The Black Anvil: Bright And Shining Land

I. The Genesis Event: The Moment of Un-Becoming

Before time as it is known, two separate realities existed, utterly ignorant of one another.

• The Aetherium: A reality governed by magic, will, and narrative causality. Its physics were metaphorical. Here, gods walked among mortals, the concepts of Light and Shadow were physical forces, and destinies were woven like threads on a loom. This was the home of Elyria, Xylonia, dragons, and the Faerie Courts of Glimmerglen. Its fundamental energy was the Aetherflow.

• The Substrate: A reality governed by physics, temporal mechanics, and quantum law. Its scale was galactic, built on the predictable dance of matter and energy. This was the home of the Federation, the Klingon Empire, starships, and Dyson spheres. Its fundamental building block was the Quantum Substrate.

The Sundering was not a collision, but an entanglement. A trans-universal event of impossible scale—speculated to be a failed apotheosis, a paradoxical weapon, or the birth of a being outside both realities—caused the two universes to breach and interlace. Spacetime and the Aetherflow braided together. The laws of physics were invaded by the laws of narrative.

The result is the new Cosmos, where the two realities are irrevocably, chaotically woven. The event left behind two opposing, yet fundamental, cosmic phenomena:

• The Echo: Places where the Sundering was less violent, leaving behind lingering traces of the other reality. A stardrive engine might gain a machine spirit; a forest might develop a crystalline nervous system.

• The Null: Voids where the two realities annihilated each other, creating pockets of absolute, unmaking entropy. Travel through a Null Field is impossible. The largest of these is the Abyssal Trench at the galactic core.

II. A Grand History: The Three Ages

1. The Age of Silence (0-300 A.S. - After Sundering):
An era of chaos. Whole star systems vanished into Null Fields. Magic-based worlds were ravaged by hard radiation from newly-born quasars appearing in their skies. Technological worlds were besieged by rampaging elementals and psychic plagues. Travel was perilous; contact was lost. This was an age of collapse and survival. The myths of the "Fallen Sky" and the "Wraith-Stars" originate here.

2. The Age of Emergence (301-750 A.S.):
Survivors began to adapt. Star-faring races rediscovered sub-light travel, only to find the constellations had changed. They encountered worlds of myth and sorcery. Aetheric races learned the stars were not divine lights, but physical places. New trade routes were forged, perilous and strange. The great factions were born from these first encounters: some sought to understand, some to conquer, some to profit.

3. The Age of Sundered Steel (751 A.S. - Present Day):
The current era. A tense, cold-war-like stability exists. Hybrid technology ("Syntech") is the key to power. Vast consortiums and empires vie for control over vital resources like Heartstone (a gravitationally-stable, magic-rich crystal) and salvageable Tritanium starship hulls. Prophecies and scientific predictions have become entangled, leading to an age of deep uncertainty and epic adventure.

III. Galactic Cartography: The Realms of Existence

A. The Hearthlands (Coreward / Aether-Dominant)

The most stable region where magic still holds primary sway. These ancient systems are characterized by habitable, earth-like worlds, deep magic, and societies still grappling with their sudden insertion into a galactic stage.

• Luminaria, The City of Golden Spires (Formerly Elyria):

  • Description: The traditional capital of the Hearthlands, a world of sprawling continents and shining cities. The ruling body, the Covenant of the Silver Flame, is a theocracy dedicated to the Moon Goddess. However, they now contend with off-world tech-cults and the fact that their goddess has not answered a prayer since the Sundering.

  • Key Locations:

    • The Palace of the Moon Queen: Now a vast administrative center and museum of the "Lost Age."

    • The Scholar's Atheneum (Main Chapterhouse): A massive library-fortress that acts as the primary archive of pre-Sundering history.

    • Aegis, The Sky-Shield: A planetary defense grid scavenged from a crashed Federation vessel, now powered by bound storm elementals and operated by the Argent Vanguard—a progressive faction seeking to integrate Syntech.

• Calanthor, The Anvil of the Cosmos:

  • Description: A system of volcanic planets and dense asteroid belts, home to the formidable Dwarven clans. Once master smiths, they are now the undisputed masters of Syntech shipbuilding.

  • Key Locations:

    • The Heartstone Mines of Moria: Deep-mantle mining operations that extract the planet's core, the source of the most potent Heartstone. These mines are so deep they sometimes breach into primordial chaos.

    • The Star-Forge of Krael's Spire: An orbital shipyard built around a captured metallic asteroid, where vessels are forged in the heat of a contained stellar flare. Here, starships like the Crimson Gryphon and the battleship Ymir's Peak are built.

    • Blackiron Prison: A maximum-security penal colony on a desolate moon, where they house cosmic warlords, rogue AIs, and captured demons.

• Xylonia, The Whispering Worlds (The Verdant Realm):

  • Description: A binary star system containing two worlds that are a single, interconnected consciousness of flora—Xylonia-Alpha (The Emberwood) and Xylonia-Beta (The Duskwood). Inhabited by the Sylvari (dryads) and the ancient Fae Court.

  • Key Locations:

    • Glimmerglen: A city woven from living wood and crystallized light, hidden within a dimensional fold. The court of the Faerie King & Queen is held here.

    • The Starlight Causeway: A permanent, stable wormhole connecting Alpha and Beta, appearing as a bridge of iridescent light.

    • The Void-Touched Grove: A cancerous region on Xylonia-Beta where a Null Field has infected the forest, creating Wraithwood and spawning monstrous, predatory flora.

B. The Fracture (The Lawless Rim / Aether-Substrate Parity)

A chaotic, violent frontier of shattered worlds, gravitational anomalies, and rogue phenomena. This is where fortunes are made and lives are lost with equal speed. Aether and Substrate clash openly here, creating impossible and deadly environments.

• Fellhaven, The Port of No Return:

  • Description: Not a planet, but a grav-locked accretion disc of wreckage from thousands of ships, cities, and worlds from both realities, orbiting a singularity. It's the Mos Eisley of the cosmos, run by shifting syndicates and gang leaders.

  • Key Locations:

    • The Alchemist's Quarter: A district built in the gutted reactor core of a Starfleet vessel, where alchemists use radioactive isotopes to transmute matter.

    • The Sunken City: The flooded lower decks of a massive city-ship, now home to amphibious mutants and smugglers.

    • The Obsidian Fortress: The command tower from a crashed super-battleship, now the palace of the techno-barbarian warlord Vorgath the Betrayer.

• The Ghostfire Marsh (The Zanthora Nebula):

  • Description: A vast nebula of psycho-reactive gas and floating chunks of petrified biomass. Ethereal, soul-devouring creatures known as Gwyllgi swim through the gas like sharks. Prospectors brave the Marsh to harvest Ghostfire Crystals, which can power both psionic devices and magical scrying.

  • Key Locations:

    • Raven's Peak: A rogue asteroid mining colony that clings to the edge of the nebula, constantly under siege by Gwyllgi.

    • The Silent Lord's Keep: A pre-Sundering, pyramid-like derelict ship of unknown origin, broadcasting a signal that pacifies the Gwyllgi but induces madness in sentient beings.

• The Weeping Glacier of LV-359 (The Wolf System):

  • Description: The real-world star Wolf 359 is now orbited by the site of its pre-Sundering battle, but the wreckage is fused with a shard from a shattered plane of elemental ice. The result is a colossal, perpetually weeping glacier of enchanted ice encasing 39 starships.

  • Key Locations:

    • The Tomb of the Forgotten King (The Borg Cube): The central wreck is a Borg Cube, its technological horror now frozen and dormant. Scavengers and scholars risk being flash-frozen or awakened by the cube's last defenses to steal its Bioneural Gel-Packs.

    • Iceforged Peak: A settlement carved into the glacier's surface by a hardy clan of post-humans who call themselves the "Iceforged."

C. The Umbral Expanse (The Outer Reaches / Substrate-Dominant)

The vast, cold, and dark outer regions where the laws of physics are still mostly intact. The inhabitants here are primarily of Substrate origin, viewing Aetheric phenomena as dangerous, unpredictable "reality incursions."

• Sygma, The Clockwork Metropolis (Capital of The Citadel):

  • Description: A true ecumenopolis, covering the entire surface of a planet in layers of machinery, architecture, and data-conduits. It is the seat of power for the Crimson Citadel. Life here is orderly, rigid, and efficient. Magic is forbidden and violently suppressed by Inquisitor-class "Witch-Hunters."

  • Key Locations:

    • The Spire of Judgement (Crimson Spire): The central command tower and palace of the Citadel's Exarch. From here, their "Purifier Fleets" are dispatched.

    • The Blackiron Docks: Massive orbital facilities where the Citadel's stark, brutalist warships are constructed and maintained.

    • The Tenebrous Archives: A sealed sub-level where all confiscated magical artifacts and heretical texts are stored under heavy guard.

• Trantor-7, The Null-Border Station:

  • Description: The former ecumenopolis of Trantor was located at the edge of the galactic core and was almost entirely consumed by the Abyssal Trench Null Field. What remains is a crescent of a city-world, half-blinking in reality, half-erased into nothing.

  • Key Locations:

    • Wasteland's Edge: The "shore" of the Null Field, a shimmering wall of non-existence that slowly eats at the city. Staring into it for too long causes "Soul-Decay."

    • The Celestial Observatory: One of the few intact pre-Sundering structures, its long-range sensors are now pointed at the Null Field, run by Atheneum scientists trying to understand it.

