The Crownless Reach
A frontier where names fall out of the sky and memory does not always agree with itself. This page lists only what is in the current build: one connected map about 768 meters across. More is planned; see the roadmap.
Regions
Sable Crossing
A crossroads village of timber cottages around a flat plaza: a well, market stalls, the longhouse, a notice board and the Wall of Names, where the village writes down who it still remembers.
Red Orchard
Fenced orchard rows on a gentle south-facing slope, a farmhouse and barn, haystacks and a scarecrow that nobody admits to building.
Margin Wood
Dense pine and oak over rolling hills, mossy boulders and a winding trail. The Margin wolves hunt in packs along it.
The Misremembered Keep
A ruined keep on a hill raised sixteen meters above the fields. Three ways in: the gatehouse at the top of the north road ramp, a rubble climb to the collapsed east wall, and the west postern where the Rootcellar tunnel comes up.
Rootcellar Nine
A carved stores tunnel under the west hill, from a cave mouth past Margin Wood up to the keep's west postern. Eight cellars line it. The ninth sits behind a sealed stone door mid-tunnel.
Lantern Ford & Memory Forge
A lantern-lit bridge over the river, a waterwheel, and Orrin Vale's smithy around the Memory Forge, a hearth older than the ford's name.
The Namefall Scar
A crater twelve meters deep, bristling with name-crystals and ringed by name-stones, with a broken throne at its heart. Storms gather here, and so does the Penitent Captain.
The Fort Road
The north road where it climbs past the wayside shrine toward the old fort country. A brass warden walks its verge.
Ashford
A walled town on the north-west plateau. Its watch keeps the east gate; only the first street is open, and the inner gate is closed by order of the Watch.
Wethers' Fold
An abandoned dry-stone sheepfold in the open meadows below Margin Wood. Its gate is tied shut, and one wall has been pushed through from outside.
Roads: North Road, East Road, West Trail, Ashford Road, South Lane and Scar Path. Lantern anchors, where you can bind your respawn point: Crossroads Lantern, Ford Lantern, Keep Gate Lantern, Cracked Lantern and Ashford Lantern.
Weather moves through clear, overcast, rain and the Namefall, and the day turns to night.
People
They have lives of their own, and they remember what you tell them.
Bren
Cooper from the burned south quarter, now in the refugee camp
Wants to pry the iron hoops out of his burned cooperage and set up again in his brother's dry barn at the Red Orchard before the cider casks are wanted.
Ysolde
Chandler of Sable Crossing, burned out of the south quarter
Wants to lay in enough tallow and beeswax for the winter dipping, because the Crossing will want light more than bread when the Rain returns, and her stores burned with the south quarter.
Corra
Keeper of the Sable Crossing chapel lamps
Wants to keep the chapel lamps burning through every night of the Rain, as she has since she was a girl, whether or not anyone comes in to see them.
Custodian Ilen
Dawnsworn custodian of the Sable Crossing chapel and the north road shrines
Wants to hang a bell in the chapel's empty frame before the first snow: one cast honestly and paid for, requisitioned from no one's tower.
Elder Maren
Elder of Sable Crossing, who stayed through the burning
Wants to see every family that fled the south lane back under a sound roof before the first frost, and to keep her place by the well until the last of them has come home.
Commander Dane
Commander of the Ashford Watch
Wants to keep Ashford's gate in the Watch's hands and not the Dominion's, without starting the kind of fight that would empty the market and cost the city its bread.
Sela
Stall-keeper in Ashford's first street, once Sable Crossing's clerk
Wants to get the Crossing's civil register back from the watch and see every name in it accounted for, before the people who remember those names are gone too.
Mara Venn
Acting leader of Sable Crossing
Wants to learn which of her two childhoods really happened. She remembers growing up at the Crossing's well and, just as clearly, on a slow brown river that appears on no map, and she means to find that river once the Crossing can spare her.
