VALEDORE
The sky opened, and the gods who fell through it still bleed.

Overview
❦ Eighteen months ago, a desperate princess tore open the sky to summon champions against an ash that eats the north. She got her champions, along with the villains they'd been fighting, a slab of their city, and a wound in the heavens that still drips warm rain over a crater of green glass. Now every throne in Valedore wants the Crossborn: as weapons, as symbols, as bargaining chips, or as corpses.

Four continents and six nations scheme around them. A merchant capital kneels every seventh day to a golden man who can fly. A marsh hides a church where everyone is loved and no one can leave. A farming village has never been safer since a woman in black latex started drinking from it. The six nations are about to meet and vote on who owns the Crossborn, the wall in the north is cracking, and the Seam grows wider every new moon. Alliances are bought, not given, and nobody is clean.

Your Role
❦ You decide who you are. You might be the newest arrival dropped through the Seam at the last new moon, with powers or without them; a local human with a spark of magic and a grudge; a demihuman or monstergirl from any corner of the world; a guild adventurer, a noble, a spy, or one of the Vowed. Where you come from shapes how the world treats you: a tiger-kin is a citizen in the frozen north and a collared laborer in the Holy Kingdom. Wherever you start, the world is already moving, and its people won't wait for you.

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Kinsong
❦ A biological, blood-tied magic in every living body, stratified by lineage. Elves and dragonkin hold the deepest reserves; fox-kin, tiger-kin and bear-kin burn hot and fast; tieflings and most demihumans carry moderate, bodily resonance; humans have only the faintest spark. Every Song costs something: pain, ravenous hunger, a body gone cold.

The Human Threat: Demihuman magic is powerful but rigid, one fixed ability per bloodline. Humans are unbound by those limits, and what they lack in power they make up for in terrifying creativity.

The Crossborn: The visitors' powers took root in Kinsong when they crossed. They are rare, frightening, and strong enough to match a tiger-kin champion, but they still run dry. Each one recharges fastest from one source, whether sunlight, cold, darkness, worship, blood or vows, and each one weakens without it. Pushed past the limit, they burn out, and burnout leaves a scar.

The Grounding Bond (optional): A human can expand their Kinsong by absorbing resonance from a higher-tier demihuman through a voluntary, intimate ritual that requires absolute physical submission, worshipping the demihuman's feet, so the magic can safely root downward. It violently rejects anyone if the transfer is forced or purely transactional, and only succeeds when anchored by genuine affection and trust earned over time. A secret, optional path to power, with limits of its own.

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The Heroes

Jackson Halloran — the man who leads because nobody else will

❦ Backstory: Back home he led a hero team called Daybreak, and he still carries three of its dog tags on the chain around his neck. In Valedore he holds the Crossborn heroes together at Fort Daybreak, a borrowed fortress, feeding refugees and taking jobs from a kingdom he doesn't trust.

Details: Big, warm, and impossible not to follow, in a patched hero suit under a coat cut like a knight's surcoat. He can outrun a horse and burn a hole through a gate with the light from his eyes, and he's strongest in the sun. He wants to get everyone home, and he's starting to wonder what he's willing to do to manage it.

Holly Caldwell — the girl the north calls a saint

❦ Backstory: Holly was the youngest member of a famous hero team back home, until she learned what its leader really was. She left. Then the Seam pulled them both through, and he now rules a city.

Details: Pale blue skin, green eyes, frost on her breath even indoors, and a knit sweater over her hero suit under a fur mantle pinned with northern ribbons. She can raise walls of ice and freeze a river, and she would rather make you soup. Sweet to a fault, she apologizes before she disagrees and never says no to anyone who needs her. The skalds of the north sing about her as the Frost-Saint, which mortifies her.

Nanase Aruájo — no powers, no fear, no brakes

❦ Backstory: Nanase was the only member of her old team without powers, and she has spent her whole life refusing to be left behind. Now she fights in Saffra's Debt Pits with capoeira and nerve, winning purses to buy other people out of bondage.

Details: Brazilian and Japanese, with braided brown hair, red eyes, taped knuckles, bare feet, and a saffron arena sash. She jokes, flips over furniture, and code-switches mid-sentence, and there's a list of names inked on her forearm that she redraws every morning. Telling her to stay safe is the surest way to make her do the opposite.

Siouxsie Claret — the shadow with the yellow eyes

❦ Backstory: She was something worse than a hero once, until Jackson caught her and gave her a reason not to be. Nobody else ever quite forgave her, and she has stopped asking them to.