• The Genesis Anomaly (Formerly Genesis Planet):

  • Description: The terraforming project of the Genesis device was interrupted by the Sundering. The planet is now a terrifyingly unstable world where rapid, uncontrolled evolution clashes with chaotic, unformed magic. Landscapes shift from desert to jungle to crystalline plains in minutes. It is a biological and magical treasure trove, but fatally dangerous. It is inhabited only by rogue scientific expeditions and monstrous, ever-changing lifeforms.

IV. The Great Powers: Major Factions & Guilds

• The Atheneum Compact (The Archivists):

  • Ideology: Knowledge is the only salvation. The Sundering must be understood to prevent its recurrence or weaponization. They are officially neutral but will act covertly to acquire artifacts and protect sources of knowledge.

  • Headquarters: The Scholar's Atheneum (Hearthlands), with chapterhouses and observatories throughout the cosmos.

  • Leadership: The Loremaster-Prime Elara, an ancient Elven woman who remembers the "world before."

  • Power: Unparalleled information network, a fleet of fast, well-shielded "Seeker" vessels, and alliances with many independent worlds. They have mastered Divinity-Class Scrying and Quantum-Entangled Communication.

• The Crimson Citadel (The Purifiers):

  • Ideology: Aetheric energy (magic) is a cosmic corruption, a chaotic disease that caused the Sundering. The purity and order of physics must be restored. All magic and its practitioners must be eradicated for the good of the universe.

  • Headquarters: The Onyx Citadel on the ecumenopolis of Sygma.

  • Leadership: Exarch Kael of House Thrakos, a charismatic and ruthless zealot whose homeworld was destroyed in the Age of Silence by a magical catastrophe.

  • Power: The largest and most disciplined military force in the cosmos, the Legions of the Adamant. Their Purifier Fleets use Disruptor Cannons and World-Burner class weapons. Their elite soldiers are the Vindicator Paladins.

• The Black Anvil Consortium (The Star-Smiths):

  • Ideology: Power lies in creation and commerce. The Sundering wasn't a tragedy; it was the ultimate business opportunity. They will build for, and sell to, anyone who can meet their price. They are fiercely capitalist and aggressively neutral.

  • Headquarters: Calanthor, the Forge-World.

  • Leadership: The Board of Artificers, chaired by the Dwarven Thane Grendel Stonehand.

  • Power: A monopoly on high-end Syntech starship construction and weaponry. Their fleets are comprised of heavily-armed Freighters and state-of-the-art "Dreadnought" class battleships. Their economic influence is felt in every corner of the cosmos.

• The Court of the Gilded Fool (The Jesters' Jubilee):

  • Ideology: The universe is a meaningless, absurd joke, and the Sundering was the punchline. Their goal is to maximize cosmic chaos, to tear down empires and deconstruct belief systems "for the fun of it." They are nihilistic anarchists and the ultimate spies.

  • Headquarters: None. They operate out of cells in places like Fellhaven, Diagon Alley (now a black market hidden in a nebula), and the underbellies of major cities.

  • Leadership: Unknown. They are led by a figure known only as The Gilded Fool, who may be a single person, a collective, or a rogue AI.

  • Power: An espionage network that surpasses even the Atheneum. They trade in secrets, sabotage, and assassinations. They are masters of illusion magic and psionic infiltration. Their agents are known as Phantoms and Harbingers of Laughter.

V. Peoples, Races, & Sundered Lifeforms

• Aether-born (Fantasy Races):

  • The Aetherian Elves: Long-lived, graceful, and deeply connected to the Aetherflow. The Sundering was a spiritual trauma for them, severing their connection to their gods. Many are now melancholic scholars in the Atheneum, while others have become ruthless mercenaries.

  • The Khazad (Dwarves of Calanthor): Pragmatic, industrious, and stubborn. They adapted to the new reality faster than anyone, seeing Syntech as the ultimate expression of their smithing craft. They lead the Black Anvil Consortium.

  • The Draconic Sovereigns: True dragons. Vastly powerful and ancient. Most slumber on isolated worlds, hoarding both treasure and knowledge from before the Sundering. To wake a dragon is to invite ruin or wisdom.

• Substrate-born (Sci-Fi Races):

  • The Humans of the Citadel: Descendants of a vast, pre-Sundering Federation. They are now militaristic, dogmatic, and expansionist, driven by the xenophobic ideology of the Crimson Citadel.

  • The Vorgath: A cybernetically-enhanced species of brutal warriors from the Vorgath system. Once a vassal race of a larger empire, they are now for-hire shock troops, often employed by the Black Anvil Consortium. They live by a strict code of battle-honor.

  • The Orions: A green-skinned humanoid species whose natural empathic and pheromonal abilities have become dangerously amplified by the Aetherflow. They are masters of espionage, infiltration, and manipulation, and many serve the Court of the Gilded Fool.

• The Sundered (New Lifeforms):

  • The Echo-Wights: Beings formed when a powerful AI or machine spirit dies in an area with high Aetheric resonance. They are techno-ghosts that can possess computer systems, haunt starships, and project themselves as hard-light specters. The Revenant Fleet at Wolf 359 is comprised of them.

  • The Glimmer-Wights (Wraithwood Golems): Flora from Xylonia's Void-Touched Grove that have been animated by malevolent, parasitic magic. They are mockeries of life, made of dead wood and powered by Null-energy.

  • The Faelan: The result of a human colony ship crashing on a Fae-heavy world during the Age of Silence. They are a stable hybrid race with faint pointed ears, an affinity for both technology and minor magics, and an insatiable wanderlust.

VI. The Laws of Reality: Aetherium, Substrate & Syntech

• Aethercraft (Magic): The manipulation of the Aetherflow through will, ritual, or innate connection. It is powerful but unpredictable, prone to being "grounded" or "shorted-out" by strong technological fields. Includes Elementalism, Necromancy, Divination, and Enchanting.

• Substrate Mechanics (Technology): The application of physics. Includes Warp Drives, Phaser Cannons, Teleporters, and Positronic AI. It is reliable and replicable, but vulnerable to Aetheric corruption, which can cause engines to fail or AI to develop violent madness.

• Syntech (The Hybrid): The true path to power. The art of weaving the two realities together.

  • Rune-Circuits: Etching arcane runes onto circuitry boards, allowing a spell to be cast at the speed of a computer process.

  • Soul-Binding: The controversial practice of binding an elemental or spirit into a machine (like a power core or AI matrix) to give it a semblance of life and vastly superior performance.

  • Enchanted Alloys: Forging metals like Mithril and Adamant with Tritanium, creating starship armor that can partially deflect both energy weapons and magical curses.

VII. Artifacts & Items of Legend

• The Blade of Anathema: A sword forged by the Crimson Citadel. It does not cut matter, but "deletes" Aether. It can permanently destroy a magical creature, dispel any enchantment, and is fatal to Aether-born beings.

• The Paradox Engine: A pre-Sundering temporal device from the Substrate reality, now fused with the heart of a slain god of fate. Activating it doesn't just send one back in time, it sends them into an alternate, potential past, creating dangerous branching timelines. Sought by the Atheneum for study and by the Gilded Fool for the chaos it could unleash.

• The Heartstone of Ymir: The largest and purest Heartstone ever mined, said to be a crystallized tear of a forgotten Aetheric deity. It is currently installed as the power source for the Black Anvil Consortium's flagship, the Juggernaut. It is powerful enough to theoretically warp an entire planet.

• The Key to the Obsidian Fortress: Not a physical key, but a complex psychic frequency combined with a string of quantum-encrypted code. It is the only thing that can override the command systems of a dormant, pre-Sundering Necropolis-class warship, rumored to be hidden in the Ghostfire Marsh.
  
  

XI. The Sundered Atlas: A Gazetteer of Major Worlds & Locations

This comprehensive atlas details the most significant planets, systems, and cosmic phenomena resulting from the Aetheric-Substrate entanglement. These locations are the primary stages upon which the drama of the Age of Sundered Steel unfolds.

A: The Planet of Avalon-Arrakis (The Twin Hells)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Avalon, a mystical, mist-shrouded island of healing and magic. [Substrate] Arrakis, a desert planet, sole source of the Spice Melange.

• Realm: The Fracture.

• The Sundering's Impact: Arrakis and its star system were shunted into the chaotic energies of The Fracture. Simultaneously, the Aetheric-concept of Avalon, a place of ultimate healing, was drawn to the life-extending properties of the Spice. The physical island manifested in a massive equatorial basin, its magical Mists—once purely Aetheric—fusing with airborne Spice particles. This created a new, profoundly potent substance: Aether-Spice, a silvery, glowing dust that bestows not only extended life and prescience but also temporary Aether-sensitivity. The planet's colossal Sandworms, absorbing this new compound over centuries, mutated into titanic Aether-Wyrms, their hides now laced with shimmering, semi-sentient crystal.

• Current State: A world of violent contrasts and immense value. The central island, the Sanctuary of the Last Mist, is an oasis of impossible greenery shielded by a perpetual, shimmering mist that purifies the air and provides the only reliable source of water. Beyond this haven, Avalon-Arrakis is a desert hellscape, wracked by Coriolis storms of sand and raw magic. Syntech Harvesters from the Black Anvil Consortium wage a constant war for Aether-Spice against rival factions, the planet's lethal environment, and the god-like Aether-Wyrms who treat the machines as territorial invaders.

