scavengers or capturing new thralls to tend to the crops.
The Sullen Marches
Across the Sullen Marches, a vast, fractured land. Sprawling Blackwood Forests choke the land, mist-shrouded and teeming with creatures born of fear and famine. Deep within their shadows, ancient monster lairs and haunted crypts fester. Twisted rivers, thick with sediment and forgotten dead, carve paths through desolate plains, linking scattered, desperate settlements clinging to crumbling fortifications. Few roads are safe; trade routes choke with bandits and drowned-infested bogs. Magic here is a curse, twisting wielders and victims alike. The air itself feels heavy with old blood, the stench of decay. Warring fiefdoms, driven by starvation and grudges, unleash desperate soldiers against each other, or the tide of horrors consuming wildlands. Every village fears the night, every town barters its last silver for grim protection. Hope? A whispered lie, fragile against a world drowned in cynicism and sheer cruelty.
The Sundered Nexus
The Sundered Nexus is Discordia's chaotic, ever-shifting urban heart, a city less built and more endlessly fought over. It's a perpetual battleground where all ten races are locked in brutal, internecine conflict. Its purpose is simply continued existence through savagery. Individuals are ruthlessly used for backbreaking labor or as cannon fodder. Threats abound: constant street skirmishes between racial gangs, targeted assassinations of faction leaders, abominations specifically adapted to urban ruins, resource blockades causing starvation in districts, reanimated corpses used as street combatants, and psychological warfare driving citizens to madness through illusions and fear.
The Sunken Decks
The Sunken Decks A vast, ship-strewn boneyard where the decks of a thousand sunken ships are exposed to the salty air, their wooden planks perpetually soaked with brackish water. On these decks, a horrifying new life grows. The Madness Berries grow here, feeding on the lingering anguish of the drowned, and the Death-Veil Fungus clings to the sunken skulls. The purpose is to use the blighted crops as a drug to break the minds of rival crews and turn them into docile, obedient workers, and to listen to the secrets of the dead. Work here involves diving for blighted crops, a dangerous task where you must contend with colossal sea monsters, drowned spirits seeking new victims, and the madness that comes from handling the crops.
The Sunless March
A vast, fortified network of tunnels inhabited by the fanatical Deep-Crawlers, ruled by a priesthood devoted to gods of hunger and depths. Life is harsh, ritualized, and devoid of freedom, with slavery and sacrifice central to their grim existence.
The Veiled Apex
A high-altitude kingdom ruled by the ancient Still-Hunter Queens, preserving sacred knowledge and spiritual sites in mist-wreathed peaks. Isolation ensures control over rare insights but breeds internal decay and constant external threats.
The Weeping Graveyard
The Weeping Graveyard is a perpetually fog-choked stretch of shallow, treacherous shoals where countless ships have met their end, their mast-tops poking like skeletal fingers from the waves. The air here is unnaturally cold, thick with the scent of brine and despair. It is the domain of the drowned spirits, restless souls who endlessly drift through the wreckage, their mournful whispers carried on the wind. These spirits do not attack directly, but they lure living sailors onto jagged rocks, whisper promises of lost treasure that lead to watery graves, or simply sap the will to live from any who linger, seeking new companions in their eternal torment. The Graveyard's purpose is a grim testament to the sea's relentless claim on souls.
The Whispering Veil
A secluded, cavernous cove where contraband and secrets are the only currency. A network of elevated platforms and ropes connects the illicit trade stalls. It is the hidden heart of the Elven kin-leaders' network, a place where no one's true motives are ever trusted, not even kin. It is also home to a unique blight. The Death-Veil Fungus grows here, feeding on the whispers and lies of the dead, and Grave-Lichen clings to the bones of the dead. The purpose is to use the fungus to listen to the silent whispers of the dead, to learn from them and to guard ancient, perilous sites. The work here is subtle and treacherous, involving harvesting the blighted crops in the deep caves and fending off the monstrous ambush predators that stalk the territories.
The Whispering Weald
Within its borders lies a bewildering, perpetually shifting expanse of woods known as The Whispering Weald. This is not a natural forest, but a twisted, blighted creation where the trees are woven from illusions and the air hums with a disorienting, psychic static. Every path, every clearing, and every shadow is a lie, constantly rearranging itself to confuse and mislead. It serves as a natural, bewildering fortress, its deceptive paths and camouflaged enclaves hiding the Kitsune's settlements. It is also their grim resource hub, a source of mind-bending flora for their illusions and the resilient wood for their snares. However, this land is an active threat. Pervasive environmental decay and insidious undead are constant dangers. The ancient tree spirits, angered by predation, are a silent, malevolent force, actively seeking to ensnare and petrify intruders. The thicket is a constant reminder of the price of survival in the Riven Lands.
Thornheart Sanctuary
A squat, reinforced structure of gnarled trees and thorns camouflaged in a treacherous forest, serving as the brutal heart of the Elven populace where Madness Berries are cultivated to break war captives' minds. Death-Veil Fungus grows on the bones of the dead, feeding on the silence of the mist-shrouded forest, making the work here lethal and unforgiving with a thin line between hunter and prey.