Orrin Vale
Blacksmith of the Memory Forge at Lantern Ford
Wants to hear the truth about his family's death. One of the blades hanging in his forge witnessed it; he can hear the shape of the memory every night but not the words, and he refuses to force it.
Enemies
Every attack is telegraphed before it lands: amber can be guarded, red must be dodged.
- Brass Penitent: Censer Sweep, Penitent's Lunge and Toll of Judgement; below half health it also uses Chain Throw and Ash Release.
- Quillcrown, the Penitent Captain: Censer Sweep, Penitent's Lunge and Toll of Judgement.
- Margin Wolf: Bite and Pounce.
- The Bell That Hunts: Knuckle Sweep, Stone Stomp, Hunting Charge and Bell Slam; below half health it also uses Leaping Slam and Echo Roar.
Bloodlines and the Fate Draw
Every character draws a bloodline: a gift, a drawback and a story the world reacts to. The full pool and its launch odds are published here. This prototype draws only from the bloodlines whose gift and drawback are fully playable, marked below with their odds in today's draw (before the draw guarantees).
| Bloodline | Tier | Published launch odds | In this prototype |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crownless | Common | 10% | Playable · 20.2% of draws |
| Verdigrin | Common | 10% | Playable · 20.2% of draws |
| Ironbound | Common | 10% | Playable · 20.2% of draws |
| Veilkin | Common | 10% | Written, not playable yet |
| Pale-Tide | Common | 10% | Written, not playable yet |
| Choirborn | Common | 10% | Written, not playable yet |
| Stormbound | Uncommon | 4.5% | Playable · 6.82% of draws |
| Sandstrider | Uncommon | 4.5% | Playable · 6.82% of draws |
| Briarborn | Uncommon | 4.5% | Playable · 6.82% of draws |
| Ashmarked | Uncommon | 4.5% | Written, not playable yet |
| Gearling | Uncommon | 4.5% | Playable · 6.82% of draws |
| Echoborn | Uncommon | 4.5% | Written, not playable yet |
| Hollowhart Kin | Rare | 2% | Written, not playable yet |
| Glasswoken | Rare | 2% | Written, not playable yet |
| Aetherial | Rare | 2% | Playable · 6.06% of draws |
| Stonewake | Rare | 2% | Playable · 6.06% of draws |
| Dawnmarked | Rare | 2% | Written, not playable yet |
| Nightbloom | Rare | 2% | Written, not playable yet |
| Chronoborn | Mythic | 0.34% | Written, not playable yet |
| Worldroot | Mythic | 0.33% | Written, not playable yet |
| Meridian | Mythic | 0.33% | Written, not playable yet |
- Rarity is not strength. Every bloodline has the same power budget; rarer ones have stranger conditions and steeper costs.
- Your first draw is free, and you get two free redraws before binding your first character. You may keep any of the three results.
- Every tenth draw guarantees uncommon or better and every thirtieth guarantees rare or better. Secret bloodlines are never drawn; they are earned through play.
Beyond the draw there are 12 secret bloodlines and 6 convergences. They are never drawn: they are meant to be earned through play, and none can be earned in this build yet. Their names and how to find them stay a secret.
Origins
Your origin gives you a starting advantage and a story pressure. These are playable now:
Wayfarer
Advantage: Better route clues and camp tools. Your compass also shows the bearing of every landmark you have not discovered yet.
Pressure: No faction initially trusts the player. Mara Venn starts one step of trust behind, and the Crossing waits to see whether you stay.
Oathbound
Advantage: Defensive technique and reputation bonus. Your maximum posture is 10 higher, and you may swear formal oaths in conversation.
Pressure: Breaking promises creates stronger consequences: a broken promise costs 2x the trust.
Seeker
Advantage: Increased rare-scenario clues. Mara Venn shares what she knows about hidden places at trust 1 instead of 2.
Pressure: Dangerous curiosities find the player more often. The Penitent Captain at the Namefall Scar notices you from 6 m farther away.
Later: Scavenger, Witness, Outcast, Artisan and Keeper. Character creation shows them, marked as later.