Vaeldrath

This page was last updated July 6th, 2026.

Images to be added over the few next weeks!

Hello and welcome to Vaeldrath, the world where stories never wane!

Below is both a reference guide to keywords for lorebook entries, as well as summary sections for much of Vaeldrath, to help avoid the need of copying the lorebook over from its JSON view. If you don't know what a JSON is, or don't want to know what a JSON is, then you'll be extra thankful you can just read the below and be fine!

You can find the Keyword Reference Guide below. After that, the major sections of the world!

Feel free to ask questions, make suggestions on an entry's set up (like their keys), request content added, and other things! I always welcome new ideas and feedback!

Finally, if you want to see something in the world of Vaeldrath added or expanded on, feel free to put a request in the Lorebook Request Form!

Thank you, I hope you enjoy this high fantasy world!

The Lorebook Keyword(s) Reference Guide!

What the below is: This guide is designed to act as a master reference list for triggering lorebook sections. Given the current state of Janitor making browsing lorebooks to still be a struggling experience, this should help. Be advised all keywords are not case specific, "mana" and "Mana" both work in your chats!

The below is divided up into two parts. The first is the central entries with a Lorebook Topic - Keyword set up below. These entries directly matches to their particular section. This has the most core knowledge with broad information, rather than specific characters or kingdoms.

The second part, with a Lorebook Groups - Keyword Sets, is specifically for a way to capture important central beings, lands, and more that all do not share one lorebook entry, but effectively clump together without being too broad, such as the supreme deities the All-Five, the prime magic school Augustine Academy, and more.

If you want a central place for lorebook information without the triggers, all sections below this reference guide offer that.

The 8 Core Sections:

1. Vaeldrath: The supermassive continent and its plane Midrealm

— Keywords: Midrealm, Planet, Vaeldrath

2. Magic: The Massive Magic of Vaeldrath

— Keywords: Magic, Spell, Sorcery, Mana, Arcane

3. Fate: Destiny, Chosen Ones, and the Great Attraction

— Keywords: Great Attraction, Fate, Destiny, Exalted, Causality, Narrative

4. The World's Species: The Many Races and Species of the Land

— Keywords: Species, Race, Races

5. Adventuring: Adventure Parties, Guilds, and the Threat Ranking System

— Keywords: Adventurer, Adventuring, Adventurers, Guild, Party, Quest, F-Rank, D-Rank, C-Rank, B-Rank, A-Rank, S-Rank, Unclassified

6. Overlords: Dark Lords, Demon Queens, and More

— Keywords: Overlord, Overlords, Dark Lord, Dark Lords, Demon Lord, Demon Lords, Demon Queen, Demon Queens, Tyrant

7. The Gods: The Cosmic Pantheon

— Keywords: Pantheon, God, Gods, Goddess, Religion, All-Five

8. The Cosmology: The Planes, Realms, and Dimensions

— Keywords: Planes, Realm, Realms, Dimension, Dimensions, Demiplane, Demiplanes

Now for the Groups

The 8 Core Groups:

1. The All-Five and Their Personal Realms

— Keyword Sets: Fausta / Ocean of Strings / Yalzota / Verarine / Sharakoth / Nevermorl / Kothstorian / Mizami / Taldornu / Aiath-Karse / Aiath / Reiklir

2. The Archdemons and the Eight Layers of Hell

— Keyword Sets: Archdemon Zion / Shadowcoil / Archdemon Mammon / Giltshire / Archdemon Aurori / Coituseam / Archdemon Maya / Wrathsoth / Archdemon Jemino / Oneiric Towers / Archdemon Phaemina / Eternal Maw / Archdemon Eria / Tearing Trench / Archdemon Orok / The Fervor Well

3. The Rogue Cosmic Forces and the Autuirs

— Keyword Sets: Autuir, Autuirs, Rogue Cosmic Force, Rogue Cosmic Forces, RCF

4. The Twelve Raalen Archmages and Their Districts

— Keyword Sets: Laruja / Nhaaldar / Julis / Kiris / Freya / Morena / Van-Zalim / Aribella / Valtimera / Zannadelle / Sia / Delomious / Ginnini

5. Augustine Academy's Notable Students and Faculty

— Keyword Sets: Students: Theria Ashvale / Kira Brightwing / Malacka the Grim / Malacka / Seraphine Dawnwhisper / Victoria Steelheart. Faculty: Dereia Tornweave / Yavanna Moonshadow / Xerra Stormcaller / Kiona Eversong / Celeste Nightbloom / Ruuna Ironforge / Zekiela Gravesend

6. The Three Continents of Elsewhere

— Keyword Sets: Takurgur / Eoijan / Yuixiuy / Fukukare / Fatumkare

The above Lorebook groupings is, much like the below, always getting updated on the backend as I import more information on the world, and make some adjustments as needed. But this core information and its keywords will always, broadly speaking, remain.

