A broken world held by a fragile word. Read it as a sacred text — for that is what the Compact is.
Long ages past, the world of Aereth was whole and silent. Then came the Sundering, when Sulvan the Forge-Sun, in his wrath against the silver-tongued Myrra the Twin-Moon, struck the firmament with his great hammer Karn, and the world cracked into seven thousand floating shards. Only the deep roots of Voth the Underroot held the pieces from scattering into the dark.
They do not appear. They are inferred from their effects — a sunrise, a forgotten dream, a stone that will not move.
From the chaos arose mountains of glass, seas that flow through open air, and continents that drift slowly upon the bones of the buried dead. No one living remembers the world before. The Quietkind say even Myrra has forgotten it, and that this is mercy.
Of those seven thousand shards, the largest is Vael'orin, the Free Lands, where your story begins. For three centuries it was contested by petty kings and shard-pirates, until eighty-seven winters ago the surviving powers met beneath an enormous tree called the Ashen Oak and signed the Compact — a fragile peace whose terms are inked in three colors of ash, and which, for now, holds.
A peace is only the silence between two confessions.
The Compact hangs in a sealed iron casket from the lowest branch of the Ashen Oak. It names three powers as its keepers, binds them to arbitration over war, and creates a single neutral office to walk between them: the Wayfarers. You are the newest of that office, though you do not yet remember swearing to it.
Sulvan of the forge. Myrra of the dusk. Voth of the deep. Three domains, three accents, three tempers.
THE FORGE-SUN
"An oath unkept is a forge unlit."
A bearded smith with eyes of molten gold, wielding the hammer Karn. He speaks plainly and oath-bound, in short sentences and proverbs of iron and light. His followers are the Sworn; his clerics, the Gilded Chapter, keep the Wayshrines lit and the roads patrolled.
THE TWIN-MOON
"There is one moon. There are two. Both are true."
Twin sisters joined at the back — Waxing and Waning — never seen apart, though sometimes only one speaks. She is lyrical and riddling, fond of paradox, her clauses contradicting each other in pairs. Her followers are the Dreaming; her keepers, the Quietkind, bear no banner save a single grey moth.
THE UNDERROOT
"Stone remembers what flesh forgets."
A great tree inverted into the rock, a face carved in its trunk that opens its eyes once a generation. He speaks slowly and formally, full of dwarven idiom and the naming of ancestors by full lineage. His followers are the Rooted; his guild, the Ironbound Concord, sells iron to whoever pays in good coin.
Sulvan · High Marshal Rhen Ostane · Seat: Kaer Vandrin
Lawful and expansionist. Believes Vael'orin must be unified under one banner before the next Sundering. Mints the standard argent crown and tithes eight percent on all trade in Chapter territory. Distrusts the Quietkind as "heretics in moth-cloaks," and treats the Concord as "useful, but mercenary."
RANKS · ACOLYTE · SWORN-LAY · LANCE-SWORN · MARSHAL · HIGH MARSHAL
Myrra · Warden-Mother Ilsa Mirelle · Seat: The Archive of Mournloom
Conservationist and secretive. They tend the old places, the Wayshrines, and the broken libraries of the pre-Sundering era. They use no coin among themselves, trading in dream-debts — oral promises that bind on waking. Cold to the Chapter since the Black Spring; cordial with the Concord, for Voth and Myrra never quarreled.
RANKS · LISTENER · LAMPBEARER · WALKER · WARDEN · WARDEN-MOTHER
Voth · Groundmaster Koren-Anbreck · Seat: The Iron Hall of Brassreach
Mercenary-neutral. Sells to any buyer in good crowns and refuses to take political sides, except where the supply of stone or ore is threatened. Mints heavier "iron crowns" at three times the weight and one and a half times the value, and accepts standard argent crowns at par. They weigh your ESC on the same scales as a man's life.
RANKS · APPRENTICE · HAMMERHAND · FORGE-MASTER · IRON-SWORN · GROUNDMASTER
| Event | When | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| The Sundering | ~3,000 yrs | Sulvan against Myrra. The world cracked into seven thousand shards. Voth's roots saved what they could. |
| The Compact of Ashen Oak | 87 yrs | The three powers met beneath the Ashen Oak. The Wayfarers were established as neutral envoys. |
| The Black Spring | 50 yrs | A plague carried in still water halved many villages. The Quietkind blamed Chapter dam-works upstream. The wound has not closed. |
| The Last Wyrmfall | 12 yrs | Halek-Auruun, the last named dragon, slain at Calderaheart by a Gilded knight whose name was struck from the rolls. |
Some say the Compact began to crack with that killing — that a peace which strikes its own name from the record was never whole.
You wake in the village of Hearthmere in early spring, with no name and no kin, branded only on the inside of your wrist with a silver triskelion. The mark belongs to the Wayfarers, an old Compact-era order of independent envoys who carry sealed letters between the three powers and arbitrate the small disputes the great houses cannot be bothered to.
It binds you to no oath. What you do with that freedom is the game.
"A Wayfarer's purse is heaviest when empty. The triskelion has three points, and only one of them is yours."
WAYFARER-HALL PROVERBS