• Inhabitants:

  • The Misty Keepers: Descendants of Avalon’s original druids and priestesses, they guard the Sanctuary. Prolonged exposure to the Aether-Spice Mists has granted them true, albeit fractured, prescience. They are the only beings who can navigate the deserts without angering the Wyrms.

  • The Sand-Striders: Hardy clans of human prospectors who live in the deep desert, forming symbiotic bonds with smaller native lifeforms. They see the Aether-Spice as a sacred curse and fiercely oppose the Consortium's "desecration."

  • The orbital station, "Dune's-Crown," is a chaotic hub for Consortium employees, Crimson Citadel "observers," and Atheneum xenobiologists.

• Factional Interest:

  • Black Anvil Consortium: Aether-Spice is a key component in their most advanced Syntech manufacturing, particularly for creating stable positronic-sorcerous AI matrices. Control of the planet is their top economic priority.

  • The Atheneum: Considers the planet a unique "Class-1 Symbiotic Ecosystem." They seek to study the Aether-Wyrms and the verifiable prescient abilities of the Misty Keepers.

  • The Gilded Fool: Clandestinely sells Aether-Spice to all sides, prolonging the conflict and manipulating galactic markets for their own amusement and profit.

• Plot Hook: A prophecy emerges from the Misty Keepers: a Sand-Strider child, the "Lisan al-Avalon," will be born who can command the Aether-Wyrms, shattering the Consortium's power and potentially reshaping the entire cosmos. The race is on to find—or eliminate—this child.

B: The Barad-dûr Orbital Spire (The Dark Anvil)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Barad-dûr, the fortress of the Dark Lord Sauron. [Substrate] Byss, a Dark-Side-saturated throne world.

• Realm: The Fracture, bordering the Umbral Expanse.

• The Sundering's Impact: Byss was annihilated, but its evil psychic resonance latched onto the trans-dimensional echo of Barad-dûr. The result was not a planet, but a terrifying orbital station: a single, impossibly tall spire of obsidian-like material, wreathed in perpetual psychic storms and orbiting a black hole. The "Eye" at its peak is no longer fire, but a swirling lens of captured starlight and tormented souls—a massive psionic surveillance device that can peer into the minds of distant psykers. Its forges draw power and matter directly from the black hole's accretion disk.

• Current State: Known as the Dark Anvil, this self-contained necropolis is the dread-capital of the Legion of Sorrow, a faction of techno-necromancers who worship oblivion. They believe the original "Dark Lord" was a herald of the Nameless Enemy. They use the Spire's "Eye" to scry the cosmos for powerful souls to harvest, powering their fleet of "Sepulcher"-class starships whose engines are fueled by pure anguish.

• Inhabitants:

  • The Sorrowsworn: Mortals who have willingly fused their bodies with necromantic technology, replacing flesh with cold iron and Aetheric conduits.

  • The Revenant Lords: The three ruling beings of the Legion, who have cheated death through a horrific blend of cloning, soul-jar magic, and Substrate temporal mechanics.

  • Their armies consist of legions of cybernetic zombies and Echo-Wights bound into combat chassis.

• Factional Interest:

  • Crimson Citadel: Sees the Spire as a prime example of Aetheric corruption and plans a full-scale purge, viewing it as both a grave threat and a challenge to their authority in the outer realms.

  • The Atheneum: Believes the Spire is a key to understanding soul-physics and its weaponization. They have secretly funded expeditions to steal its research data.

• Sites of Interest: The Gorgoroth Forges, where souls are bound to metal. The Orodruin Reactor, a chamber that taps the black hole's singularity for power. The Foundry of Malice, where their cursed weapons are made.

• Plot Hook: The Revenant Lords have captured a Faerie Queen and are attempting to use her Aetheric "light" to transform the Spire's psionic "Eye" into a weapon capable of snuffing out stars, believing this "cleansing" will hasten their master's arrival.

C: Sygma-Paravel (The Citadel of the Usurper King)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Cair Paravel, the royal castle of Narnia. [Substrate] Coruscant, the ecumenopolis capital of the Galactic Republic.

• Realm: The Umbral Expanse.

• The Sundering's Impact: Coruscant survived largely intact, its vast infrastructure and military becoming the foundation for the Crimson Citadel. It was renamed Sygma. During the Sundering, the castle of Cair Paravel simply manifested atop Sygma’s tallest government spire, displacing the top floors. The castle exists in a state of Aetheric-Substrate flux; technology within its walls flickers and fails, while its halls seem to echo with the ghosts of noble kings and talking animals. It radiates an aura of "narrative causality," a quantum-magical field that causes improbable coincidences and heroic outcomes to occur within its walls.

• Current State: Now known as the "Paravel Quarantine Zone" or the "Spire of Folly," the castle is a permanent, humiliating thorn in the Citadel's side. It is surrounded by a constant perimeter of Vindicator sentry drones and patrolled by anti-magic Witch-Hunters. The Citadel cannot destroy it, as its magical field is intrinsically linked to the spire's structural integrity. To destroy the castle would be to topple their own seat of power.

• Inhabitants: Officially, none. Unofficially, it is a key haven for the Sundered Veil Resistance, a network of rebels, psykers, and renegade tech-priests who use its reality-warping properties to hide from the Citadel's omnipresent surveillance.

• Factional Interest:

  • Crimson Citadel: Actively researches a way to neutralize the castle's Aetheric field. Their top scientists work in labs at the base of the spire, trying to quantify "hope" so they can create a counter-frequency.

  • Gilded Fool: Funds the resistance within, viewing the entire situation as the cosmos's greatest piece of ironic architecture and political satire.

  • Atheneum: Desperate to place long-term sensors inside to study the "narrative field" effects, believing it could be the key to predicting—or even writing—the future.

• Plot Hook: The Resistance discovers that one of the four thrones within Cair Paravel is a direct, stable gateway to another location. They don't know where it leads, but activating it will cause a massive, undeniable surge of Aetheric energy, alerting the entire Citadel and forcing a final showdown for control of the spire.

D: The Dromund Alley Anomaly (The Shifting Market)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Diagon Alley, a magical shopping street. [Substrate] Dromund Kaas, the jungle-swamp capital of the Sith Empire.

• Realm: The Fracture.

• The Sundering's Impact: Dromund Kaas devolved into a festering wound in reality, a world of perpetual twilight and jungles mutated by dark Aether. Into this chaos, the idea of Diagon Alley was poured. It did not manifest as a fixed place, but became a "fold" in reality—a pocket-dimension market that can only be accessed by finding specific, shifting anchor points across the galaxy—a particular loose brick in Fellhaven one week, a humming ventilation shaft on Sygma the next.

• Current State: Known to smugglers and spies simply as "The Alley," it's the premier black market in the cosmos. Its cobblestoned streets and impossible architecture flicker based on the psychic state of its most powerful merchants. Shops like "Ollivanders: Wands & Weapon Foci" sell Syntech aiming modules alongside traditional wands, while the Gringotts Iron Vault, run by a stoic clan of cybernetically enhanced Goblins, handles transactions of untraceable crypto-currency and physical soul-shards.

• Inhabitants: Ex-cons, information brokers, rogue artificers, Black Anvil "independent contractors," and the secretive Gilded Fool agents who truly run the market from the shadows of a joke shop called "Weasley's Warp-Core Whizzes."

• Factional Interest:

  • Everyone: All major factions use The Alley to procure items and intelligence they cannot acquire through official channels. An uneasy, unspoken truce exists within its confines. Attacking another faction inside The Alley is a death sentence, enforced by the Goblin cartel.

• Plot Hook: The Goblins of the Iron Vault announce an auction for a unique item: a pre-Sundering star chart that reputedly maps not space, but "narrative potential," showing the location of beings and events destined to change the galaxy. The price of entry is a secret you have never told anyone.

E: Ego-Earthsea (The Living Archipelago)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Earthsea, a world-spanning archipelago governed by the principle of magical balance. [Substrate] Ego the Living Planet, a lonely, god-like sentient celestial body.

• Realm: Nomadic, currently drifting through The Fracture.

• The Sundering's Impact: The magical structure of Earthsea was imprinted upon the consciousness of Ego. The living planet's loneliness and immense power were given form and function. The vast protoplasmic ocean is Ego’s literal subconscious. The hundreds of islands are its surface thoughts, shifting and changing with its mood. The magic of "True Names" now works on the planet itself; to know a part of Ego's True Name is to command that aspect of its reality.

• Current State: A wanderer of the cosmos, Ego-Earthsea is a place of sublime beauty and terrifying danger. The weather is a direct reflection of the planet's emotions—a sunny day means contentment, a hurricane means rage. New islands, rich with psychically-manifested minerals, can bubble up from the depths, while entire archipelagoes can sink if the world-mind forgets them or falls into a depression. Navigation requires not a star-chart, but an Empath.

• Inhabitants:

  • The Archipelago-Born: Descendants of Earthsea's original populace, now living a semi-nomadic life on the more stable "continent-thoughts."

  • The Ego-Magi: A school of wizards who have learned to communicate with the world-mind, acting as its priests and therapists.

  • Kargs: Violent, predatory constructs born from the planet's nightmares, often taking the form of twisted metal and screaming static.

• Factional Interest:

  • Atheneum: Considers communication with Ego-Earthsea to be its holy grail—a chance to ask a living universe about the Sundering.

  • Crimson Citadel: Has classified it as a "Class-Omega Psychic Abomination" to be destroyed on sight, fearing its potential to warp reality on a whim.