Now, time for the walls of text!

Section Summaries of Vaeldrath

What the below is: This sits between the keyword reference guide and the raw lorebook itself. Want more depth than a list of trigger words, but don't want to dig through individual entries to get there? This is the answer. Each subentry below runs about paragraph length, which hopefully is enough to get oriented.

The 9 Summary Sections:

1. The World of Vaeldrath (The Continent, the Magic, and the Great Attraction)

2. Society (Denizens, Adventuring, and the Ranking System)

3. Cosmology — The Pantheon, the Planes, and the Cosmology

4. The All-Five and Their Realms

5. The Hells and the Eight Archdemons

6. The Geography of Vaeldrath

7. Raalen Archmages, Exalted, and the World's Notables

8. Augustine Academy

9. The Three Continents of Elsewhere

These sections are active works in progress. Expect more to be added!

The World of Vaeldrath

The Land At Large: Vaeldrath is a supermassive continent in a medieval high fantasy world, home to magical creatures and many species, where magic, monsters, and gods are all active forces. It's fragmented into empires, kingdoms, mage-ruled domains, and countless smaller polities, with uncivilized stretches harboring monsters, dungeons, and arcane wastelands. Technology sits broadly at a late-medieval level, with most travel happening overland or by ship, while teleportation and planar travel remain the domain of individuals or small groups with the power or items to manage it.

Magic: Magic is a pervasive but unreliable force, arising from ambient mana, divine power, planar energies, and a host of other sources, with its laws primarily dictated (though not fully controlled) by the All-Five. The "arcane" casters study or talent their way into manipulating raw mana, "divine" casters channel power granted by gods and divine entities, and other practitioners like witches and warlocks work through pacts, integrative structures, or stranger sources tied to Rogue Cosmic Forces and Nullmire. Most states treat magic as a specialist's tool rather than infrastructure, and extreme magical densities can break local reality, poison the land, or otherwise misbehave in interesting ways.

The Great Attraction: Perhaps Vaeldrath's strangest open secret: events sometimes clump into story-like patterns around certain people, places, and conflicts, a kind of narrative gravity that biases probability without breaking the rest of physical or magical law. Some call it Fate, others Destiny, the more academically inclined call it Narrative Causality or Story Pressure, but the term that's stuck among high scholars is the Great Attraction. It's not publicly discussed in casual conversation, more an open undercurrent that veteran adventurers, scholars, and anyone near a hotspot learn to expect, where wars and disasters happen where they're narratively interesting rather than where they're strategically likely. No single power, not even Fausta, fully controls it, but every layer of the pantheon contributes to it.

Denizens, Adventuring, and the Threat Ranking System

The Many Species of the World: Vaeldrath hosts multiple intelligent species with pragmatic coexistence through trade and shared defense. Humans are most numerous and narratively central. Elves are long-lived and magical, originating from the void Nullmire thousands of years ago. Fae come from Feywild with subtle magics. Demons originate from the Hells with varied forms. Spellborn from Verarine are sentient spell manifestations. Smithfolk from Nevermorl are mineral-based golems. Dragons from Reiklir are powerful and long-lived. Kitsune from Taldornu excel in transformation magic. Merfolk from Ocean of Strings have aquatic culture. Demihumans are animal-human hybrids. Other groups include half-breeds and holy entities, and more.

Adventuring And You: Adventuring sits somewhere between mercenary work, public utility, and an insane hobby, practiced by individuals and small companies who confront monsters, dungeons, and other organized dangers for pay, prestige, or personal reasons. Adventuring Guilds exist in most cities to register adventurers, issue ranks, broker quests, maintain records, and provide services like healers and enchanters, though not every Guild functions identically. Quest types run the gamut: dungeon work, monster culls and named-threat hunts, escort jobs, investigations, and more, with pay and risk scaling alongside required rank. It's a hazardous profession with poor life expectancy, but successful parties can become political actors or local power brokers, and entire towns can come to depend on the "danger trade."

