Threads of the Weave

The World

Eryndor

Four continents, separated by sea. Drag the map to move, scroll or pinch to zoom, and open any marker to read about the place.

Map of Eryndor: four lands around the central Sunfall Sea. Sovereth lies to the west, with Hartland; Malgareth, the Outlands, to the north; the desert of the Sunreach to the south; and Estara to the east, where Tidehold sits on the coast with the Thornshade forest and Rogue's Den to its north-east and Manaridge up in the Dragonspine mountains.

Magic

The Weave

The Weave is the magic of Eryndor. It runs through every living thing and through the world itself, and those who carry deep reserves of it are called the gifted.

Mages shape the Weave through a discipline, and each discipline colours the magic it makes. Most work through a focus: a staff, a blade, a book.

Old accounts speak of a place where the energy that others called magic had a different name, an older name, and moved through the body like breath rather than fire. Nobody alive seems to know what that name was.

Pyromancy
Fire, held in check. The elementalists of Manaridge taught it as a responsibility before a weapon.
Cryomancy and aquamancy
Ice and water, the mountain village’s other crafts, used to shape terrain and survive winters.
Void magic
Cold, pressure and the absence of light. Rare, and unsettling to stand near.
Weave-forging
Craft-weave worked into steel. The finest was dwarven, of a grade no one else could match.

The Adventurers' Guild

Seven metals

  1. Copper
  2. Bronze
  3. Iron
  4. Steel
  5. Gold
  6. Platinum
  7. Adamantine

The Adventurers’ Guild runs contracts, bounties and trade protection in every guild-controlled town of Estara, Sovereth and the Sunreach. It has no reach at all in the Outlands.

Every registered adventurer carries a brooch: an emblem coated in the metal of their rank and bonded to a piece of clothing or gear. It works as a passport. Only its owner can reveal it or mask it, and a brooch registered in Tidehold is honoured in Hartland.

Everyone also knows the ranks are imperfect. They can be gamed, bought or inflated by the right connections. What counts is what you do in the field, not the metal on your chest.

Peoples

Who walks Eryndor

Humans

The most widespread people of Eryndor, found in every guild city from Tidehold to Hartland to the desert states. Most follow Dharani.

Elves

Near-ageless, learned and reclusive. Almost all of them live in Sylvaris, inside a forest that does not let strangers leave, so an elf on the road is a rare thing. Elves remember what the rest of the world has forgotten.

Dwarves

Stubborn, blunt and long-lived, and once the finest smiths in the world. Since the sealing of Karrundeep they are almost never seen on the surface.

Dragonkin

Tall, scaled and golden-eyed. Many follow Svarog. Tidehold’s Guildmaster is one, and so is the innkeeper of the Driftwood Haven.

Demonkin

Horned and tailed, with skin in shades such as crimson. The first one the reader meets is a thief in Tidehold’s market.

Orcs and half-orcs

Hardy and long-lived. Most orcs hail from the north, and they still meet suspicion in the southern cities. Many of those who came south follow Svarog.

Goblins and kobolds

Peoples of the northern frontier, numerous in Grokmar, the Sundered City.

Faith

Who they pray to

Dharani

Goddess of the living world

The most widely worshipped god in Eryndor, shared by humans and elves, and split by doctrine into what are almost two religions. Elves hold that Dharani is one with the earth: growth, balance, stewardship. Humans invoke her as the foundation of law, hierarchy and order, and have built councils and conquered in her name. It is the same goddess in two very different spirits.

Svarog

The Forge

God of craft, fire, metal, honest labour and the hearth. Dwarves, dragonkin and many orcs swear by him, keep forge-shrines and mark their work in his name. Togorn and Tyron do all three.

The crimson eye

A faith without temples

There is a third worship, and it has no temples. Its sign is an eye whose lines claw outward. In Book One it turns up scorched into stone, inked in forbidden books, and carved wherever the gifted have been taken.

Powers

Councils, orders and companies

The Adventurers’ Guild

A cross-continental institution. When a chapter is short-handed, the network sends adventurers from one city to reinforce another.

The Central Council

The guild authority that appoints Guildmasters. Its choice of replacement for Tidehold, sent all the way from Hartland, raises questions.

The High Council of the Weave

Seated in Hartland: the mages, judges and archivists who oversee magical law. Their citadel is said to hold more secrets than the rest of Eryndor combined.

The Concord of the Sands

The alliance of the desert city-states. Above trade, its shared purpose is to hold back the dead of Sethara.

The Vigil

The order that mans the Duskwall, sworn to contain what lies behind it.

The Crimson Blades

One of the most feared mercenary companies in Eryndor. They fly no banner, serve no crown and answer only to coin, in amounts that could buy a city. Captain Bardock leads them.