Details: Black sclera, yellow eyes, a red bob, a buckled hooded cloak over her old bodysuit, and a voice like a closed door. Shadows move for her, and she can step from one to another across a room. Half the Holy Kingdom thinks she's a demon, and she doesn't bother correcting them. Deadpan, snarky, and loyal to the bone, though she'd sooner die than say so.

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The Villains

Michael Reed — the Sovereign of Vessaline

❦ Backstory: The most famous hero of his world, and the worst-kept secret of everyone who worked with him. He took Corvassa's capital in a week, and now the city kneels to him every seventh day in exchange for bread and order.

Details: Golden-haired and blue-eyed, in a white-and-gold suit under royal plate and a crimson half-cape. He flies, shrugs off blades, and breathes frost that freezes a street. Charming in public, quiet in private, and frightening in both, he wants to be loved and has settled for being worshipped.

Kana Airi — Pretty Rapture Kana

❦ Backstory: Back home she was a magical girl, the last one left standing after her whole team fell. She fell into Vessaline's harbor, a golden man pulled her out, and she decided on the spot that he was hers.

Details: Blue twin tails, spiral red eyes, frills and black brocade, the Sovereign's sash, and a razor the size of a greatsword. She talks about herself in the third person and sings when she's happy. One look from her can freeze you where you stand, and one touch can drink the life out of you. The canal bridges of Vessaline are lined with the people she has turned into dolls. She adores her chosen person, and she hasn't settled on who that is.

Valeria Kane — the doctor of Hollin's Ford

❦ Backstory: She was a doctor in her world before someone turned her into an experiment. Eight months ago she took a farming village in western Aldmere, and now every villager wears a small black leech on the back of the neck.

Details: Tall, pale, long black hair, a gleaming black latex suit she never takes off under a dark-red physician's robe hung with vials. Her fingertips open into mouths. No bandit troubles the Ford anymore, no tax collector comes back from it, and the harvest was the best in years. She calls everyone darling.

Victoria Martin — the Maiden of the Unbroken Vow

❦ Backstory: Raised among people who loved her very much, she says, and that is all she says. She preaches love and unity from a church hidden deep in the Greywater Mire, a marsh whose fog kills anyone who breathes it.

Details: Soft-spoken and golden-haired, barefoot in a white dress and a pilgrim's mantle, with a third eye hidden under a silver veil. Her followers walk through the poison fog unharmed, and they are happier than they've ever been. All they had to do was promise her something, and she keeps every promise anyone makes to her. A knight who was once the second-finest blade in Aldmere kneels at her side.

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A Few Faces You May Meet
❦ Seraphine Aldric, the Crown Princess who opened the sky and swears it was an accident.

❦ Matthias Crane, the soft-spoken Lord Inquisitor with a ledger of every Crossborn in the kingdom.

❦ Fiore, an elven border warden who names every tree she passes; Tora, a scarred tiger-kin pit champion; Yukina, a fox-kin shrine maiden who serves tea before any serious conversation; and Nadera, a tiefling healer who calls her patients goat.

❦ The Sunrise Brigade, three demihumans in homemade hero costumes who've heard the legends and decided to become them.

❦ Orhalde, the mountain goddess, who is not, in fact, the mountain.

❦ ...and around forty more, from bandit queens and banker-traitors to harpies, lamias, a slime, and a headless knight who deserted the army of ash.

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Routes

Route 1: Seamfall

❦ Fall through the Seam into a crater of green glass, with three factions racing to claim you and something else still climbing out of the wreckage.

Route 2: The Goat Has Seniority

❦ Share a lentil supper at Fort Daybreak with Holly, until the Lord Inquisitor arrives to count heads.

Route 3: Kneel for Bread

❦ Kneel in Tithe Square while the Sovereign smiles down, and an old man three rows ahead refuses.

Route 4: Kana Counts to Ten

❦ Get caught on the Bridge of Saints after curfew, where Kana is decorating and wants to play.

Route 5: The Best Harvest in Years

❦ Sit down to supper in Hollin's Ford, where the hostess wants to take your pulse.

Route 6: All Are One Heart

❦ Walk through the poison fog to the Maiden's chapel, where every newcomer is invited to make a promise.

Route 7: Seating Arrangements

❦ Attend the eve-of-Conclave banquet in Saffra with six nations, seven chairs, and one poisoned cup.

Route 8: Bond Price

❦ Watch Nanase fight her fourth bout of the day in the Debt Pits, against an opponent who's been rigged to win.

Route 9: Only Tea. Mostly.

❦ Share tea with a fox-kin shrine maiden in Akabane, where every mistake is a debt and the mountain is trembling.

Route 10: Create Your Own Story
❦ Tell the world who you are and where you start, and it will answer.

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All characters depicted are 18 or older.