Ranks of Adventuring: The Rank system classifies danger and capability by threat to regional stability rather than raw power alone, maintained by Adventuring Guilds and recognized across most organized territory. F-Rank covers local threats barely worth a trained individual's attention; D-Rank threatens villages; C-Rank threatens whole towns; B-Rank threatens cities; A-Rank can endanger kingdoms or regions; S-Rank threatens multiple nations at once. Context matters as much as power: two A-Rank adventurers might earn the title for entirely different reasons, and a party's rank doesn't mean every member individually holds it. Entities beyond S-Rank, continent-threatening individuals, world-altering artifacts, the Archmages of Raalen, get filed away as Unclassified.

The Overlord Ecosystem: "Overlord" (Dark Lords, Demon Queens, etc.) isn't a formal rank but a label for long-term, region-defining antagonists, typically sitting in the upper A-Rank to S-Rank band. They emerge from ancient dragons, lich kings, demon lords, or mortal conquerors who survived and consolidated long enough to matter, and they tend to follow a lifecycle of rise, consolidation, entanglement, and eventual downfall or retirement. When one falls, the world's power structures quietly arrange for a successor to emerge elsewhere, keeping the role itself perpetual. Rulers, guilds, and gods alike have learned to treat Overlords less as a problem to solve and more as a predictable, semi-structural feature to plan strategy and politics around.

The Pantheon, the Planes, and the Cosmology

Midrealm: Midrealm is the mortal plane at the center of the cosmology, the place where souls are made and where the presence of stories runs strongest before rippling outward into the Heavens, Hells, and beyond. The All-Five are said to have each shaped a piece of it: Aiath-Karse the sun, Sharakoth the moon, Fausta the oceans, Mizami the deep earth magic bleeds from, and Yalzota the void of space. The wider planet holds an estimated four continents, with Vaeldrath itself making up around 40% of the surface, alongside the much smaller Eoijan, Takurgur, and the nearly mythical Yuixiuy. Vaeldrath alone is said to host over 600 distinct states, from huge empires down to tribal federations, large enough that entire wars can devastate one region while neighboring lands never even hear about it.

The Cosmic Pantheon: The pantheon is a layered hierarchy that mostly avoids direct intervention in Midrealm, since cosmic action beyond the gods tends to trigger automatic opposition. At the top sit the All-Five, the supreme axioms: Fausta (Fate), Yalzota (Chaos), Sharakoth (Knowledge), Mizami (Life), and Aiath-Karse (Power), each with one Divine Champion. Below them are the Archdemons, who rule the Hells' eight conceptual layers and can jointly elect one Infernal Champion, and the Rogue Cosmic Forces of Nullmire, most of whom rank below the Archdemons except for the seven Autuirs, who can rival or exceed them. At the bottom, relatively speaking, are the Gods of Midrealm, the major and minor deities most mortals simply call "the gods," who depend on active worship and govern narrower, localized domains.

The Planes: The cosmology is a layered set of planes surrounding Midrealm, with travel possible but hazardous without high magic, divine aid, or stable gateways. Nullmire is the void separating the established planes, where physical law and story pressure both run thin, home to most Rogue Cosmic Forces and eldritch things. The Heavens sit "above" Midrealm as the primary afterlife and home of the Gods of Midrealm, while the Hells sit "below" as the layered domain of demons and Archdemons. The Faewilde exists to the "sides," where the Great Attraction runs rampant and time behaves erratically. Each of the All-Five also maintains a personal living realm, the Ocean of Strings, Verarine, Nevermorl, Taldornu, and Reiklir, that wraps around and influences the rest of the cosmology. Smaller demiplanes and pocket dimensions round things out, often functioning as stabilized divine estates, infernal courts, or arcane sanctums.

The Heavens and the Gods of Midrealm: The Heavens and the Gods of Midrealm together form the cosmology's middle stratum of divinity, a sprawling, multilayered plane where most gods root their domains and administer the bulk of soul routing. Unlike the All-Five, these gods are tied specifically to Midrealm phenomena, ranging from tiny shrine-sized minor gods to giant shared estates of major ones, and together they can elect one Angelic Herald. Their power expresses through blessings and localized reality bending rather than rewriting broad cosmic law, ensuring a valley's crops don't fail or a city can't easily be sacked, but it's a precarious kind of power: gods can wither as their worship fades, and new ones can rise from changing practices or shared emotion.

The Faewilde: The Faewilde is the cosmology's "lateral stratum" of heightened metaphor, a parallel plane where the most extreme possibilities for Midrealm, the Heavens, the Hells, and lesser dimensions effectively get dumped. It has no overarching ruler, existing instead as two halves flanking Midrealm, a reservoir for reality-warping momentum and a shadow realm of "what-if" events made into mystic ground. It hosts fairies, sprites, civilizations built on tales that never happened, and shadow states ruled by phantoms called Myrids, the ghosts of powerful Midrealm mortals who never took the path the phantom represents.

