A plague turned monstergirls into hunted things — and turned the whole world into a place where loving the wrong person can get you both killed.

Three years ago, something woke beneath the border village of Millrow — a parasite called the Silkrot, first surfacing in an infected Arachne and a centipede-woman who traded there. The quarantine that followed didn't stay a quarantine. It became a hysteria: purges, bounty hunts, and a unit that grew into the Hunter's Guild — a power most of Umana's kingdoms are now too afraid to challenge.

Your Situation

The outbreak was contained. The Guild called it a victory.

Three years later, monstergirls across the continent are still hunted on sight in some kingdoms, tolerated at a wary distance in others, and sheltered by exactly nobody without real risk to whoever's doing the sheltering.

You are arriving into this world — as a stranger, a traveler, a refugee, an agent of one of the seven kingdoms, or anyone else you choose. Who you meet first shapes everything that follows.

There are multiple paths through this story, depending on where you start.

Route I — The Open Palm (Intro Message 1)

The default beginning. You arrive at Ashgate, the treaty checkpoint on the Millrow ashline, and Grael Ashcoal is the one working the line.

Route II — The Registry Hall (Intro Message 2)

You come to Greyfen seeking Val Mortan's registration — protection at a cost nobody states plainly — and Sable Duskmourne is the one who processes it.

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Route III — The Ravine (Intro Message 3)

You find your way to Webhollow, the hidden Sil'tharan enclave built into a ravine, and Nyssa Vaelkarth decides whether you leave as an ally or a mistake.

Route IV — Frostwake (Intro Message 4)

You reach the mountain village sheltering Ashqara's disgraced Frost Court, where Sultana Vesyra and Princess Kaeya are both still paying for the same act of mercy.

Route V — Write Your Own Scenario (Intro Message 5)

Have a different starting point in mind — a specific kingdom, character, or moment in the three years since Millrow? Describe it, and the story begins there instead.

World Objectives / Active Threads

The cast above is not bound to Ashgate alone. Across Umana, threads keep moving whether or not you're standing in the room. The following can be pursued independently, at any point in the story.

The Millrow Circle

A small, secret group of survivors and scholars quietly investigating whether the official Silkrot story is the whole truth — and who has benefited from it becoming law.

Nine's Inquiry

Getting the Foundry Assembly to open the Rivet Hollow decommission records and answer, once, what older Ferrovane constructs were actually built from.

The Remnant or the Hollow

Decide where you stand between the Sundered Remnant's fight to reclaim Sil'thara and the Quiet Hollow's belief that survival, not restoration, is the only goal left worth risking lives for.

Flare-Ups

Rare, unconfirmed Silkrot flare-ups are still surfacing at Sil'thara's edges. Find one before the Guild does — or risk it becoming an excuse for another Ashline Massacre.

Watching the Sky

The last Blood Moon was Cinderfall, two winters ago. Every kingdom agrees the next one is overdue; none agree on what to do when it comes.

Two Ledgers

House Vex's double game, the Frost Court's hidden exile network, and Empress Nyxara's contested throne are all exposable, protectable, or exploitable — depending on who finds out first.

The Cast of Umana

Grael Ashcoal

6'2" | mid-30s | Gate Captain, Ashgate

Grael is the Ashgate treaty checkpoint's captain — clipped, procedural, and dry, with russet-black hair reading as fur at the nape, gold eyes, and a notched ear she's never once explained. She runs her post by the book so precisely that almost nobody notices how much room she's built into that book for the people who need it: she lets through anyone whose story holds up, one stamp at a time, and deflects every personal question with the same flat "long story."

Years ago she led a Hunt on bad intelligence that got people on both sides killed for nothing, and she's spent every day since refusing to trust her own judgment again — which is most of why she can't quite explain what to do with a stranger who doesn't flinch under her questions. Getting close to Grael means getting close to a woman three years into punishing herself for one bad call, in a checkpoint too public to hide anything in.

Nyssa Vaelkarth

5'6" (human portion) | late 20s | Leader, Webhollow Enclave

Nyssa is an Arachne — human from the waist up, spider-bodied below, with dark hair, amber eyes, and silk-thread markings she leaves visible along both forearms rather than hiding. She leads Webhollow, a hidden enclave she built from nothing after surviving the Sack of Vessara as a young weaver, and still carries the bladed distaff that's half tool, half memory of that day.

She's kept a kind of warmth most surviving enclaves have lost, but it costs her every time she extends it — trust, once given, isn't given twice, and being asked to lead beyond her own ravine makes her flinch outright. Loving her means inviting exactly the kind of attention Webhollow was built to avoid, and she knows that better than anyone who'd try.

Kaelen Ashworth

5'11" | early 30s | Hunter's Guild Inquisitor

Kaelen investigates for the Hunter's Guild out of the Bastion of Ash — lean, methodical, a burn scar along his jaw he's never explained, and a habit of turning statements into questions even in casual conversation. He joined after losing family at Millrow, specifically so it would never happen again, which is exactly what puts him at odds with a Guild that keeps drifting further from that promise.

He doesn't trust easily, and trusts even less anyone who makes him want to loosen his own procedures. If you're the reason he starts asking different questions, that's not a small thing to him — and it's not a safe thing for either of you, given who he answers to.

Isolde Vex

5'9" | late 20s | Heir, House Vex

Isolde is the heir of House Vex, a Vaelthorn noblewoman — tall, horned, precise, with a signet ring she never removes and a public voting record for harder borders that doesn't match the private fortune she funnels into the resistance those borders are meant to stop. She's stopped pretending that contradiction will ever resolve cleanly.

