Art by Joel Hustak

A priestess of the dust temples of Ash wakes from a nightmare, of being stranded alone, floating in water, nothing else in sight. Water extending into eternal darkness below. More water than an emperor could muster. Enough water to smother the flames of the sea.

Artur Sadlos

An ancient mage watches a subject wake on the 26th day in the thin air chamber. This morning he wakes without the headaches, and his exercises come easily to him. He notes “The human body can adjust to the air as it is even a mile above Val Sharan. Why does it have this capability? Where did the gods intend us to live so far above the suface of the solfari sea?”

Art by Hjalmar Wahlin

Medrash perches atop Dragonspire Mountain, peering down through the clouds. Wheels turn in his mind. His war with Agravain is nearing its 500th year, but his mind sits on a moment an age ago. Days before his great betrayal, he asked Medrash, “How would you know if you’d met a god? Besides Azriel and Raziel, of course”. Medrash had taken it as philosophizing, and answered academically, speaking about True Names and reverse empathy. Agravain left with a troubled face, and proceeded to slaughter half a world. Was it madness? What did he see, that dragged a goodly cleric down to a monster?

Art by Alex R (Aerroscape)

We do not belong where we are. Man and Elf kind were made for a broad world with a thousand climates, stretching horizons, and boundless peoples. But the world is small. For some, small enough to cross in a week’s travel. We chafe against this, for we know it is wrong, but have not seen the rightness to hold it against.

There was once a larger world. The great forests of Gelach gave way to beaches and the wide Solfari Sea. The world wore Faerie like a tight cloak, and we walked between them. Now we are isolated. A world shattered and split apart, and then as reason reasserted itself, the fragments formed into small worlds of their own. A road that ran to a land that no longer existed seamed back to a similar road on the other side of the country. The mind could not conceive of the event that had passed, as so it excised the knowlege from our minds.

I do not know how long ago this happened. It could have happened during my lifetime, and been lost to me with everyone else. I suspect it was thousands of years, as the lesser immortals of the worlds are just as ignorant of it. I must imagine that a dragon’s mind or a liches many failsafes could have carried over some knowlege, but little such knowledge exists.

As far as I know, I’m the only person to discover a reliable way to carry other people between worlds. I found a remaining wound in the world, that reality struggled to contain. It is encased in a prism, and it allows me to drag objects out of the world. Even then, I can only take a few dozen at a time on a trip that takes weeks. That is why I’ve kept this a secret, and I hope history will not judge me harshly for it.

I am not alone out here. I have encountered lone travelers, all led on this path by strange discoveries, or strange powers. Some are simply things their own realities rejected. We form a sort of fraternity out between the folds of reality. Aldin Crookedtongue, Vivian the Moonmother, Naberius and Ophiel the Blasphemers, and myself were the first five. More have joined since then.

Art by Mike Winkelmann

We founded a base, in a small and uninhabited world. It was once a palace, but now the great doors are sealed shut. Each window and balcony looks out on an expanse of stars. Here we catalog and map the worlds. The thin places, where anyone can walk between them. Some are interested in how the land once knit together, and try to map the old world. Some don’t want to look backwards.

I am only a scholar, but I have noticed troubling things. ■■■■■ and Anarchy grow their worlds towards some unknown goal. Their nature does not allow them to accept the new world, I suppose. One can travel through their realms to almost any world now, if one can navigate and survive. We even have a heavily guarded portal that Anarchy cut open into our citadel.

If you are reading this you already know more than most. If you find yourself adrift, follow the lamenting star, and down the 7 fold road. Find us.

– Astral Cartographer Vek