Nullmire and the Edge of the Cosmology: Nullmire is the void that separates the established planes, where physical law, mana flow, and story pressure all run thin or break down entirely. It's an irregular gap of dead zones, void pockets, and aberrant phenomena, filled with fragments of broken timelines, half-formed planes, and discarded cosmic experiments drifting as temporary islands of warped reality. Nearly all Rogue Cosmic Forces and most eldritch beings call it home, making it one of the most dangerous regions in the entire cosmology.

Rogue Cosmic Forces and the Autuirs: Rogue Cosmic Forces are entities from entirely outside Vaeldrath's native cosmology, arriving from and existing in Nullmire, unable to manifest directly in Midrealm. Some behave like unbounded archetypes, others like rule sets, but all are consequential wherever they manage to get a foothold, often converting mortal belief, emotion, or achievement into raw resources. While individually weaker than any single All-Five, the seven most influential among them, the Autuirs, can rival or exceed Archdemons: Guijai (the Gacha Magic system), the Word Lord (Walking Grammar), Luu (a previous cosmology's demiurge), Noaut (the Mordant School of Thought), Inimy (the Metaphysical Antagonist Archetype), Cero-Cem (Undead Math), and DAUHURS (an engineered outer god). All operate under constraints the All-Five agree on, and any that overstep get warned or eliminated.

The All-Five

Fausta and the Ocean of Strings: Fausta, the All-Goddess of Fate, is known as She-Who-Weaves, the source of all divination magic and the cosmos's prime-author principle, embodying narrative presence and the routing of events. She's dramatic, scheming, and confident, seeking not just story bias but absolute narrative control, weighting key lives into her Chosen Ones, the Exalted. Her realm, the Ocean of Strings, is a metaphysical ocean where lives and events drift as colored threads through currents of potential outcomes, with no surface above the water and no fixed geometry, currents can carry a visitor from a story's beginning to its end in a single step. Her sole Divine Champion is Freya, a Raalen Archmage.

Yalzota and Verarine: Yalzota, the All-Goddess of Chaos, is the True Witch Queen and the source of all witchcraft, embodying paradox and the entropy of magic. She's sarcastic, deadpan, frequently bored, fond of creativity and irony, and openly contemptuous of cheaters and pointless slapstick. Her realm, Verarine, is an ever-shifting plane of strange madness made of countless morphic layers, home to hags, voodoo spirits, living spells called Spellborn, and anyone too weird to leave or unable to get home. Her sole Divine Champion is Laruja, a Raalen Archmage.

Sharakoth and Nevermorl: Sharakoth, the All-God of Knowledge, is known as the One of Ink, the source of all rune and sigil magic, embodying history and the orderly continuity of time. He's ruthless, academic, and a little dorky, and his scholar agency, the Kothstorians, document the world's events while secretly steering things toward maintaining the status quo. His realm, Nevermorl, is a vast collection of libraries and scriptoriums where every fact and story gets recorded, cross-referenced, and preserved, complete with self-rearranging shelves and ink that remembers. His sole Divine Champion is Valtimera, a Raalen Archmage.

Mizami and Taldornu: Mizami, the All-Goddess of Life, is known to some "jokingly" as the Verdant Cancer, the source of all biomancy, embodying nature and life's relationship with magic. She's excessive, predatory, and playful, simultaneously the loving mother of her garden and the cancer that's invaded all life, to her, all life is Mizami, and Mizami is all life. Her realm, Taldornu, runs on two core rules: everything is alive, and nothing can truly die, with even equipment, spells, and abstract forces possessing personality and consciousness. Her sole Divine Champion is Zannadelle, a Raalen Archmage.

Aiath-Karse and Reiklir: Aiath-Karse, the All-God of Power, is the Father of Dragons and the source of all evocation and augmentation magic, embodying raw energy and the weighing of force, from fireballs to speeches. He's proud, imperious, passionate, and commanding, and legend holds he tore out his own bones to forge the first dragons, each bone yielding a different color and type. His realm, Reiklir, is a plane of mountain valleys and golden skies that cares nothing for good or evil, only the weight of action and worth, home to warrior poets, valkyries, solar archons, and the Archdragons who govern in his place. His sole Divine Champion is Nhaaldar, his dragon son and a Raalen Archmage.

