Enter Solvasthar
The World
Solvasthar is a continent shared by five mortal races, and two powers have been fighting over it for centuries. The Tohzar Empire serves the gods of Eerithanos, and its scripture glorifies bloodshed and subjugation. The Nembriyan Alliance is the only thing that has ever stood in its way, and it is losing.
At the heart of the Alliance stands the Temple of Nembriya, and inside it the Throne where every Nembriyan Spiritwoven has been bound to their god. The Alliance has nowhere else to make one. Nothing of consequence now stands between Tohzar’s armies and that Throne.
The Factions
The Tohzar Empire
The Tohzar Empire is ruled from Jeldanur by King Torvaldris, the last of House Blackthorne. Its armies march humans, wolfish Ravokar and scaled Zyr’thak in the same column. In the towns it holds, the Nembriyan blessing marks have been hammered into rubble and attendance at the Church of Eerithanos is mandatory. Anyone suspected of carrying Arcanergy is taken away and not seen again. Highwall Holdfast was the last stronghold standing between Tohzar and Brenoveld, and it has fallen.
The Nembriyan Alliance
The Knights of Nembriya are four armies, each sworn to one of its gods. Four peoples stand behind them, and each gives what its own borders allow. What they share is the Temple of Nembriya, which is older than Brenoveld itself.
Brenoveld
Brenoveld holds the Temple of Nembriya, which makes its lands the ground the Tohzar Empire has to conquer. Its strongholds have guarded the mountain passes for centuries. Highwall Holdfast was once thought impregnable, but the Tohzar Empire now holds it.
Daelyrya
Daelyrya is forest, and its elves fight in gold. Their youngest prince carries the mantle of Sylvoranix, God of Nature, which the god passes between his favored races rather than down a bloodline. The road from Daelyrya to the Temple of Nembriya runs through the Western Iridal Pass, and the pass is lost to the Tohzar Empire.
Kronithur Kingdom
Kronithur is a dwarven kingdom in the mountains, and little of its strength ever reaches the Temple of Nembriya. Its own borders are under constant assault in places the Knights cannot easily reach, and what it can field stays home to hold them. Dragons dwell in the same peaks, and a caretaker keeps the peace between them.
Mareadoran Kingdom
The Mareadoran Kingdom lies on the far eastern side of Solvasthar, cut off from the rest of the Alliance by lands the Tohzar Empire holds. Its sea elves have pledged few soldiers, because their own shores leave them little to spare. Under the Spiritwoven of Nereidralyn they hold the eastern front against the Ravokar, and while that front holds, the Empire cannot turn its whole strength on the Temple of Nembriya.
Arcanergy
Arcanergy is as much a part of a mage as blood, and unlike blood it bends to their will. Five families once held it, each with a discipline of its own, and each certain theirs would outlast the others. They were wrong. In a single day the Burning took every mage whose power ran in the blood. What survives of that inheritance sits in Torvaldris, King of the Tohzar Empire, and in the rumored grandchildren of Matois Julithus. If those rumors are true, then on their eighteenth birthday it will make mages of them both, ready or not.
The Gods and the Spiritwoven
The gods of Solvasthar do not fight their own wars. Each one chooses a single mortal champion, a Spiritwoven, and fights through that champion’s hands. The god’s own power runs in them and remakes what they are, so what a Spiritwoven can do follows from what their god is. Four of them answer to Nembriya and stand for life and balance. Five answer to Eerithanos and stand for domination, and everything Tohzar has done was done in their name. A mantle cannot be forced on anyone who refuses it, and when its bearer falls the god begins again. Alystheria, Goddess of Unity, has been without a champion since Roland died, and every power in Solvasthar has an interest in who fills that place.
The Gods of Nembriya
Alystheria
Unity
Her ideal is carved in the Temple itself, a gathering of troops with humans, elves and dwarves standing side by side, each carrying the weapons of their own people.
Veralynsara
Knowledge
Knowledge is her domain and kindness is her ideal, and the Alliance honors the two together.
Sylvoranix
Nature
Nature is his, and he will not keep his champions to one people. He moves the mantle between his favored races as it suits him.
Nereidralyn
The Ocean
The ocean is hers, and she speaks the way it moves. She will tell you the tide does not wait for a swimmer who hesitates.
Thanachrith
Time
Time is his, and no banner in the Alliance carries his name. No mortal has ever claimed his blessing.
The Gods of Eerithanos
Kalytharn
Discord
Kalytharn stands first among the gods of Eerithanos. His creed promises that he breaks what is weak so something stronger can grow in its place, and his faithful call that mercy.
Xercathis
Corruption
Corruption is his domain and his method. He reaches into a mortal’s mind, and what he takes hold of he twists.
Nylothara
Shadows
Shadow is hers to give, and in the hands she gives it to it gathers and hardens into a blade.
Lyrithena
Nightmares
Nightmares are hers, and the Empire sets her face above its doors, pupilless and watching.
Gorvaleth
Plague
Plague is his domain, and he sets it on those who refuse to serve the Empire.