The prologue lineupThere is something wrong with the world. You can feel it behind the wall and behind your thoughts. This isn’t what was meant to be. There was a time before you awakened into this world, another life with a purpose and people you loved. It was real. You know it was real—and someone took it from you.
You have had dreams, or are they memories, of other people familiar and strange—things that are, things that were, and things that should have been but never were.
There is a place in the mountains so far across the world, a place where a piece of the sky has fallen and cracked the world.
You have seen them in your dreams, white haired and blue skinned, the boy who broke the world, and you have seen her, hair like wheat and eyes like garnets, the woman who never dies.
There are answers in the mountains, but the journey will not be easy, because this world, that is not your world, is full of perils.
The Dreamers
Cards deck
Currently Around
Deck row
Ashen Iscariot
Armored up raven-themed dude. Human, looks 50 but acts 200, he/him.
Bax Demir
Outdoorsy fighty guy. Human, looks 30 but acts 20, he/him.
Ethan Thorne
Shady PI type. Half-elf, late 30s but looks late 20s, he/him.
Frisk
Mysterious crime-ridden half-elf. She/her.
Proserpina "Peach" Pine
Cheerful waitress/writer with a gun. Half-elf, 19, she/her.
Salinger Morel
Big dad, with a pet dragon Poppy. Firbolg, mid-30s, he/him.
Sav
Awkward wants-to-know-it-all magicist. Human, 20, she/they/he.
Asleep
Deck row
Hark'ul
Quiet ascetic who cooks well and runs real fast. Orc, mid-20s, he/they.
Mosrael Lycanna
Outdoorsy healer type. Half-elf, mid-20s, she/her.
Talith Elinasti
Occasionally hotheaded guardian sort. Weirdly half-elf, 30ish, he/him.
The Story Thus Far
See Season 14 Chronology for all episodes and fiction, arranged chronologically.
One by one, years or months or days apart, people begin to Return, between one blink and the next going from their known world into a new unknown one. None of the nations they knew existed, the sun never rises or sets, leaving one side of the world completely locked in night, and all goodness and warmth centers around Aseraphal and the tentacle-faced angels at the top of the world, where admission might be bought for the price of an artifact from ancient times. Strangest of all, occasionally each of them might blink out from moment to the next, returning without any memory of the time between; unlike in previous times, however, no false memories interpose themselves in the meantime.
Ashen, Ethan, Salinger, and Talith are some of the earliest to emerge back into the world, and began rebuilding a routine for themselves as they hunt for answers. Salinger is welcomed to the town of Kendall’s Forge and eventually finds a family in Ori Wisplore and their eventual daughter, even as he continues to search for ghosts and trails of stories through the years. Mosrael and Hark’ul have a few extra years under their belt to adjust the new world, while Bax, Peach, and Sav reemerge less than a year before the Pull grows insistent.
The dreams start immediately for some, and not for a while for others (or ever, for one), but eventually all start to feel the pull toward the Daggered Spine. Following that urge, they collide and collect in twos and threes, in the town of Ivakar’s Passage and deep in the mountains. An encounter with Gwin Clockwright and Samsel reveals that they’ve been studying a piece of an aasimar artifact that might be the source of the pull, and a piece of what Esmund Clockwright—who had shown himself to Gwin and to Sav once, desperately trying to communicate something—was trying to show them. (Yev is there too, but he doesn’t know much about the shard.) Reunions and gladness are dampened by the coming of Summit, the range-namer, who had also wrecked Gwin’s workshop and maybe was also drawn to this artifact.
After attempting to connect with Danica through the constellations Bax and Talith still bear, combined with the single stars each of the Dreamers now have, they all the involuntarily share a memory with one another. Drawn by the connection, Zephyrus, a messenger of the angels who now takes the appearance of Esmund with a single hummingbird wing, shows up to give them an invite to come chat in Aseraphal.
On traveling to the ruins of the workshop, they find the shard and escape the dragon on Gwin’s airship, the Clockwright. They take flight and shelter in the city of Endergaln, where Gwin has a preexisting relationship with the House of Beryl and the defenses are stout enough to discourage the dragon.
Unlocking the secrets of the Shard of the Confluence takes time, however, and in the meantime the group spread out and settle in, establishing routines and learning the city. They pool their knowledge together and puzzle out an overarching history of the angels, the illithid and Paradox that might have a bearing on the situation of the current day, which Ethan sets up as a play to stir up anyone suspicious who might recognize too much in the story.
It works; Rhun Enkerig recognizes too much of what happened and comes to investigate. As a veteran illithid-killer, he seeks to raise others against the angels, and brings his own team of ne’er-do-wells who kidnap and traumatize the playwright, Xander Quillwick.
Esmund returns again with more cryptic messages and desperate formulas, but a little different each time, and not registering in the same way as the other Dreamers and Returned do when they vanish. His aid reveals that another piece of the Shard exists in Endergaln, however, and further investigation reveals that it lies in the hands of House Diamante, on their largest airship.
How to reach it, though, is another matter—which is where Frisk shows up, triggering the same feeling of recognition as the rest.
NPCs
The Returned
- Elderly goblin artificer, Esmund’s adoptive mom. Started a workshop investigating the Returned and seeking signs of Esmund.