Thornwood
Thornwood is a wild, perilous Country deep within the treacherous forests, its boundaries defined by gnarled trees and shadowed paths. Its Elven populace survives through constant ambush, brutal efficiency, and elusiveness, embodying the woods' savage nature. Their purpose: grim self-preservation and ruthless exploitation of the forest's dark bounty via hunts and swift raids. Those unfit or captured are compelled into service as expendable scouts or living bait. Threats are relentless. Internally, fierce disputes over dwindling hunting grounds ignite bloody skirmishes and pervasive paranoia among kin-bands. Externally, massive forest abominations—blighted beasts—stalk their territory. Organized military campaigns from Human fiefdoms spark bloody guerilla warfare. The forest itself turns hostile, with ancient tree spirits angered by predation, and insidious undead lurking in shadows, posing unexpected localized dangers.
Threnody Landing
A melancholic town on the edge of Sylvanspire's misty forests, serving as a grim outpost for harvesting ancient, blighted magical timber. The town is marked by sorrowful laborers overseen by Shadar-kai, exporting carved timber and dark resin while facing threats from forest spirits, shadow creatures, and psychological decay.
Veilwatch
Veilwatch operates as a chillingly deceptive Rigged Democracy, its Kitsune populace maintaining an illusion of choice while subtly manipulating events through espionage and identity theft. Slavery is pervasive, often through psychological conditioning or identity theft, turning victims into unaware pawns or debased informants. Threats include relentless counter-espionage, insidious mind-rending phantasms that prey on unstable identities, the psychological toll of never trusting anyone, and entities that feed on discarded personalities, pushing Kitsune to identity loss.
Vesperia
Vesperia functions as a chilling Theocracy, its Tiefling priesthood pursuing ultimate power through dark rituals and arcane experimentation, interpreting the will of unseen entities. Slavery is common, with captives used as experimental subjects for grotesque transformations and perverse pleasure. Threats include the unpredictable backlash of their own uncontrolled experiments, fiendish entities attracted to their debauchery demanding greater pacts, madness consuming those who delve too deep, and grotesque, mutated creatures birthed from their blight turning hostile within their very temple-complexes.
Vilebloom Port
Vilebloom Port is a grim, sprawling port town, its structures covered in pulsating, corrupted growths, perpetually reeking of decay and strange chemicals. Its purpose is the acquisition and processing of resources for Vesperia's Tiefling noble experiments, and the discreet disposal of their failures. The town's dock, The Crimson Ooze Dock, is perpetually slick with foul, iridescent slime, its timbers appearing to breathe. You'll find gaunt Human thralls laboring under the watchful gaze of Tiefling overseers, loading grotesque cargo—unwilling experimental subjects, mutated fauna, and vats of potent blights. Threats include uncontrolled blight outbreaks among the populace, fiendish manifestations erupting from failed experiments, localized outbreaks of madness from contact with corrupted goods, and mutated creatures escaping their confinement.
Weeping Grove
Weeping Grove is Sylvanspire's melancholic heart, a city nestled amidst ancient, sorrow-laden groves. Its Shadar-kai guard fading wisdom, clinging to fragile beauty. Individuals are psychologically bound as silent thralls. Threats include ancient trees bleeding corruption into homes, shadows consuming individuals who stray from paths, pervasive melancholy causing citizens to abandon duties, creatures of sorrow preying on the weak-willed, and localized blight outbreaks from emotional resonance affecting city districts.
Whisper-Knot
Whisper-Knot serves as the central node of Echoes of Entrapment's vast information network, a labyrinthine city woven from hardened silk and shadow. Its purpose is comprehensive intelligence gathering, meticulous surveillance, and silent infiltration training for Still-Hunter operatives. Threats include infiltration by rival agents leading to sudden, bloody betrayals within the city's hidden passages. Localized information warfare, where manipulated rumors and false intel cause mass panic, is constant. Psychic backlash from overloaded data processing leaves some Still-Hunters in catatonic states. Operatives frequently succumb to extreme paranoia, and missing individuals vanish without a trace from the city's intricate web.
Whispercove
Whispercove functions as a secretive Council of Elf kin-leaders, overseeing a hidden network of treacherous coves and passages. Its purpose is to control the flow of secrets and contraband. Slavery is highly selective, with specialized captives held for their unique skills or having their wills subtly broken through manipulation rather than brute force. Threats include persistent monstrous ambush predators in their territories, spectral guardians of hidden caches reacting violently to intrusions, attempts by rivals to infiltrate their networks, and the constant paranoia inherent in their trade.
Whispering Hollow Memorial Park
A seemingly pristine, beautiful memorial park where the dead are not actually buried. It is a place of quiet contemplation and manicured gardens, a chilling facade over a deeper, more sinister truth. Here, Madness Berries are grown in a series of labyrinthine hedgerows, and Grave-Lichen grows on the tombstones. The purpose is to maintain the illusion of choice and respect while using the blighted crops to turn victims into unaware pawns or debased informants, and to absorb the forgotten memories of the dead. Work here involves tending to the blighted crops, a task that can cause a slow mental decline, and hunting down those who have gone mad from their proximity to the blight.