World Lore

The storm has passed, but reality hasn't settled. People wake from dreams of places they have never seen, and some wake knowing the way there.

This year a dragon's egg changed hands, and trust changed with it. Someone buried it where no one would follow. Someone else has not been the same since.

Meanwhile, in the forests and the far plains, the illagers are gathering banners. Old alliances are being remembered and new ones counted.

Most of Terra thinks the worst is behind it. The oldest stories disagree.

Terra, 1426

The dragon did not die quietly.

Those who were there still don't agree on what they saw. They only agree on how it ended: the beast fell, and it left something behind. An egg, dark and warm, humming with something that did not belong to this world.

An alliance had formed before anyone knew what they were fighting for. Gods and mortals marched side by side and promised to share whatever they found.

The promise lasted about as long as it took to find it.

WHAT THE EGG DOES

No two people who stood near it describe it the same way. Most say they felt smaller.

One of them said it felt like coming home.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

The egg was taken, and not by the one the alliance feared. It was carried out of the hunt by someone they had trusted, and the betrayal is still argued over in every tavern from the coast to the mountains.

High on a mountain, someone was waiting for the thief. They fought. Only one of them walked down.

The egg was never seen again.

WHERE IT IS NOW

No one knows, or almost no one. It is said the egg was buried somewhere no one would think to dig, and that a single compass was enchanted to find it again. It does not point north. It points to the one place its maker wanted to forget.

Some say the egg is sleeping.

Others say eggs don't sleep. They wait.

The alliance did not survive the year. Neither did the trust between those who formed it. And the one who said it felt like coming home has not been seen sleeping since.

Somewhere at the centre of existence rests an ancient, hidden power. The few tales that mention it speak of a stone, one that some would call worthless and others would kill for.

It is small. Every telling agrees on that. No crown, no temple, no light. Those who claim to have seen it say they almost walked past it. The oldest texts give it a name in a language nobody speaks anymore: lapsit exillis. The scholars who know what the words mean do not agree on why it was named that.

Names are written on it. They appear along its edge with no hand to carve them, and some are taken away. No one has ever seen a name return.

It does not eat or sleep, but it hungers. The songs say it lives on what happens: wars and weddings, betrayals and quiet evenings. Every story told keeps it whole a little longer.

It waits for someone. Not the strongest, and not the most worthy. Just the one who stays long enough to understand it.

Ask how it all began, and the oldest stories fall quiet. The ones that do answer speak of light that came from somewhere else.

The world is called Terra. Myths take root in the land, gods from many cultures are real, sacred places hold memory, and old events leave scars that never fully fade.

Terra is home to humans, anthros (anthropomorphic beings of any species), elves, witches, illagers, villagers, mythic creatures and gods. For about two centuries, gods and mortals have lived side by side in the open. That uneasy order holds, mostly.

Here, a sanctuary may also be a place of exile. A divine city may feel like a tomb. A love story may unfold in the shadow of betrayal.

The people of Terra are rarely only one thing. Like the magpie, black and white in the same feather, a person can be noble and cruel, faithful and doubting. An old saying warns that when doubt lives too close to the heart, the soul turns bitter.

Gods are real and larger than life. Each is tied to a domain, like Mischief, Luck, Fire or Desire, and the room changes when one walks in.

Magic is ancient, symbolic and costly. It does not always behave the same way, and nobody fully understands why.

Powerful objects carry history with them. The best relics do more than grant power: they tempt, divide, reveal, or change the people around them.

OLD KNOWLEDGE

Terra is not purely medieval, but it isn't futuristic either. Fragments of older knowledge still exist: strange machines, buried ideas and the remains of a lost understanding. Some of it was buried on purpose.