The story
The Unravelling, the Fringe, the dead of the Crypt and what sleeps under the Massif. Each local holds a piece; you put the rest together in your Journal.
In a single night, the roads linking six kingdoms came loose like threads in old cloth. The arrivals call that night the Unravelling. Everyone on the road walked a path that grew longer, then white, and ended in the same place: a valley with stone terraces cut into a hillside, a slow river, a stone that gives life back, and the ruins of a people nobody knows.
Seven years on, the refugees have built a town without a king, the Steps. They call the valley Semfim, “no end”, because nobody leaves: at its edge the ground frays into loose threads of light, the Fringe, and whoever crosses it wakes up back inside. People still arrive from time to time, stepping out of the Fringe with no memory of the road. You are one of them.
Type what you want to ask. Each local answers in character, with their own voice and memories. Everyone holds a piece of the story, and some take time to open up. Trust grows through conversation, trade, helping out and work on town projects.
Pages of the Journal
Where they came from
Everyone in the valley came from one of six kingdoms. Trades are mixed among them; what changes is custom, and what each one lost.
The fallen crown
Highlands of dark stone castles and iron mines. Their young king led the royal column down the white road and never arrived. Most of the soldiers now guard the Steps; the nobles swore to wait for him across the river.
Lost: the king and the crown
Islands without a sea
Merchants who count everything in coins and tides. They arrived first, on a barge drifting down the river, and now run the harbor, the bank and the fishing. There is no sea in Semfim, so they keep salt water in bottles.
Lost: the sea
The sunken tower
Scholars from a city on a clear lake, built around the Deep Tower. The tower sank on the night of the Unravelling. Only a few of them came, many people blame them, and they live quietly on the upper terrace.
Lost: the Deep Tower and its books
The forest left behind
Villages without a king that cared for the Mother Wood together. They walked in single file, singing so nobody got lost, founded New Clearing and swore to grow a new forest. They don't trust crowns.
Lost: the Mother Wood
The silent bells
Cities dug under mountains, where bells marked every shift. The miners walked into a tunnel and came out in the Old Forest, opened the mine to the west and found the Old Mouth. They miss the sound of the bells.
Lost: the bells of the galleries
The pilgrim roads
Valleys of pilgrims, with inns that took in any traveler. They revere the Dew, which falls freely every morning for everyone. Their healer tends the wounded by the Gentle Stone, and an old gravedigger tends the dead.
Lost: the pilgrim roads and their inns