Shared Lore & World
Aureline
A continent around an inner sea called the Veilwater. Weather is temperate to wet. Politics are a patchwork of city-states, remnant kingdoms, and merchant leagues. The gods are real and, for the most part, as confused as everyone else about the Courts.
The Seven Courts are not pocket dimensions. They are regions of Aureline whose climate of the soul has been claimed. You can walk into Vaelspire with mud on your boots from Goldwake. You can send a letter. The letter may arrive changed.
Ashenmere
Crossroads city on the northern Veilwater. Canals, rain, brick, a reputation for minding its own business that it no longer deserves. Home of the House of Unfinished Names and, once, of Oris — though the city does not know that yet.
Ashenmere is the campaign’s hinge. Between books, the party can return here. Maera (if alive) is here. The iron band feels heavier here. News from every Court washes up on the same quay.
The Grey Roads
Old pilgrim paths that predate the current kingdoms. Since the Courts opened, the Roads have begun to shorten: a two-week journey takes five days, then three. The Master is not being kind. Attention collapses distance.
Walking a Grey Road, travelers sometimes meet a version of themselves coming the other way — not a clone, a choice not taken. The meeting is brief. It is never a fight unless a PC starts one. Record what was said.
The Seven Courts (geography)
| Court | Region | Terrain | What the land rewards |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pride | Vaelspire | High mountains, white stone | Certainty, height, public success |
| Greed | Goldwake | River delta, canals | Accumulation, clever contracts |
| Lust | Thornveil | Garden lowlands | Attention, intensity, being chosen |
| Envy | Narth | Twin cities, canyon | Comparison, borrowed excellence |
| Gluttony | Marrowfen | Wet grain-country | Surplus, never stopping |
| Wrath | Cinderreach | Volcanic borderlands | Grudge, justified harm |
| Sloth | Duskhaven | Grey coast | Rest, delay, numbness |
The Unwritten Court has no geography until Book 8.
The Keepers of the Reckoning
A small, unfashionable order. They believed that looking inward was a civic duty, not a mystic luxury. Most are dead, scattered, or sleeping in Duskhaven. Maera is the last who still knocks on doors. Oris was one of them.
Their sign is an iron ring with no gem. The party’s seal-band is a Keeper tool.
Religion
Do not replace Pathfinder’s pantheon. Let the gods have opinions:
- Gods of justice hate Cinderreach and cannot fix it.
- Gods of love are split on Thornveil and ashamed of the split.
- Gods of harvest argue about Marrowfen in terms that sound like gluttony.
- A god of secrets knows Oris’s name and will not say it; knowledge is their hoard.
If a cleric PC asks their deity “which Court first?” the honest answer is: whichever one you are already in.
History in brief
- The Empire of Completeness (fallen) — Vaelspire is its last posture.
- The Year of Open Hands — Goldwake’s founding myth; now a brand.
- The Nine-Day Truce — Cinderreach’s last peace; Rell was born in it.
- The Opening — eleven years before Session 1, all seven Courts claimed in the same hour. Most people experienced it as weather.
The Master’s thesis (lore the party can piece together)
Scattered in each Court is a fragment of Oris’s writing. Collecting them is optional and rewarding. The thesis, assembled:
I looked. I did not die. What I saw was not a stain on a good person. It was the person. We have built whole civilizations on the hope that this is not so. I will build one on the hope that it is.
The campaign exists to test whether that last sentence deserves to win.