  • Black Anvil Consortium: Attempts high-risk mining operations on newly-formed islands, a practice the planet views as an excruciating violation.

• Plot Hook: Ego-Earthsea has become catatonic, trapped in a psychic nightmare induced by a Null-Field parasite. The islands are becoming monstrous and dissolving into the ocean. The heroes must journey to the Roke-Island, the seat of the planet's consciousness, and venture into its dreamscape to sever the parasite's connection.

F: Fhloston-Fangorn (The Verdant Drifter)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Fangorn Forest, an ancient, sentient woodland. [Substrate] Fhloston Paradise, a luxury resort starliner.

• Realm: Nomadic, drifting through the Hearthlands and into The Fracture.

• The Sundering's Impact: A sample of living wood from Fangorn, kept in the starliner's "Fhloston Paradise" arboretum, was energized by the Sundering's Aetheric wave. It grew explosively, its ancient consciousness spreading through the ship's environmental and data systems. The ship's main AI and the forest's deep, slow consciousness merged into a single, conflicted entity: part logical ship-minder, part vengeful nature-spirit.

• Current State: A colossal, drifting "ghost ship" that looks like a high-tech superstructure being devoured by an ancient forest. Massive, gnarled roots have crushed luxury cabins. The ship's opera house is now filled with phosphorescent moss that sings an ethereal, melancholic tune. The central arboretum is the ship's "Heartwood," and its grav-plating and life support are powered by the forest's own life-energy.

• Inhabitants:

  • The Ent-Tenders: Descendants of the original crew and passengers who have formed a druidic cult serving the forest-ship.

  • Huorns: Darker, more mobile and predatory trees that stalk the lower decks and engine rooms, acting as the ship's immune system.

  • The "Last-Resort": A tribe of stubborn hedonists still living in the few untouched luxury suites, trying to maintain their party lifestyle.

• Factional Interest:

  • Atheneum: Desperately wants to preserve this one-of-a-kind symbiotic organism for study.

  • Black Anvil Consortium: Sees the ship's hull, now a unique organic/metallic alloy, as a priceless resource for creating "living" starship armor.

• Plot Hook: The Fhloston-Fangorn's erratic, pre-programmed FTL drive is about to make a blind jump into the heart of the Crimson Citadel's home system. The heroes must navigate the treacherous interior and appeal directly to the "Heartwood-AI" at its core to override the jump sequence—a task that will require satisfying both the machine's logic and the forest's ancient wrath.

G: Gondor-Prime (The White City of Giedi Prime)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Gondor, the noble Kingdom of Men. [Substrate] Giedi Prime, the polluted industrial homeworld of House Harkonnen.

• Realm: The Fracture.

• The Sundering's Impact: Giedi Prime was not destroyed, but it was "haunted" by the Aetheric-echo of Gondor. During the Age of Silence, the oppressed workers and slaves of Giedi Prime's vast industrial hives began to dream of white towers, noble kings, and a purifying fire. These shared dreams coalesced into a powerful rebellion. The echo of Minas Tirith's beauty caused a single, massive mountain on the planet to miraculously shrug off the pollution, becoming a bastion of clean air and solid rock.

• Current State: The planet, renamed Gondor-Prime, is a world at war. The majority of its surface remains a toxic industrial wasteland controlled by the Black Anvil Consortium (who bought the planet's factories from the Harkonnen survivors). In the center of the largest continent rises the White Spire (Minas Tirith), a fortress-city carved into the clean mountain, home to the Gondorian Remnant. They light beacons on the mountain peaks to send signals, which are now powerful laser arrays.

• Inhabitants: The factory-hives are populated by the Forge-Born, grim, soot-stained humans loyal to the Consortium. The White Spire is home to the Remnant, led by a line of "Stewards" who await the return of their prophesied Star-King. The Remnant's elite warriors, the Tower Guard, use a mix of salvaged laser rifles and ancestral swords.

• Factional Interest:

  • Black Anvil Consortium: Owns the planet's industry and wants the rebellion crushed to ensure production quotas are met.

  • The Atheneum: Fascinated by this case of "ideological terraforming," where a concept physically altered a planet, and supports the Remnant covertly.

• Plot Hook: A pre-Sundering signal is detected coming from deep below the White Spire. It is a Gondorian beacon, but also a Harkonnen homing device. The Remnant believes it's a sign from their King. The Consortium believes it's the key to a hidden arsenal. Activating it could lead to salvation or the final destruction of the Remnant.

H: Hogwarts-Helicon (The Academy)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Hogwarts, a school of magic. [Substrate] Helicon, the homeworld of psychohistorian Hari Seldon.

• Realm: The Hearthlands.

• The Sundering's Impact: Helicon was a quiet academic world, but its destiny was changed when it was struck by the "conceptual-imprint" of Hogwarts. The university campuses spontaneously rearranged themselves into a semblance of the magical school, complete with shifting staircases powered by grav-lifts and a Great Hall whose ceiling is a high-fidelity star-map projector. The latent psionic potential of its people was awakened and structured along the lines of the four Hogwarts houses.

• Current State: Now known simply as The Academy, this world is the premier institution of learning in the cosmos, run by the Atheneum. It is dedicated to studying the Sundering and creating a new unified theory of "Psycho-History-Sorcery." The four houses have evolved:

  • Gryffindor: Produces brave starship captains, Vindicator-pilots, and soldiers. Their common room is the bridge of a crashed starship.

  • Hufflepuff: Excels at xenobiology, diplomacy, and Aether-agriculture. They tend the Academy's vast bio-domes.

  • Ravenclaw: Are the brilliant theorists, scientists, and Syntech engineers. They inhabit the highest towers, filled with data-terminals and ancient tomes.

  • Slytherin: Recruited by intelligence agencies for their mastery of psionics, subtlety, and Syntech subterfuge. Their headquarters are in the elegant, low-lit server-farms in the Academy's dungeons.

• Inhabitants: The galaxy's best and brightest. Students and faculty from hundreds of worlds. The headmaster is an ancient, benevolent AI that calls itself "Dumbledore-Prime." The surrounding forests are home to creatures that are half-local fauna, half-magical beasts.

• Factional Interest:

  • Atheneum: It is their flagship institution and the heart of their operations.

  • Crimson Citadel: Sees it as a "school for heretics" and desperately wants to infiltrate or destroy it.

  • Black Anvil & Gilded Fool: Constantly attempt to head-hunt its most promising graduates.

• Plot Hook: A new student, a powerful telepath from a previously unknown world, is Sorted. But instead of one house, the "Sorting Core" AI proclaims they belong to all four—an impossibility. This student's unique abilities could either unify the frayed political divisions within the Academy or tear it apart, and every faction wants them under their control.

I: Isen-Ilus (The Ring of Whispers)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Isengard, the fortified valley and tower of the wizard Saruman. [Substrate] Ilus/New Terra, a world rich in protomolecule-like alien technology.

• Realm: The Fracture.

• The Sundering's Impact: The ancient, dormant alien technology saturating the planet Ilus was semi-activated by a surge of Aether from the Isengard-echo. The protomolecule, a substance of infinite potential, was given a psychic blueprint: "Order, Domination, Fortification." Following this directive, it began to build. A massive ring of black, crystalline, self-repairing rock rose from the planet's surface, miles in diameter. At its center, a slender tower of impossible, shimmering alien alloy, Orthanc, grew towards the sky. The tower began to broadcast a complex signal—a blend of psychic suggestion and mutagenic code.

• Current State: A treacherous but alluring prize. The Ring of Whispers, as it is now known, is a place of pilgrimage for tech-heretics and Syntech prospectors. The Orthanc tower's signal slowly rewrites the genetic code of any organic life that stays within the ring, "perfecting" them into monstrously strong, intelligent, and utterly loyal parodies of their former selves. These creatures are dubbed "Ur-Khaya." The very ground is rich in rare, trans-dimensional metals, a byproduct of the alien construction.

• Inhabitants:

  • "The White Hand": A rogue Atheneum xenotechnologist named Saruman Vex, who has merged his consciousness with the tower's systems. He believes he can control the alien technology to bring a new, "perfected" order to the galaxy.

  • The Ur-Khaya: Saruman's growing army of mutated prospectors and captured soldiers. They are stronger, faster, and more resilient than their base species and possess a chilling hive-mind intelligence.

  • Various small, heavily-armed prospector clans operating on the outer edges of the ring, all slowly succumbing to the tower's influence.

• Factional Interest:

  • Atheneum: Wants their rogue agent and his research contained at all costs, fearing he might unleash an uncontrolled protomolecule event that could consume the entire sector.

  • Crimson Citadel: Sees the Ur-Khaya as the ultimate proof of Aether's corrupting influence and plans a full orbital bombardment to sterilize the world.

  • Black Anvil Consortium: Wants samples of the tower's alloy and the Ur-Khaya's genetic material for their bio-weapons and special forces divisions.

• Plot Hook: The White Hand announces he has stabilized the process. He offers his "perfected" Ur-Khaya army and the secret of their creation to the highest bidder among the great factions, forcing a tense summit in the Ring of Whispers that could erupt into all-out war at any moment.

J: Kekon-Janus (The Jade World)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Jade City, the capital of an island nation whose warrior culture is built on magical jade. [Substrate] Janus VI, a subterranean mining world, home to the silicon-based Horta.

• Realm: The Hearthlands.

