Lore

The known world is called Caelmir, though few speak the name aloud anymore. Maps that once bore its boundaries have burned. Kings who once ruled its continents are now bones in sealed catacombs. Still, some remember. And memory, like rust, never sleeps.

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The Age of Light

Long before the Hollow Age, Caelmir was a realm of breathtaking wonder. Kingdoms thrived under twin suns. The skies were bright, the seas clear. Science and sorcery walked hand in hand, building towering cities of crystal and brass. The greatest of these civilizations was the Velathi Concord, an alliance of scholar-kings, artificer-priests, and dream-weavers who unlocked the mysteries of aether, the invisible current said to flow between all things.

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It was the Velathi who first forged soulsteel, later called wraithsteel. They discovered how to bind memory and will into metal, how to stitch the soul to a machine, how to make death work.

They believed themselves invincible.

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The Sundering Plague

No record agrees on the exact moment Caelmir broke. Some blame the Concord’s experiments in deathless labor. Others whisper of gods that were unearthed beneath the ocean. But all agree on the arrival of the Sundering Plague. A sickness that did not just kill, but changed. It rewrote flesh, shattered reason, and twisted the dead into new shapes.

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No cure held. Cities sealed themselves behind rune-locked gates, only to fall from within. Entire regions were burned to prevent spread. The seas blackened. The skies dimmed. The Velathi disappeared, their towers left empty or cursed.

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The plague was not the only end. In its wake came famine, cults, soulstorms, and living machines who no longer recognized their masters. Aether-tech shattered or turned against its wielders. War followed, but none truly survived it.

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The old world ended in silence.

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The Hollow Age

Caelmir today is not a world, but a wound.

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The sun is veiled. The air is foul. Nothing grows without consequence. Survivors huddle in ruin-choked cities, worshiping corpses or machines, or both. Others roam in armored warbands, seeking relics in rusted cathedrals and flooded vaults. The machines walk still, animated by echoes of commands no one remembers giving. Ghosts sing from broken towers. Flesh wars with metal. Fire consumes.

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This is the Hollow Age. A time when death is uncertain, and life is a curse.

Still, some fight. Not for hope, but for memory. For vengeance. For hunger. For meaning.

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In Caelmir, nothing ends cleanly. Even the world itself refuses to die.