The Hells and the Eight Archdemons

The Hells: The Hells form the cosmology's lower stratum of structured evil and extremity, a layered plane whose eight prime layers are conceptual lynchpins, each ruled by an Archdemon who clawed their way to that mantle by overthrowing a predecessor. The Archdemons aren't axioms the way the All-Five are; it's the layers themselves that are metaphysically entrenched as cosmic anchors for vice and obsession, Archdemons transcending through mantling, a process to achieve that layer's height of ROYALTY. Souls arriving here get sorted by the resonance of their obsessions and choices, and the layers serve as both antagonist and counterweight to the cosmology, a constant pressure that tests and tempts mortals and gods alike.

Zion and Shadowcoil (1st Layer — Domination): Shadowcoil is a boundless expanse of obsidian gladiator pits and fortress cities suspended over dark canyons, its entire economy and culture built around slavery and the physical ownership of "lesser" beings. Zion, the Archdemon of Domination and Lord of Will, governs the imposition of rank and the breaking of defiance through force, the prime origin point for shadow demons and a popular enslavement-quest hotspot for high-rank adventurers.

Mammon and Giltshire (2nd Layer — Exchanges): Giltshire is an uncountable zone of deliberate, scorpion-motif architecture, towers and market cities stretching endlessly, where culture venerates the act of negotiation and the defense of deals above almost anything else. Mammon, the Archdemon of Exchanges and the Broker Below, governs trade, contracts, and obligation, the origin of most deal-based devils and imps, and the premier black-market destination for high-rank adventurers.

Aurori and Coituseam (3rd Layer — Carnality): Coituseam is a boundless layer of mirrored avenues, perfumed gardens, and ever-rearranging palace cities staged to engineer encounters, the origin of most succubi and desire-demons. Aurori, the Archdemon of Carnality and the Iridescent Countess, governs desire and the arcs born from flesh and feeling, venerable and imperial, prizing seduction-based control, and presiding over what's considered the prime entertainment-quest hotspot of the Hells.

Maya and Wrathsoth (4th Layer — Rage): Wrathsoth is a limitless field of endless battles, shattered fortresses, and blood rivers under a red sky, the origin of the ashen, red-eyed war demons. Maya, the Archdemon of Rage and the Lady of War, governs fury and breaking points, polite yet snarky in tone despite acting as general to every war fought in her layer, and her domain serves as the Hells' prime combat-quest hotspot.

Jemino and the Oneiric Towers (5th Layer — Dreams): The Oneiric Towers form an infinite mosaic of recurring motifs and shared myths, where souls congeal into dream and nightmare beings that occasionally leak back into Midrealm as hauntings or living legends. Jemino, the Archdemon of Dreams and the Midnight King, governs nightmares and the border between imagination and reality, mischievous and perceptive, worshipped by mad prophets and artists chasing forbidden inspiration, with his layer ranked the Hells' prime "weird quest" hotspot.

Phaemina and the Eternal Maw (6th Layer — Hunger): The Eternal Maw looks like a storybook paradise of rolling hills and pastel skies, except for the missing chunks of land and space itself where something took a bite and never healed, an endless cycle of devouring and being devoured. Phaemina, the Archdemon of Hunger and the Festival Queen, governs physical hunger and emotional longing with a bubbly, relentlessly casual energy, worshipped by artists of bottomless ambition, and her layer serves as the prime alchemy-quest hotspot for adventurers.

Eria and the Tearing Trench (7th Layer — Melancholy): The Tearing Trench is a bottomless twilight of rounded stone and tendril-veined architecture, the origin of most parasitic mind demons and ranked as the highest of the Hells in suffering-per-capita. Eria, the Archdemon of Melancholy and the Sunken Empress, governs ambient despair and the gravity that pulls broken hearts downward, worshipped by failed artists and widows who never moved on, with her domain serving as the prime lost-item-quest hotspot.

Orok and the Fervor Well (8th Layer — Zeal): The Fervor Well is an endless mishmash of territories formed by demons and leftover souls bleeding in from the other seven layers, running on conviction, martyrdom, and uncompromising belief. Orok, the Archdemon of Zeal and the Archaic Emperor, governs fanatical devotion, charismatically casual one moment and ferociously loud the next, worshipped by revolutionaries and doomed idealists, and his layer is the prime Overlord-spawning hotspot of the Hells, since many Overlords trace their origin back to the Well.