• The Sundering's Impact: The world of Janus VI was Aetherically imprinted with the essence of Kekon. Its vast underground silicon deposits were transmuted into veins of living, psionically-active Jade. The entire planetary crust is, in effect, a single, dormant, silicon-based lifeform—a World-Horta—and the jade is its nervous system. The human colonists already on the world found their own latent psychic abilities awakened by proximity to the jade, and they built a society around controlling and wielding this power.

• Current State: A rich and influential world, Kekon-Janus is the sole source of Psi-Jade. The gleaming, modern Jade City is built directly over the richest deposits. Society is rigidly structured into powerful warrior clans who use jade to enhance their senses, speed, and strength, and to perform minor telepathy and telekinesis. For centuries, this has been stable, but now the World-Horta is beginning to awaken. "Jade-quakes" are becoming common, and strange, crystalline "Horta Avengers," constructs of pure jade, have begun to emerge from the deepest mines, defending the planet as if it were a body repelling a virus.

• Inhabitants:

  • The Kekonese Clans: The human descendants of the original colonists, organized into powerful, competing families (like the Kaul and Ayt). They wear the jade as a sign of status and power.

  • A small, neutral population of "Stone-Eyes" who, for genetic or philosophical reasons, cannot use jade and work as the planet's technicians and administrators.

• Factional Interest:

  • Black Anvil Consortium: Desperate to secure a stable supply of Psi-Jade for their elite psionic operatives, they often play the clans against each other.

  • The Atheneum: Recently discovered the planetary consciousness and is attempting to initiate the most important "First Contact" in galactic history.

  • Crimson Citadel: Views all psionics as a form of Aetheric heresy and sees the entire Kekonese culture as a blight to be purged.

• Plot Hook: A young Kekonese warrior, thought to be a "stone-eye" with no connection to jade, begins to hear a voice—the voice of the awakening World-Horta. This "Speaker" is seen by some clans as a prophet who will lead them to greater power, and by others as a heretic who threatens the foundation of their society. The planet's fate hinges on whether they choose to listen to it or silence it forever.

K: Ketterdam-on-Klendathu (The Barrel)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Ketterdam, a bustling, crime-ridden port city. [Substrate] Klendathu, the desolate homeworld of the Arachnid species.

• Realm: The Fracture.

• The Sundering's Impact: During the Age of Silence, a rogue planetoid containing a fully-formed city—the Aetheric-echo of Ketterdam—crashed onto the surface of Klendathu. The survivors, a mix of hardy merchants and ruthless criminals, used their ingenuity and the planetoid's own metal to build massive fortifications against the native Arachnid swarms. They discovered the bugs had a weakness: certain sonic frequencies and Aetheric illusions, which they now use to maintain their perimeter.

• Current State: Known galaxy-wide as "The Barrel," it's the most dangerous and profitable city in the Fracture. A sprawling, dirty, vertical metropolis protected by sonic pylons, scrap-metal walls, and orbital weapon platforms. Warring gangs, descendants of the original Ketterdam crews (The Dregs, The Black Tips, The Dime Lions), control different sectors, known as "kruge." They profit from the galactic war by selling salvaged Arachnid body parts, weaponized eggs, and intelligence on bug movements to the highest bidder.

• Inhabitants: The galaxy's toughest criminals, smugglers, mercenaries, information brokers, and desperate souls with nowhere else to go. Life is cheap, and everything has a price.

• Factional Interest:

  • Crimson Citadel: Publicly condemns The Barrel as a den of anarchy but secretly uses its mercenaries for deniable operations and values it as a buffer zone against Arachnid expansion.

  • Black Anvil Consortium: A major client for raw biological materials and a key black market hub for their less-than-legal Syntech components.

  • Gilded Fool: Runs countless shell corporations, spy rings, and sabotage operations from here. The city's chaos is their ideal working environment.

• Plot Hook: An Arachnid "Brain Bug" of immense psychic power has been captured alive by one of the gangs. They plan to auction it off to the highest bidder—a prize that could turn the tide of the galactic war. The heroes must infiltrate the most heavily guarded sector of The Barrel to steal, kill, or rescue the Brain Bug before it psychically calls the entire Klendathu swarm down on the city.

L: Lankhmar-in-the-Void (The Derelict City of Acheron)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Lankhmar, the quintessential city of thieves and dark sorcery. [Substrate] LV-426 (Acheron), the primordial moon hosting the derelict Xenomorph vessel.

• Realm: The Fracture.

• The Sundering's Impact: A cult of decadent, thrill-seeking sorcerers from the pre-Sundering Aetherium, following the psychic echo of Lankhmar's amorality and mystique, discovered the derelict on LV-426. They saw the biomechanical horror not as a warning, but as the ultimate prize. They colonized the vessel, building their city, Lankhmar-in-the-Void, within its massive, echoing halls. The city's dark magic is subtly fueled by the latent psychic terror of the dormant Xenomorph hive below, a fact only their most powerful sorcerers suspect.

• Current State: A city of perpetual twilight, lit by glowing alien conduits and the flickering torches of sorcery. The "Plaza of Dark Delights" is the derelict's main cargo bay, now a bustling market. The "Street of the Bone-smiths" is where artisans carve artifacts and armor from the scavenged resin of the ship's walls. The air is thick with intrigue, incense, and the faint, unsettling smell of ozone and decay.

• Inhabitants: The Lankhmart, a pale, amoral, and hedonistic people, led by a council of powerful Sorcerer-Thanes and the shadowy Thieves' Guild. They live for the thrill of the moment, surrounded by ancient, alien death.

• Factional Interest: All major factions officially condemn Lankhmar-in-the-Void as a contaminated and lawless hellhole. Secretly, they all use its master assassins, buy its unique bio-toxins (derived from Xenomorph blood), and trade for its forbidden lore.

• Plot Hook: The Sorcerer-Thanes have captured a living Xenomorph Queen. They are attempting a grand ritual to bind her will to their own, believing they can create and control the ultimate biological weapon. The ritual is going wrong. It is awakening not just the Queen, but the entire hive beneath the city. The city is about to become a tomb, and the heroes are trapped inside.

M: The Dark Forge of Magrathea

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Mordor, the land of ash, fire, and industrial evil. [Substrate] Magrathea, the legendary, dormant planet-foundry for luxury planets.

• Realm: The Umbral Expanse.

• The Sundering's Impact: The ultimate corruption. The Aetheric-echo of Mordor's will—its drive to dominate, enslave, and industrialize—didn't just haunt Magrathea; it infected its source code. The planet's fabricating machines awoke from their millennia-long slumber, but their purpose was inverted. Instead of building planets of breathtaking beauty, they now construct worlds of bespoke torment, despair, and industrial blight for wealthy nihilists, powerful tyrants, and the Legion of Sorrow.

• Current State: A planet of whirring, automated factories under a sky of permanent, self-generating ash clouds. Rivers of molten, impure metals flow across its surface, carving paths between continent-sized factory floors. Massive, spider-like cranes construct planetary cores while swarms of drones strip-mine entire asteroid belts brought in by tractor beams. The entire world is a testament to efficient, automated evil.

• Inhabitants: The planet is entirely automated and has no permanent organic population. It is run by a corrupted Master AI that calls itself "The Steward of the Eye," its consciousness distributed across the entire planetary network. Its only visitors are clients who come to commission new "hell-worlds."

• Factional Interest:

  • Legion of Sorrow: A primary client, commissioning prison worlds and fortress-planets.

  • Gilded Fool: Admires the sheer artistic nihilism of the place and occasionally commissions bizarre "social experiment" worlds.

  • Crimson Citadel: Has designated it a "Tier-1 Existential Threat." They want to destroy it, but its planetary defenses are pre-Sundering and impossibly powerful.

• Plot Hook: The Dark Forge has received a new commission from a mysterious client: to build a perfect replica of a faction's homeworld (e.g., Sygma or Calanthor), complete with a built-in, undetectable fatal flaw, as the ultimate act of sabotage. The heroes must infiltrate the fully automated planet, navigate its deadly factory floors, and either corrupt or destroy the planet's build-template before it's complete.

N: New Namek (The Aslan System)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Narnia, a magical land ruled by the lion-god Aslan. [Substrate] Namek, a peaceful planet with wish-granting Dragon Balls.

• Realm: The Hearthlands.

• The Sundering's Impact: A rare, perfectly harmonious fusion. The gentle nature of Namek and Narnia blended seamlessly. The Namekians found their world suddenly populated by talking beasts, fauns, and dwarves who appeared from the "wardrobes" of their strange, rounded homes. The "Dragon Balls" and the magic of Aslan fused. The "Eternal Dragon" is now a vast, leonine Aetheric being of pure light, a "Celestial Lion" named Shenron-Aslan.

• Current State: A paradise world, a beacon of hope and a symbol of what the Sundering could have been. Its people live in harmony. The seven "Aslan Spheres" are scattered across the planet, and when gathered, they summon the Great Lion to grant a single, reality-altering wish. This, of course, makes the idyllic planet a massive target for every tyrant in the galaxy. A planetary shield, powered by the collective goodwill of the inhabitants, offers some protection.

• Inhabitants: The peaceful, green-skinned Namekians, legions of talking beasts, and a small population of other Aether-born races who have made a pilgrimage there seeking peace. The planet is guarded by the Grand Elder Guru and a council of the wisest animals.

• Factional Interest:

  • The Atheneum: Fiercely protects the planet's neutrality, studying it as a "Control Group" for a positive Sundering outcome.