- Goliath, Xalati and Ixtalan’s younger brother. Currently in his 40s and joined a goliath tribe.
- Showing up again, now Returned, in the company of Gwin and Yev. Found the curious chunk of white stone that she’s loaned to Gwin to study which may be a key to the link between them all and to find Esmund.
- Not sure if he quite counts as an NPC at this point, but formerly of Shepherd’s End, arguably responsible for the Breaking due to the use of the Door Jamb he created. Appears to be out there trying to do something, based on his cryptic reappearances. Reappeared briefly in 01.6.920 looking super old and awful with more formulas that led to a breakthrough.
The Shady Returnt
A group who also remember times other than these and resonate with the same dreams. Led by Rhun Enkerig, a grim, relentless traveler from the stars.
- A sad redhead who’s been in the Feywild for too long and just ended up stranded somewhere else.
- A dangerous magic-worker with a taste for expensive liquor and no apparent compunctions.
- A former adventurer from Lux, who confusingly shares the same name as Peach’s mom and may have been the original.
- He’s come to kill the illithid.
- A psychotic halfling who likes fingers.
Endergaln
- Philanthropist who runs the Orfanage Theater, where all the actors and crew are the orphans of the institution.
- Famed actor, rumored a wash-up, who struggles with alcoholism and hadn’t been active for a while until early 920.
- Two thug-types employed initially by the Boss, then later by Ethan Thorne.
- Air genasi tailor, proprietor and designer of Ochrefeldt Tailoring, he/him, 50s. Friend and user of Sav.
- Art historian, noted authority on the corpus of Serrano Mettique, equally an art forger. Works with Ethan on jobs unknown.
- Earth genasi street urchin, she/her, 10-11. Used by Sav for errands and to learn the Galnian street accent.
- Famed playwright who fell out of the public eye for a while before returning with Winged Truth: Untold Tales in 920.
The Relicors
Relicors
A band of adventurers and relic-hunters in Ixadal, led by Merrick of Jhorlon.
Members
Link to original
Merrick of Jhorlon
Leader of the Relicors. Human, grizzled male, jaded. Impenetrable to Squire.Caspeid
Saucy member of the Relicors. Human, male, 20s.Icana
Dead member of the Relicors, sister of Vesper.Squire
See Ethan Fairchild.Velt
Sweet member of the Relicors. Halfling, male, teens.Vesper
Dead member of the Relicors. Seer, Dreamer. Teens. His dreams and foresights often came true. Brother to Icana.
On the Side of the Angels
- Angelic mouthpiece with the appearance of Esmund and one wing.
The Rest
- Sav’s familiar, currently back in rat form.
- A golden clockwork raven construct summoned by Sav. Can’t speak, but intelligent.
- Former Queen of Lux, now tooling about somewhere with Esmund.
Locations
Ixadal
Daggered Spine center, Endergaln a little north, Kendall's Forge in the far north of this map.The continent where Season 14 takes place, east of the continent of Ithar and west of Luxian.
Link to original
- The Daggered Spine
Rocky mountain range. Here be dragons. Or at least one giant one.- The Concordian Alliance
An alliance to the west of Endergaln that threatens its hold.- Endergaln
Megacity balanced over vents to the Plane of Fire, with powerful houses jockeying for power via control of the vents.- Ivakar’s Passage
Small crossing town on the east side of the Daggered Spine, at the mouth of a pass that’s the only way across the Spine.- Kendall’s Well
The town facing Kendall’s Well; both towns are located on either side of a river where Returned are known to Return like clockwork at least once a year.- Kendall’s Forge
Where Salinger Morel and his family live.- Jhorlon
Merrick’s hometown, apparently a place that’s seen some unrest recently.- Yyolwood
Where Sav first landed near when they Returned.
Lore
Important stuff to know.
Paradox
A place, a being, a concept. Everything at once. Also known as the Impossible.
The Weave
The wall that holds out Paradox and permits reality and time to exist. Magic interacts with the weave to create its effects. Created by Time/Rhythm. Chronomantic magic is dangerous because it interacts directly with the fabric of the Weave, rather than its lint.
Setting
The world is tidally locked with the White Tower pointed directly at the sun and forming its magnetic north pole. From the point of view of its inhabitants, this means there is no day/night cycle, but the lands of Spring, the lands of Frozen Night, and the Autumn Lands in perpetual twilight in between. The magic of the angels keeps the lands of Spring with its unending daylight mild and temperate, but the lands of Night are frozen wastelands populated by hordes of undead that surge forth every now and then to overrun the inhabitants of the Autumn Lands.
Time
Though the world itself is much different, the DnD rules use certain terms such as Day and Hour that need to make sense in gameplay.
The sky is littered with stable debris from the shattered moon, typically called Stones or Shards and these conveniently create a basis for judging time.
The world rotates on its axis once per day, which can be tracked against the stars and the Stones.
Meanwhile, the Stone of Monath orbits the world once per month.
There is a smaller shard, the Stone of Ure, that orbits Monath, conveniently, every hour.
The Stone of Jhar orbits the world once per year, and tracking the stars, it’s understood that the world orbits the sun once every 10 years.
While these stones are not always visible from every point in the world they are the basis for time keeping for clocks and pocket watches.