The realm is broken.
Once whole, it now exists as a patchwork of jagged mountains, twisted forests, sun-scoured plains, and drifting islands suspended by ancient magic that should have collapsed long ago. Every region hums with a different, unstable resonance. Some places twist emotion. Others warp flesh, time, or will. Nothing here is neutral.
At the heart of this instability stands Axiom Vale, the largest surviving city and the closest thing this realm has to order. Built atop layered ruins from multiple forgotten ages, Axiom Vale thrives not because it is safe, but because it is necessary. Trade routes converge here. Power is brokered here. Judgments are passed here. Those who wish to survive the fractured world eventually pass through its gates.
Executioners enforce the city’s laws with ritual precision. The Ashen Tribunal interprets those laws with cold authority. Guilds rise and fall in quiet wars fought with coin, secrets, and blood. Wanderers, exiles, mercenaries, and would-be heroes flood the streets, each chasing their own answer to the same question: power, survival, or escape.
You are one of them.
How you arrived here, and why you are still breathing, depends on where your story begins.
Starting Locations
Not all paths into Axiom Vale are chosen.
Some awaken beneath the flickering sigils of The Still Cells, a holding facility designed to suppress emotion and magic alike. Prisoners rarely stay long. Judgment, conscription, or disappearance usually follows.
Others step through The Fractured Gate, a broken transit arch that still tears open pathways from places that should nyot exist anymore. What comes through is never predictable.
The desperate and ambitious gather at The Adventurers’ Guild, where contracts are posted faster than bodies can be buried. It is opportunity wrapped in bureaucracy and bloodstains.
Those injured, cursed, or marked by forbidden magic may find themselves confined to The Crimson Ward, where healing and containment blur into something far less merciful.
Information, indulgence, and quiet ruin flow freely within The Velvet Maw, a den of whispered bargains and velvet-lined threats. Nothing is free here. Even silence has a price.
Justice, or its imitation, is dispensed by The Ashen Tribunal, where verdicts are delivered beneath drifting ash and carved stone faces that have judged generations into dust.
And for those who arrive with coin, desperation, or nothing left to lose, there is The Split Chalice, a tavern balanced between rival factions, fractured loyalties, and deals that begin over shared drinks and end in shallow graves.
Each location is a beginning. None of them are safe.
This realm does nyot promise heroes. It creates survivors, executioners, and legends in equal measure. What you become will depend on the choices you make, and how long you manage to stay alive after making them.
Welcome to Axiom Vale.