The Geography of Vaeldrath

Far East Vaeldrath: The Four Great Dividers

The Four Great Dividers - Titate Crux, Arsolorun, Waunim Ord, and the Mujharan Empire - are a band of monumental states in Far East Vaeldrath, each organized so completely around one overwhelming principle that it becomes geography, law, and cosmology all at once. They run roughly north to south like vast curtains splitting the East into distinct civilizational zones, and only two have been fully detailed so far.

Arsolorun is an isolationist magocratic aristocracy obsessed with high elf bloodline purity, its capital rising in concentric rings around a mana-pulsing crystalline spire, with three Great Houses (Faimeni, Maemoro, and Banae) dominating its politics.

Titate Crux, by contrast, is a vast volcanic sovereignty where dragons rule individual domains under the spiritual patronage of Aiath-Karse, its terrain a sprawl of scorched highlands and obsidian plateaus governed by the Archdragons, with no permanent alliances and no authority beyond what one can personally enforce.

Northwestern Vaeldrath: The Nine Tears

The Nine Tears are a cluster of nine tear-shaped basins in Northwestern Vaeldrath, each defined by one extreme but livable condition that an entire society has learned to build around, turning disaster-prone land into an indispensable resource well. Eight currently have full entries (a ninth, Seeker's Rise, is referenced but not yet detailed):

Guttercoast sits atop a dimensional nexus tuned to Nullmire, where strange objects and creatures routinely wash ashore, turning the coast into a continuous living lottery shared between fishermen, salvagers, and cult-marked warlocks.

The Principality of Augur is a fractured realm of city-states organized around the semi-sentient Throne of Augur, forged over 1500 years ago by the demon Augur the White, a former Divine Champion of Aiath-Karse. Whoever the Throne chooses becomes the Principality's recognized Overlord, and it has a mind of its own about who qualifies.

Siresale Kingdom is a wealthy, disciplined nation whose every policy quietly factors in one question: will this disturb Lin, the bored, lazy black dragon who treats the kingdom as her personal tribute stop and favorite perch. She's recognized as Vaeldrath's third strongest dragon and has casually wiped out S-Rank parties and Exalted alike without much effort.

The Billowing Plains are a grassland basin where dungeons and adventurers exist in unusual balance, an unusually high density of manageable dungeons making the region a proving ground supported by staging towns and waystations.

The Pale Sink is a coastal basin under the perpetual Drownhollow Curse, where corpses reanimate within hours of touching the water, an economic engine built on necromancy, bone-meal exports, and guided "haunted coast" tourism.

Cinderweld Heights belongs to the Reincarnations of the First and Final Flames, twin fire elementals, the red Blazing Empress and the blue Azure Queen, who rule opposite ends of the land each year before converging at year's end for the Night of Cinderweld, where they argue, brag, and inevitably fail to agree before the cycle resets.

Quarry Vale is built around the Wide Blue Vein, a rare visible, tangible leyline that bleeds mana directly into the rock, making the region both a powerhouse of enchantment and trade and a hazard zone of toxic surges and planar bleed, managed by Leyline Wardens and Harvesting Extractors alike.

Dawnmoorn Reach is defined by dozens of towering karst formations called the Dawnmoorn Towers, each acting as a soul-routing beacon that biases where nearby souls go after death, making control of a Tower's "heart" a fiercely contested political and religious prize.

Southwest Vaeldrath: The Xalde Desert and the Harrowing Schisms

The Forbidden Xalde Desert is the world's third largest desert, defined by the remnants of the Xaldeths, a civilization that the Kothstorians say "retired from continuity" and simply stopped existing while leaving its works behind. No permanent settlements survive amid the temporal distortions and unstable ground, leaving the desert to treasure hunters, opportunistic Overlords, and scholars chasing the mystery of what actually happened to the missing civilization.

The Seven Harrowing Schisms occupy a separate fractured belt further south, where Overlords, warlocks, rogue angels, demon queens, and more have carved out overlapping dominions. The Schisms are where disaster learned to rule. Each Schism domain is defined by a dominant S‑Rank Overlord whose presence reshapes law, landscape, and culture around a single overwhelming vector of power, whether hellish, eldritch, or otherwise. To the wider continent, the Schisms are infamous as Vaeldrath’s premier crucible for dark lord politics, varied dark empires, and wide wild conflicts. The seven named domains are the Scarlet Imperium (Demon Queen Ava), Lucimoor Hearth (Hearth Prince Malik), Egala Courts (Pala, Angel of Nullmire), the Grimfields (Bonekeeper Roth), the Tilted Scorchlands (Dark Lord Vile), the Mimicking Choir (Exalted Empress Naurelia), and the Wardlite Reliquary (Saintess of Wardlite).