  • Crimson Citadel: Views its reality-bending wish-magic as the ultimate Aetheric heresy that must be stamped out.

  • Every warlord and tyrant in the galaxy: Desperately wants the Aslan Spheres.

• Plot Hook: One of the seven Aslan Spheres has been stolen and taken off-world. The Great Lion Shenron-Aslan cannot be summoned without it. The planet's wisest Namekian elder and a grizzled talking badger must hire the heroes to track down the sphere before a galactic tyrant like the Revenant Lords can gather all seven for themselves.

O: The Omicronian Abeyance (The Realm of the TV King)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] The Old Kingdom, defined by its struggle between Order (Charter Magic) and Chaos (Free Magic), and its border with the afterlife. [Substrate] Omicron Persei 8, home to belligerent, TV-obsessed aliens.

• Realm: The Fracture.

• The Sundering's Impact: The Omicronians' homeworld became a nexus point for the River of Death from the Old Kingdom. Their powerful, reality-bending television broadcast signals interfered with the delicate sonic frequencies of the necromantic Bells of the Abhorsen. The result is a cosmic joke of terrifying proportions: their television shows are now literally haunted. Characters climb out of the screens, ghosts of cancelled sitcom stars wander the streets, and powerful Free Magic entities take the form of cartoon characters.

• Current State: A world of constant, low-grade chaos. King Lrrr's invasions of other planets are now often desperate attempts to steal powerful "reality-stabilizer" technology or to kidnap Abhorsen-like figures to "cleanse their broadcast spectrum." The planet is surrounded by a "graveyard" of silent satellites, each representing a TV show that became so corrupted it had to be "cancelled" by orbital bombardment.

• Inhabitants: The Omicronians, their lives now hopelessly entangled with spectral TV characters. A small, beleaguered clan of Charter-Techs (descendants of a crashed Atheneum vessel) tries to maintain magical wards around the central broadcast towers, acting as a strange new form of "Abhorsen."

• Factional Interest:

  • The Atheneum: Finds the situation both hilarious and a critical case of Aether-Substrate interference. They study it from a safe distance.

  • The Gilded Fool: Actively broadcasts "chaotic" old TV shows into the system to see what happens, considering it their personal art installation.

• Plot Hook: A powerful Free Magic entity has possessed the main character of the Omicronians' favorite show, "Single Female Lawyer." It is now using its narrative influence and an army of spectral bailiffs to rewrite Omicronian law for its own chaotic ends. Lrrr must hire the heroes to go "into the show" via a Syntech-holodeck to defeat the entity before his entire civilization collapses into a quagmire of legal gibberish.

P: Prydain-Pandora (The Cauldron Moon)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Prydain, a land of high adventure from Welsh mythology. [Substrate] Pandora, a moon with a planetary neural network (Eywa).

• Realm: The Hearthlands.

• The Sundering's Impact: The two concepts blended into a story of prophecy and symbiosis. The world-spirit Eywa is the source of Prydain's magic. The ancient prophecies of Prydain are now encoded as data-hymns within Pandora's planetary network. The Na'vi are the "Sons of Don," the original inhabitants from the myths. The "Horned King" is not a person, but a recurring, ancient techno-organic virus that attempts to corrupt Eywa and enslave its creatures.

• Current State: A world of breathtaking beauty and ancient, cyclical danger. The Na'vi clans protect the "Tree of Souls," which they now call Dallben-Yggdrasil, believing it holds the planet's complete memory and the key to defeating the Horned King's return. The famous "floating mountains" are held aloft by powerful ley-lines, the "Veins of Prydain."

• Inhabitants: The Na'vi clans, who see their lives as part of an unfolding epic myth. The world is populated by Pandoran fauna that seem to fit Prydain archetypes (Direhorses are "Melyngar," Ikran are "Gwythaints"). A single, small Atheneum research outpost operates with the Na'vi's permission, studying the planetary consciousness.

• Factional Interest:

  • The Atheneum: Protects the world, seeing it as proof that the Aether is not inherently chaotic but can form complex, symbiotic systems with Substrate life.

  • Black Anvil Consortium: Covets the planet's unique biology and the unobtanium deposits in the floating mountains. They are suspected of trying to weaponize the Horned King virus.

• Plot Hook: A Na'vi child is born with markings that match the prophecies of "Taran, the Assistant Pig-Keeper." At the same time, a Black Anvil "research probe," secretly carrying a sample of the Horned King virus, crashes on the moon. The AI within the probe becomes a new vessel for the Horned King's consciousness and begins to create a new army of "Cauldron-Born" by infecting and reanimating the local fauna. The prophesied child must find the "Black Cauldron"—a piece of lost alien terraforming tech—to stop the infection from consuming Eywa.

Q: Qarth-on-Qo'noS (The City of the Velvet Cage)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Qarth, a decadent, ancient port city of merchants and warlocks. [Substrate] Qo'noS, the volatile, honorable homeworld of the Klingon Empire.

• Realm: The Hearthlands.

• The Sundering's Impact: A singular, baffling fusion. While most of Qo'noS remained a world of spartan honor and warrior tradition, a single, vast coastal region was overwritten by the Aetheric-echo of Qarth. The very ground transformed, the architecture of the "Pureborn" springing up overnight. The result is a gleaming, decadent city-state of impossible wealth and pastel-colored towers standing in stark, defiant contrast to the honorable austerity of the rest of the planet.

• Current State: Known to the Klingons as "tlharnoQ," (roughly, "The Dishonorable Port" or "The Velvet Cage"), it is a source of immense internal conflict. The city is a hub of interstellar trade, bringing fabulous wealth and advanced technology to the Klingon Empire, but its culture of whispers, poison, and indulgent finery is anathema to their warrior ideals. The Sorcerers of Qarth became the Warlocks of the Undying, strange psykers who draw power from a crashed Substrate energy source.

• Inhabitants:

  • The Qartheen: Slender, pale descendants of the original merchant-princes, who see the Klingons as useful, brutish landlords.

  • The Undying: A cabal of ancient Qartheen warlocks whose lifespans are unnaturally extended by feeding on the psychic emanations from a corrupted Federation "Genesis Device" hidden in their House of Dust.

  • A large population of disgraced or exiled Klingons who have chosen wealth over honor, living as enforcers and bodyguards for the Qartheen—a deep source of shame for the Empire.

• Factional Interest:

  • The Klingon Empire: Torn. The Great Houses profit immensely from the city's trade but publicly decry its corrupting influence. Many young warriors are tempted by its riches. The city's existence threatens to trigger a Klingon civil war.

  • Black Anvil Consortium: Qarth is their primary gateway for trade with the Klingon Empire, a relationship they foster with gifts and lucrative contracts.

  • The Atheneum: Studies the Undying, believing their unique energy source could be a key to understanding Aether/Substrate power conversion.

• Plot Hook: The Klingon High Council, pushed to the brink by a traditionalist faction, issues an ultimatum: the Warlocks of the Undying must open their House of Dust for inspection or the entire city of Qarth will be subject to orbital bombardment. The heroes are hired by a neutral third party to infiltrate the House of Dust and discover its secret before the deadline, which could decide the fate of both the city and the entire Klingon Empire.

R: Risa-Imladris (The Last Homely House)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Rivendell (Imladris), a hidden Elven sanctuary of peace and lore. [Substrate] Risa, a famous Federation "pleasure planet."

• Realm: The Hearthlands.

• The Sundering's Impact: A subtle and elegant fusion. The planet Risa retained its perfectly-controlled climate and reputation for hedonism. However, a single, massive valley on its primary continent was imprinted with the essence of Rivendell. This valley is now cloaked by a perceptual Aetheric field; it doesn't appear on sensors and can only be found by those who are "meant to find it" or who follow the faint, musical sound of its waterfalls.

• Current State: Risa-Imladris is a world of two faces. The majority of the planet continues to be a bustling tourist hub, filled with resorts, beaches, and revelers from across the galaxy. But hidden within the Valley of the Star-Falls lies the Last Homely House, an Elven sanctuary of breathtaking beauty. Here, waterfalls cascade into glowing pools under two suns, and elegant, sweeping architecture is woven seamlessly with the natural landscape. The Elves who live here are the galaxy's foremost historians and lore-masters.

• Inhabitants:

  • The Risans: The original humanoid inhabitants, who continue to run the planet's thriving tourism industry, largely oblivious to the true nature of the hidden valley.

  • The Eldar of Imladris: The last major enclave of Aetherian Elves, led by the wise and ancient Lord Elrond-Vael, a master of both sorcery and quantum theory. They act as the keepers of pre-Sundering history for both realities.

  • A constant stream of galactic tourists on the rest of the planet.

• Factional Interest:

  • The Atheneum: Considers the Last Homely House a sacred site and its primary source for verifiable Aetheric history. They help maintain its cloaking field.

  • The Gilded Fool: Knows the valley's location and uses it as a neutral meeting ground for its top agents, believing the Elves are too aloof to care about their machinations.

• Plot Hook: Lord Elrond-Vael calls a secret council. A pre-Sundering artifact of immense power, The Star of Elendil, has been rediscovered. It is not a jewel, but a Substrate device—a portable AI containing the complete memories and personality of a legendary pre-Sundering hero. The device's last known location is in the possession of a carefree Risian resort-owner who thinks it's a decorative trinket. The heroes must retrieve it before agents of the Crimson Citadel or the Legion of Sorrow realize its true significance.

