Chronicle · Act I
The kingdom that broke
The body changes. The world changes. Names disappear. The mind remains.
Dark Memory
What Vharan knows fits in a short register. The rest is scattered across the regions of Act I, in pages, echoes and spoken lines, and the memories don't always agree. This chronicle gathers only what the game shows; what it hasn't shown yet stays sealed.
An old kingdom
There was a kingdom, Elyndor, and there was a night when it broke apart. No one in Vharan tells that night the same way. Whoever mentions it tends to glance north, where the ruins of the old kingdom lie, and change the subject.
What is left of it shows up in pieces: a crest on a sealed letter from the fallen house, an invitation with no living owner to receive it, coins struck for a peace that did not last.
“Something in you still carries the night the kingdom broke.” — Morvath, in the Forest of Awakening
Vharan, the last refuge
A palisade, torches, mist and chimney smoke. In the square, a statue on a circular altar and a violet waystone. The Chapel of Silence is older than the palisade itself: the town's first people raised it on the rock so the dead would know their way home.
In Vharan, whoever arrives without a past is not questioned. At the door they first ask whether you are cold; names can wait. But the town counts who leaves: last moon, twelve of the patrol went through the north gate, and none came back.
“From here I count who leaves and who comes back.” — Tomas, Watcher of the North Road
Who you meet in Vharan
Captain ElaraCommands the guard and sends out the expeditions.
Sister MaerynKeeps the Chapel of Silence and examines what you bring back.
Old OdraKeeper of the threshold: greets newcomers by the fire at the south gate.
TomasWatcher of the north road: counts who leaves and who returns.
LissRuns the stall and hears the rumours; her uncle Brenn handles the weapons.
BranPatrol scout, waiting by the fire in the Woods.
The voices in the woods
Beyond the north gate, the Whispering Woods hold what is left of the patrol: an overturned cart, a burned camp, insignia in the mud. The orcs came down from the north fleeing their own mine, and the wolves run with them.
At night, voices call names among the trees. Bran, the last scout, has a single piece of advice: don't answer. One of the insignia keeps a soldier's voice: “She passed by us. None of us remembered our own name.”
She: a presence that passes and erases the names of those she meets. That is all anyone says of her.
The singing stone
Beneath the orc den, a mine goes deeper than any clan would need. The dead miners still swing their picks, and the tally tablets tell why: “The shaman orders us to dig down to the stone that sings. We dug. It sings at night, and whoever listens forgets the way back.”
The shaman stayed when the clan fled, and the stone gave him the dead. In Vharan, Sister Maeryn says the singing reached the chapel. Whatever it is, it was not born there: the corruption rises from deeper down.
“The stone… still sings. Down below… it sings louder.” — Shaman of the Depths
The Lady of Ashes
In the Marsh, the rain does not put out the ash. The bell-ringer kept the village's names; his pages, hidden by the villagers, tell the rest: “The Lady of Ashes ordered everything the corruption touched to be burned: houses, books, memories. We rang the bell at every house. At the seventh, we stopped counting.”
Those who hid the pages were hanged. The Custodian swore to keep the fire until the end, and came to keep the ashes instead — and anyone who tried to remember.
“The Lady left me the fire… and a single order. What remembers… burns.” — The Ash Custodian
The Tithe
After the Marsh, the dead began to be collected. Loaded carts climb the frozen road north, escorted by Tithe-takers and pulled by Haulers; when one tips over, the bodies scatter and the scavengers come down. Under the ice of the Mute River there are faces, some with their eyes still open, turned toward the bridge.
A memory gathered on the road tells how it works: “They counted us at our doors, like sacks of wheat. The man in the iron mask wrote in a book. He said the Black King only takes what he is owed.” At the fort, someone weighs the dead on a scale.
Not every dead one goes quietly. Stray Echoes still remember and ask for one thing only: that someone say their name. The Book of Names keeps the ones that return.
“Thank you. Say my name to someone.” — a Stray Echo
Register of titles
In Act I, people remember titles, not people. The names exist; their time has not come yet.
| Title | Where you hear it | Name |
|---|---|---|
| the king | a sealed letter from the fallen house | |
| the Lady of Ashes | the Ashen Marsh | |
| the Black King | the Tithe Road | |
| she | Whispering Woods, the Marsh, the Sanctuary | |
| Cael | Vale of the Broken Moon | |
| the singing stone | the Hollow Depths | |
| the Nameless | what they call you |
The acts
The further you go, the further memory reaches back. What comes after Act I stays sealed, as on the game's map.
- Prologue · The Awakeningopen in build 0.1
- Act I · The Last Refugeopen in build 0.1
- Act II · memory still sealed
- Act III · memory still sealed
- Act IV · memory still sealed
- Act V · memory still sealed