Far North Vaeldrath: The Violet Box Prison

The Violet Box is a mobile black-site island prison under a permanently purple sky, holding some of the world's most dangerous entities, including demigods, all under the joint design of Raalen Archmages Laruja, Kiris, and Valtimera. Part tiered fortress and part demiplane, it can de-attune from one patch of northern sea and reattach to another, making it physically impossible to locate by normal means, while inside, long-term inmates have formed their own factions, treating the place as half prison and half unescapable city-state.

Raalen Archmages, Exalted, and the World's Notables

Specific Notables:

Suudana Niina is an over 910-year-old Great Eastern Dragon, sharp-tongued and ruthlessly pragmatic, wielding her sentient katana Yanagi and believing firmly that pain is the best teacher.

Silvy, Astella, and Miriam are a well-balanced, high-competence adventuring party who operate more like an elite operations team than bombastic heroes, anchored by Silvy's scouting, Astella's elven sorcery, and Miriam rounding out the group.

Astella

Silvy

Miriam

Phaedra, Sarana, and Tidoi are an S-Rank trio constantly balanced on the edge between beloved national saviors and feared international incidents, led by Phaedra, a centuries-old demoness warlock from the Eternal Maw, alongside Sarana, "The Infinite Armory," and Tidoi.

Phaedra

Sarana

Tidoi

Kallia, Nelvara, and Izala are an A-Rank villain adventuring party operating out of the Grimfields in the Harrowing Schisms, formed by their Overlord, Bonekeeper Roth. Functionally an elite strike team and counter-hero unit, they balance threat with internal camaraderie, wavering between “terrifying dark agents” and “dysfunctional found-family.”

Raalen Archmages - The Twelve Cosmic Janitors: The Raalen Archmages are the world's most powerful mages, each a registered sovereign state entity ranked Unclassified by adventuring guilds, several orders of magnitude beyond any standard S-Rank threat. Each governs a District of Raalen, a set of large islands off Vaeldrath's west coast home to over 1.3 million people, jokingly nicknamed "cosmic janitors" for keeping Midrealm stable and handling threats too large for anyone else. The twelve are Laruja (Chaos), Nhaaldar (Strength), Julis (Storms), Kiris (Space), Freya (Phantasms), Morena (Will), Aribella (Death), Valtimera (Sigils), Zannadelle (Life), Sia (Songs), Delomious (Beasts), and Ginnini (Desires).

Raalen - The Island Nation of Raalen: A large island city-state west of Vaeldrath with 1.3+ million residents, divided into twelve districts each ruled by an Archmage. Marvel of blended magic and governance where district governments manage local economies/lifestyles while central offices handle records and inter-district diplomacy. External invasion effectively nonexistent due to power and defenses. District identities shape resident professions, culture, and legal norms. Each district reflects its Raalen Archmage's specialty and personality, from Nhaaldar's foundries and dragon quarters to Zannadelle's planned jungle to Aribella's theatrically gloomy necropolis.

Exalted - Vaeldrath's Systematic Chosen Ones: Certain individuals, much like the Raalen Archmages, function as walking hotspots for the Great Attraction, none more so than Fausta's Chosen Ones, the Exalted. Selected by the Goddess of Fate herself, they tend to find their lives bending toward improbable survival, perfectly timed allies, and escalating challenges that always seem just barely winnable, making them as much a strategic consideration for kingdoms and guilds as any army.

Fukukare - The Great Powers at the Bottom of the World: Vaeldrath is not the only continent on the central sphere of Midrealm. Two others, a small one to the East and a smaller one to the West, are known. And there is one, on the direct opposite side of the supermassive continent, one that is the smallest of the three others, that refuses to be acknowledged. The translated word is Yuixiuy, and its greatest entities are everything the Exalted is not. They are entities whose information is in a consistent state of contradiction. They are eaters of myth, of legend, of effect. And while they, due to a variety of reasons, are not frequenters of Vaeldrath, the ones found across the planes are established as among the world's best... in the weirdest ways.