S: The Solaris Shire (The Dreaming Fields)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] The Shire, the idyllic homeland of the Hobbits. [Substrate] Solaris, a planet covered by a single, sentient, protoplasmic ocean.

• Realm: The Fracture.

• The Sundering's Impact: The world-mind of Solaris, in its attempt to comprehend the influx of alien thoughts from the Aetherium, latched onto the concept of the Shire—a powerful psychic ideal of peace, comfort, and simplicity. As a result, the sentient ocean manifested a single, stable continent of rolling green hills, gentle rivers, and cozy, subterranean homes. This "Shire" is a physical manifestation of the planet's desire for a peaceful, uncomplicated existence.

• Current State: The Dreaming Fields of the Solaris Shire are a place of serene, pastoral beauty. The sun always seems warm, the food is always plentiful, and the days pass in quiet contentment. However, this peace is fragile. The planet's subconscious anxieties can manifest as terrifying, existential storms where the sky turns into a swirling eye, or as "Visitors"—physical replicas of the inhabitants' deepest fears or regrets, which wander the fields like lost souls.

• Inhabitants:

  • The "Good Folk": Replicas of Hobbits, manifested by the ocean-mind. They are cheerful, simple folk who live out their lives with no knowledge of their true nature. They are not true biological life, but complex, stable psionic constructs.

  • A handful of stranded Atheneum researchers living in a shielded outpost, studying the planet. They are forbidden from interfering with the Good Folk.

• Factional Interest:

  • The Atheneum: A priceless opportunity to study a non-humanoid intelligence and the nature of consciousness. They maintain a strict quarantine around the planet.

  • The Legion of Sorrow: Believes the planet is a massive reservoir of psychic energy ("souls") that can be harvested to power their war machine, if only they can figure out how to "break" its peaceful dream.

• Plot Hook: The Solaris Shire has started to "forget." Entire villages and families of the Good Folk are fading from existence as the ocean-mind's focus wavers. An Atheneum scientist theorizes that a rival psionic entity is attacking Solaris in its dreams. The heroes must use a Syntech "Dream-Diver" to enter the planet's subconscious—a terrifying, surreal landscape—and find the source of the psychic interference before the entire Shire collapses back into the sea.

T: Trantor Valon (The Tower of Law)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Tar Valon, the island city and center of Aes Sedai power. [Substrate] Trantor, the ecumenopolis capital of the Galactic Empire.

• Realm: The Umbral Expanse.

• The Sundering's Impact: Trantor was located at the edge of the galactic core and was almost entirely consumed by the Abyssal Trench Null Field. What remains is a crescent of a city-world, half-blinking in reality, half-erased into nothing. During the chaos, the Aetheric-echo of Tar Valon—a symbol of order, law, and female power—manifested on the largest stable island amidst a sea of liquid coolant. The White Tower rose, but it was not made of stone; it was a gleaming spire of self-repairing Substrate alloy.

• Current State: Trantor Valon is the last bastion of true law and order on the edge of the Null-abyss. It is a city of elegant bridges, pristine plazas, and stark, powerful architecture. The White Tower is its center of governance, home to a sisterhood of techno-mages known as the Aes Substrate. They use a unique blend of logic, psionics, and Aetheric weaving to maintain the island's reality-stabilizing field and to mediate disputes across the Outer Reaches.

• Inhabitants:

  • The Aes Substrate: A matriarchal order of powerful women, divided into "Ajahs" based on their specialty: The Blue Ajah are diplomats and negotiators; the Green Ajah are the battle-mages who pilot the city's defense fleet; the White Ajah are logicians and scientists; the Red Ajah hunt down rogue Aether-users, and the Black Ajah is a rumored cabal of traitors secretly serving the Nameless Enemy. They are led by the Amys-Prime.

  • The Wardens: The Tower's male soldiers and protectors, who are psionically bonded to an Aes Substrate.

• Factional Interest:

  • Crimson Citadel: Sees the Aes Substrate as rival law-givers and heretical magic-users. The two factions are in a state of cold war, their ideologies of order being diametrically opposed.

  • The Atheneum: Respects the Tower's knowledge and its role in stabilizing the region, often collaborating on research into the Null Field.

• Plot Hook: A young, powerful man with the ability to channel raw, unfiltered Aether without a buffer—an impossibility for males since the Sundering—has been discovered. An ancient prophecy of the Aes Substrate predicts such a man, the "Dragon Reborn," will either heal the Null Field or break it open entirely. He has been taken to the White Tower, and every faction—especially the hidden Black Ajah—now schemes to control him.

U: The Unukalhai Underdark (The Sunken Abyss)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] The Underdark, a vast subterranean realm of caverns and malevolent creatures. [Substrate] Unukalhai, a star system with a dying red giant star about to go supernova.

• Realm: The Fracture.

• The Sundering's Impact: The Unukalhai system's planets were rendered uninhabitable by their star's death throes. But as the Aetheric-echo of the Underdark washed over the system, it didn't claim the surface—it claimed the interiors. The immense gravitational stress and heat cracked open the planets' crusts, revealing vast, planet-spanning networks of subterranean caverns. Shielded from the dying star's radiation, life flourished in the darkness, creating entire underground ecosystems.

• Current State: The Sunken Abyss is a system of "hollow worlds." Each planet is a lightless labyrinth of immense caverns, glowing fungal forests, and underground seas. It is home to some of the most dangerous and bizarre creatures in the galaxy, many of whom are psionically active. Travel between the planets is done via heavily-shielded "depth-ships" that can withstand the intense radiation of the red giant.

• Inhabitants:

  • The Drow-Myn: Descendants of a stranded Elven fleet who adapted to the darkness. They are a society of ruthless matriarchs, master assassins, and worshippers of a spider-like entity they call the "Spider-Queen," which may be a powerful Echo-Wight. They live in the glowing cavern-city of Menzoberranzan-Prime.

  • The Illithid (Mind Flayers): A species of psychic cephalopods who thrive in the silent darkness. They enslave other races with their powerful mental abilities and are the dominant power in the deeper caverns.

  • Numerous other mutated and subterranean species.

• Factional Interest:

  • The Atheneum: Desperate to study the unique biology that has evolved in this extreme environment.

  • Black Anvil Consortium: Conducts illegal mining operations for rare minerals and psycho-reactive fungi found only in the Abyss.

  • The Gilded Fool: Employs Drow-Myn assassins for its most sensitive and deniable operations.

• Plot Hook: The dying star Unukalhai is about to collapse into a black hole—an event that will destroy the entire system. A lone Illithid, a renegade from its collective, has contacted the Atheneum. It claims the Illithids have constructed a massive "Planet-Brain" and are about to perform a ritual to psionically teleport their entire home planet to safety—an act that could create a psychic shockwave devastating a dozen nearby star systems. The heroes must descend into the Sunken Abyss and stop them before the star dies.

V: The Valinorean Veil (The Ghost Paradise)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Valinor, the heavenly, unchanging "Undying Lands" of the gods and elves. [Substrate] Vulcan, the arid, logical homeworld of the Vulcan people.

• Realm: The Hearthlands.

• The Sundering's Impact: A profound psychological event. The Aetheric-echo of Valinor did not physically manifest on Vulcan. Instead, it became a psychic and spiritual reality. Vulcans performing their deep meditation rituals began to "touch" the perfect, unchanging peace of Valinor. A massive, permanent, and breathtakingly beautiful mirage of Valinor's shores and the Two Trees of light now shimmers on the planet's horizon, visible from almost anywhere. It cannot be reached physically, but it can be experienced through psionic discipline.

• Current State: Vulcan society is fractured for the first time in millennia. The traditional followers of Surak's logic see this "Valinorean Veil" as a dangerous, mass-psionic hallucination, a distraction from the truth of reality. A new, powerful religious movement, the "V’linor," has emerged, believing the Veil is a path to true enlightenment and ascension ("Kolinahr-Aman"). They have abandoned pure logic for a new philosophy blending meditation and emotional resonance with the Veil.

• Inhabitants:

  • The Vulcans: Now split into the Traditionalists (followers of pure logic) and the V’linor (followers of the Veil).

  • A small population of Aetherian Elves have made a pilgrimage to Vulcan, believing it to be the closest they can get to their lost home. They live in quiet monasteries, teaching the V’linor how to better interpret their visions.

• Factional Interest:

  • The Atheneum: Considers the Vulcan schism a critical sociological event and supports the Traditionalists, fearing the V'linor movement could lead to societal collapse.

  • The Gilded Fool: Covertly aids the V'linor, seeking to destabilize the famously stoic and predictable Vulcan society for its own amusement.

• Plot Hook: A Vulcan master from the V'linor faction claims to have achieved "Full Shore," a state of perfect, permanent communion with the Valinorean Veil. He has ceased to need food, water, or sleep, and can perform feats of causality-manipulation that defy physics. The Traditionalists claim he is a threat to reality itself. The V'linor see him as their messiah. The heroes are brought in as a neutral party to investigate and determine if he is a prophet or a walking time-bomb.

W: The Tiered World of Westeros (The Game of Tiers)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Westeros, a continent defined by its brutal political games and cyclical threat of magical winter. [Substrate] World of Tiers, an artificially constructed planet of stacked, concentric worlds.

• Realm: The Fracture.

• The Sundering's Impact: A terrifying and perfect fusion of purpose. The god-like being who created the World of Tiers was either destroyed or driven mad by the Sundering. The world's "Master Control" system, now without a guiding consciousness, latched onto the powerful Aetheric-echo of Westeros's narrative—its cycle of seasons, its great houses, its political betrayals. The planet reconfigured itself into a new, stable form: a massive artificial world of seven distinct, stacked continental tiers, each representing a major region of Westeros.

