NARRATIVE ARC ZERO: INITIATION
0
REBIRTH
The Riftborn emerged from the sunken depths of the Astral Corridor at a time of great upheaval, now resurrected and bound to the Nine through accursed undeath. The City of Adrestia, and the multiversal nexus beneath it, had always been protected by a Keeper. A mage of near-limitless potential, with the seemingly innate ability to traverse the Corridor with ease.
The Keepers hail from an Order beyond the furthest reaches of the Corridor, working in slavish devotion to a circular doctrine that defies all rational explanation. Cause and effect mean little to those that walk outside of time itself. As such, they would often serve as neutral arbiters and guides to the lost. Their premonitions helping to avoid certain calamity.
As the first to transcend the barbarity of the Old Flesh, the Nine are responsible for guiding humanity towards a better future. Ensuring the mistakes of the past are not repeated. Through the vast bureaucracy of the Enclave, they police magic and its use - but the Keepers exist in defiance of this rigid doctrine. Tolerated only for their gifts of foresight born of the Corridor.
Despite this, even the immortal Nine were unsettled when the entire Order vanished without ceremony. Leaving only Lucille, an apprentice of the Corridor and the last to accept the mantle of Keeper.
In their absence, she would be called upon to mediate the great guilds of Adrestia, and to serve as an agent of the Nine. She worked to protect their vast interplanar trade network under the constant threat of captivity, and severance. A gruesome ritual to permanently bind a mage’s arcane connection.
It’s rumored that Lucille began to dig deeper in search of her missing order, exploring the furthest capillaries of the Corridor. An act strictly forbidden by the Enclave.
Amidst the fragmented remains of potential futures, something found her instead.
The Enclave descended swiftly, calling upon the city’s Navigators to trace her footsteps through the Corridor. By the time they arrived, nothing but a faded echo of her final words remained. ‘The promise.’
In her absence, the great machinery of Adrestia began to unravel. Pulling the world apart, and ushering in a new God known only as the Witness.
I
SEASON OF THE LOST
Tales from the frontier towns bordering the ever-shifting wastes north of Adrestia would soon reach the Riftborn. They warned of mass-dissppearances: once thriving settlements found empty by morning light, with not a single body left behind. A figure wreathed in pale robes had been sighted prior to several of these attacks, providing the Guilds of Adrestia with few leads to investigate.
Whilst scouting these now-abandoned towns, the Riftborn would encounter fleeting echoes of a mysterious girl, believed to be Lucille. Her cryptic warnings suggested that the force behind these attacks was more than the usual aberrations that plague the outer frontiers.
One ill-fated assignment saw the Riftborn dispatched to a cave overrun with strange crystalline horrors. Their mission to retrieve the meteor responsible for this infestation was complicated by a shapeshifting assassin, wearing the borrowed face of a dead mercenary girl. This assassin, known only as 776, revealed themselves to be a creation of the Valentian ‘Black Church’. Hinting that the distant holy continent had a vested interest in the affairs of Adrestia and the mysterious Astral Corridor. They seemed to know that something was coming. A darkness that might even swallow the immortal Nine.
After weeks of mounting unease, the Riftborn were awoken by the sound of a great bell, and their Navigator brands pulsing a deep crimson. The Guilds had received an urgent distress signal from the town of Lamprow.