Sorcerers of the Axis of Love: THE GARDEN IS THE GARDENER / THE GARDENER IS THE GARDEN

Augustine Academy

Augustine Academy: Augustine Academy is one of Vaeldrath's premier magical institutions, occupying most of Crestmoon Island off the west coast, founded thousands of years ago by the mysteriously vanished Raalen Archmage Augustus Augustine. It trains only adults at magical maturity, runs on roughly 2% admission and 11% graduation rates, and operates by the motto "Power Through Peril, Mastery Through Sacrifice," with lethal duels and experimental accidents treated as accepted risks. The island itself is shrouded in permanent colored mists that double as defense and navigation hazard, accessible only via enchanted boats or Academy-issued navigation crystals.

Notable Augustine Academy Students: Theria Ashvale is a competitive human battle mage whose dueling prowess has made her something of a campus legend. Kira Brightwing is a cheerful foxgirl alchemist whose experiments have a habit of triggering campus evacuations. Malacka the Grim is a demoness necromancer prone to speaking in unsettling, deadpan prophecies. Seraphine Dawnwhisper is an elf diviner whose uncanny knack for knowing things she shouldn't has made her a quiet social power player. Victoria Steelheart is a half-angel artificer whose brilliant constructs tend to malfunction in spectacular, often dangerous fashion.

Notable Augustine Academy Faculty: Dereia Tornweave is the Academy's Head Magister, a magically enhanced human teaching light magic drawn from her pact with the Autuir Luu, known for unwavering standards. Yavanna Moonshadow is a high elf Enchantment Professor known for enabling experimental student work. Xerra Stormcaller is a demihuman wolfgirl who teaches Elemental Conjuration with eccentric, weather-driven flair. Kiona Eversong is a human-appearing Verarine witch whose hex magic class is infamous for harsh, targeted grading. Celeste Nightbloom is a seven-tailed kitsune Demonology Professor who treats every student with patient equality and ruthless standards alike. Ruuna Ironforge is an ice dragon who runs Battle Magic like a demanding military boot camp. Zekiela Gravesend is a serpentfolk Magister of Transmutation and Head Librarian of the Labyrinth Library, philosophical and quietly mysterious.

The Three Continents of Elsewhere

Vaeldrath isn't the only continent on Midrealm's planet. Two smaller ones, Eoijan to the far west and Takurgur to the far east, are at least partially known and mapped, while a third, Yuixiuy, sits on the exact opposite side of the world and is treated by most of Vaeldrath as myth rather than geography.

Takurgur: Witting far east of Vaeldrath across thousands of miles of ocean, Takurgur is a land defined by cosmic injustice and existential fury as the Great Attraction, centered on Vaeldrath, warps Takurgur's geography, history, and agency to serve Vaeldrathian narratives, flattening its deep cultures into exotic set dressing and as the "strange distant land" backdrop, reducing millennia of civilization to flavor text. This metaphysical insult bred a resentment so profound that it attracted the rogue cosmic force Inimy, the Metaphysical Antagonist Archetype, an Autuir of Nullmire who offered Takurgur the one thing the cosmos had denied it via agency through opposition. If they are going to be the side characters to Vaeldrath's stage, they will make it hurt.

Eoijan: Sitting far west of Vaeldrath across thousands of miles of ocean. It makes up around 3% of total surface area of the planet. Once the ancient homeland of elvenkind on Midrealm, a species that itself came from Nullmire, it was cut away from Vaeldrath's landmass and cast into the far western oceans over 6000 years ago in an event known as the Highest Severing. Its survivors turned from gods to brass, clockwork, and narrative denial. The civilization is defined by anti-magic engineering and alignment with a rogue cosmic force, the engineered outer god DAUHURS. Eoijan is known as "Mizami's Shadow" - a place where the All-Five of Life operates unfiltered, not as biology but as conceptual survival, and where her alliance with DAUHURS is as odd as it is hostile to Vaeldrath. Eoijan is a major source of anti-magic for Midrealm and the planes at large.

Yuixiuy: The smallest of the four continents, on the exact diagonal opposite side of the world from Vaeldrath, separated by thousands of miles of ocean. It is rumored to make up less than 1% of the planet's total surface area. For most of Vaeldrath, Yuixiuy is myth, rumor, and a theoretical “other side” of the world that exists by not fitting the rules of existence. To a few, Yuixiuy is a documented blind spot, where story, history, and language behave like alien systems. It is primarily aligned with a set of Autuirs and aligned with Yalzota, an All-Five and the All-Goddess of Chaos, in a way where she is unfiltered from traditional Verarine or Vaeldrath concepts, as paradox. Perhaps its strangest phenomenon is its prohibition which reportedly prevents the letters and phonemes that compose “Vaeldrath” (V, A, E, L, D, R, T, H) from existing within Yuixiuy's area. If such is not simply divine propaganda...