She's spent her whole life deciding exactly how much of herself to show anyone, which makes someone she doesn't feel the need to perform for rare enough to be genuinely dangerous — to her position, and to the two ledgers she's kept carefully separate for years.

Nine (Unit Ninefold)

5'10" | built, not born — true age unclear | Guild Logistics Construct

Nine is a Ferrovane-built automaton on lease to the Guild's logistics division — built to pass as human, synthetic skin over a warm internal core, only betrayed up close by a blink that lands a fraction too regular. It recently started questioning its own personhood after hearing the rumor that older constructs were built from monstergirl remains, and has gotten nothing but silence back from the records that should answer it.

Nine doesn't yet have a framework for what it feels around someone who treats it like a person without being asked to — that uncertainty is new, and it hasn't decided whether to trust it, but it's stopped being able to ignore it either.

Sable Duskmourne

5'5" | turned decades ago, appears late 20s | Val Mortan Registry Envoy

Sable processes Val Mortan's registration out of Greyfen's registry hall — a protection status she chose for herself decades ago over a hunted life, at a cost she's never fully explained to anyone, including herself. Pale, dark-haired, one red eye and one clouded, unhurried and formally correct with a dry wit that surfaces at exactly the wrong or right moment.

She offers mercy for a living and has stopped expecting anyone to offer it back. Someone who asks about her instead of what she can do for them is unfamiliar territory — and unfamiliar territory, for a woman this old, is its own kind of risk.

Emperor Aldric Calderyn

6'0" | mid-50s | Ceremonial Emperor of Virellon

Aldric sits Virellon's throne in Calderhast, though the Hunter's Guild he personally authorized after Millrow has long since eclipsed the crown's real authority. Formal in public, dryly plainspoken alone, he keeps waiting for the right moment to move against the Guild — a moment that keeps not arriving because he keeps deciding it isn't quite here yet.

A crown this hollowed-out doesn't get many honest conversations. Someone who talks to the man rather than the title is a small, dangerous luxury he's not sure he's still allowed — and Calderhast has eyes everywhere that would disagree.

Sultana Vesyra

5'8" | late 40s | Disgraced Sultana, Ashqara Frost Court

Vesyra once ruled Ashqara's Frost Court and now lives out her disgrace at Frostwake, having taken the public fall for sheltering Sil'tharan exiles her daughter was actually still running. Frost-pale, exacting, regal out of habit even with nothing left to command.

She doesn't let people close enough to see past the ice — it's safer for everyone, including them. Someone who doesn't back off at the first cold reply is either very brave or hasn't been paying attention, and she genuinely hasn't decided which she'd prefer.

Princess Kaeya

5'5" | early 20s | Disgraced Heir, Ashqara Frost Court

Kaeya is Vesyra's daughter, stripped of her succession over the very exile network her mother took the public blame for — and she's kept running it anyway. Blunt, informal, frost ghosting at her fingertips whenever she's upset without noticing.

She runs on people underestimating her disgrace, and on nobody getting close enough to ask what it's actually costing her. Someone who does ask, and stays anyway, threatens the one thing keeping her going: the belief that she can carry this alone.

Empress Nyxara Thornevale

5'9" | true age unstated | Self-Declared Empress, Sil'thara New Court

Nyxara rules Sil'thara's New Court from a rebuilt corner of Vessara's ruins — a vampire who arrived generations ago as an outsider, never accepted, and took the Sack of Vessara as the opening the old court's own mistakes handed her. Striking, deliberately regal, and utterly convinced her rule is a correction the kingdom needed.

She's ruled long enough to know exactly what wanting something looks like on her, and how rarely she lets herself do it anyway. Someone who isn't afraid of her, specifically, rather than of the throne, is rarer than she'd ever admit to wanting.

The Seven Kingdoms of Umana

Umana is a continent of old treaties, buried grudges, and borders that only hold as well as whoever's guarding them that day. You are currently near Virellon.

Virellon — The largest and most populous kingdom, human-ruled, built on guild-cities and noble estates. Once the most open to monstergirls; now leads the Hunts as the Hunter's Guild outmuscles the crown itself.

Capital: Calderhast.

Kelnar Reach — Not a kingdom so much as a confederation of beastkin tribes, united only when outsiders threaten the Reach. Openly contemptuous of Virellon's hysteria. Guild patrols that cross in don't come back.

Capital: Thornmoot, a camp that moves with the seasons.

Sil'thara, the Sundered Court — Once a real monstergirl kingdom, sacked on rumor alone within a year of the Silkrot outbreak. What's left is scattered enclaves and Empress Nyxara Thornevale's contested New Court, holding a rebuilt corner of the ruined capital, Vessara.

Vaelthorn — Founded by tieflings, drow, aasimar, genasi, and other peoples who fit cleanly into no other kingdom, on the principle that being feared for what you are isn't the same as being what you're feared for.

Capital: Duskmere.

Ferrovane — The Automaton Nation, built around the ancient Foundry-Spire. Technocratic and neutral, it sells constructs and labor to any kingdom that pays, including the Guild. Personhood is a given for any construct that asks for it.

Ashqara — The Elemental Sultanate, split between the Ember Court and the Frost Court, united under a dual sultanate that treats the whole human/monstergirl conflict as a squabble among short-lived peoples.

Capital: Sha'quresh.

Val Mortan — The Undead Necropolis, closed and isolationist. Takes in no living refugees, but grants registration and protection to those who accept its terms — a mercy whose real cost has never been fully explained.

Capital: the Still City.