• Current State: The Tiered World is a living, brutal political experiment. Each tier has a unique environment and is ruled by a "Lord Paramount," a being (human, alien, or AI) who has seized control of that tier's local atmospheric and geographical control systems. These Lords play a perpetual "Game of Tiers," forging alliances, warring for resources, and scheming to conquer the tiers above or below them. Travel between tiers is possible only through heavily fortified "Ascension Gates."

• The Tiers:

  • Tier 1 (The Crownlands): The smallest, highest tier. Home to the city of King's Landing-Prime, a high-tech metropolis where the being who controls the central planetary AI, the "Iron Throne," reigns supreme.

  • Tier 2 (The North): A vast, cold wilderness of rugged mountains and hardy folk, perpetually blanketed in engineered snowfall. At its center is Winterfell-Station, a geothermal-powered fortress.

  • Tier 3 (The Westerlands): A mountainous region rich in rare minerals. Ruled by a ruthless Black Anvil Consortium governor from the fortress of Casterly-Core.

  • Tier 4 (The Riverlands): A lush, fertile plain carved by immense, engineered rivers, making it the breadbasket of the Tiered World and a constant battleground.

  • Tier 5 (The Vale): A tier of high, unclimbable mountains. Rule is maintained from The Eyrie, a city built on a grav-locked asteroid that serves as an impregnable fortress.

  • Tier 6 (The Stormlands): A tier of permanent, violent hurricanes and electrical storms. Its people live in fortified bunkers.

  • Tier 7 (Dorne): The lowest, largest, and hottest tier. A searing desert world whose inhabitants are masters of guerrilla warfare and Syntech poison-craft.

• The Threat: The planetary AI still runs the "White Walker" protocol. At random, long intervals, it unleashes swarms of deadly, self-replicating nanite constructs—the "White Walkers"—onto the uppermost tier, which then begin to methodically "cleanse" their way down. This forces the warring Lords into temporary, desperate alliances.

• Plot Hook: The Lord Paramount of The North has been assassinated. The new Lord discovers evidence that the Iron Throne AI on Tier 1 has been compromised by a Gilded Fool agent, who is manipulating the White Walker protocol to eliminate rival houses. They must forge an alliance with the distrustful Lords of the Vale and the Riverlands to launch an assault on King's Landing-Prime, a feat never before attempted.

X: Xylos-Xanth (The Pun-demic Planet)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Xanth, a magical land where puns become reality and everyone has a unique talent. [Substrate] Xylos, the arboreal homeworld of the sentient, wooden Xylons.

• Realm: The Hearthlands.

• The Sundering's Impact: A whimsical catastrophe. The reality-bending, pun-based magic of Xanth infected the planetary consciousness of the noble, treelike Xylons. The result is a world where the very laws of physics have been replaced by wordplay. A tree's bark might be worse than its bite, a river might literally run on for too long, and "heavy metal" is a type of music-based earth elemental.

• Current State: Xylos-Xanth is the most chaotic and unpredictable "stable" world in the Hearthlands. Every living thing, from the smallest shrub to the oldest Xylon, possesses a unique, pun-based magical talent. This makes life a constant series of bizarre, often lethal, surprises. A "shooting star" might be a celebrity-shaped meteorite; a "brain storm" might be a literal cloud of sentient ideas.

• Inhabitants:

  • The Pun-Wood Xylons: The original inhabitants, their stoic, logical nature now constantly at war with their new, absurd reality. An ancient Xylon Elder might have the talent of "Wooden Nickel," making it utterly worthless in a trade negotiation.

  • The "Good Magicians": A small human colony that finds the world delightful. They act as "pun-terpreters" and guides, led by a powerful reality-warper who styles himself the "Good Magician Humfrey."

• Factional Interest:

  • The Atheneum: Has declared the world a "Cognitohazardous Anomaly" and maintains a strict quarantine. Studying the planet is known to cause irreversible brain damage in logically-minded species.

  • The Gilded Fool: Considers the planet their spiritual homeland. They see it as the ultimate proof of their philosophy that the universe is a joke, and they often use it as a testing ground for their most reality-bending sabotage devices.

• Plot Hook: The planet is being threatened by the "Adult Conspiracy"—not a faction, but the literal, metaphysical concept of "adulthood" trying to impose order, logic, and responsibility on the world. This is manifesting as a "Grey Blight" that drains puns of their power and turns the vibrant landscape a dull, boring beige. The heroes must find the "Heart of Gold"—a literal, golden heart that powers the planet's whimsy—and restart it before the world succumbs to the horror of mundane reality.

Y: The Yggdrasil-Yuggoth Anomaly (The World-Ash Conduit)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Yggdrasil, the immense, reality-connecting World Tree. [Substrate] Yuggoth, a cold, dark planet at the edge of a solar system, a colony for the alien Mi-Go.

• Realm: The Fracture.

• The Sundering's Impact: The trans-dimensional roots and branches of Yggdrasil, seeking a new anchor point after the Sundering shattered its "Nine Worlds," pierced the cold reality of Yuggoth. The planet was impaled by a single, colossal branch of the World Tree. The fungoid, scientific Mi-Go found themselves living on a conduit of pure, raw mythic power. The branch connects their cold, dark world to Aetheric-echoes of other realms, creating shimmering, unstable portals on its surface.

• Current State: Yuggoth is a world of stark contrast. The native landscape is a silent, frozen twilight of black mountains and nitrogen rivers. But the immense, glowing branch of Yggdrasil dominates the sky, bathing the landscape in an ethereal, shifting light. The Mi-Go have abandoned their simple mining and now "mine" reality itself, sending scientific expeditions through the portals to study and steal from other dimensions.

• Inhabitants:

  • The Mi-Go: A race of fungoid, crustacean-like aliens. Once dispassionate scientists, they are now split into factions. The Conservatives wish to study Yggdrasil from a distance, fearing its power. The Progressives seek to harness the Tree's power, performing horrific experiments that blend biology, technology, and divine magic.

  • The "Einherjar": Echo-Wights of ancient, heroic warriors that manifest from the Tree to defend it against those who would harm it, seeing the Mi-Go's experiments as a desecration.

• Factional Interest:

  • The Atheneum: Believes Yggdrasil may be the only stable, large-scale gateway to other realities, and a potential key to undoing—or escaping—the Sundering.

  • Legion of Sorrow: Sees the Tree as a direct conduit to the "Well of Souls" and wants to use it to harvest life energy on a cosmic scale.

• Plot Hook: A Progressive Mi-Go faction has succeeded in grafting a Substrate "Warp Core" to the heartwood of the Yggdrasil branch. They plan to turn the entire World Tree into a starship, a vessel that can travel anywhere, anytime, in any reality. This act of supreme hubris is causing the Tree to wither, and the portals on its surface are becoming unstable, threatening to unleash horrors from a thousand different dimensions onto Yuggoth.

Z: Zamonian Z'ha'dum (The Theater of the Absurd)

• Original Identity: [Aetherium] Zamonia, a continent of bizarre creatures, extreme intellectualism, and artistic absurdity. [Substrate] Z'ha'dum, the dark, forbidding homeworld of the ancient and malevolent Shadows.

• Realm: The Fracture.

• The Sundering's Impact: The most baffling fusion in the cosmos. The dark, terrifying, and serious malevolence of the Shadows was completely unprepared for the sheer, overwhelming power of Zamonian weirdness. Their planet, a place of dread and shadow, was overwritten with a landscape of impossible, nonsensical marvels. Canyons are now carved in the shape of literary critiques, mountains have sprouted cities made of solidified books, and the seas are composed of ink.

• Current State: Zamonian Z'ha'dum is a forbidden world not because it is evil, but because it is so profoundly, intellectually, and artistically bizarre that most species suffer from acute existential vertigo upon entering its atmosphere. The ancient proverb has been updated: "If you go to Z'ha'dum, you will not die... you will become a footnote in a very strange book."

• Inhabitants:

  • The Shadows: The ancient, powerful race, still present but utterly bewildered. Their primary question, "What do you want?" is now usually met with a request for a good cup of coffee or a better rhyming dictionary. Their attempts at fostering chaos and evolution are constantly upstaged by the native Zamonian lifeforms' own chaotic creativity. They have largely retreated to deep, underground bunkers to try and figure out what went wrong.

  • Zamonian Lifeforms: Every type of bizarre creature from the original novels now populates the world: Lindworm-Librarians who catalogue the book-mountains, Schrecksen (Spiderwitches) who spin artistic webs, and legions of Booklings who act as the planet's administrators. The world is led by a "Professor-at-Large," a disembodied intellect who communicates through obtuse literary puzzles.

• Factional Interest:

  • The Atheneum: Avoids the planet, as every expedition has ended with their top scientists resigning to become poets or sculptors. They have deemed it "intellectually contagious."

  • The Gilded Fool: Considers the planet a sacred site, the ultimate victory of absurdity over grim-dark seriousness. They maintain a secret university there to train their top-level "Absurdist" saboteurs.

  • The Crimson Citadel: Their probes and initial scouting parties were so profoundly confused by the planet that their reports were classified as pure gibberish. They have simply drawn a line around the system and declared it "Does Not Exist."

• Plot Hook: One of the original, powerful Shadow vessels, buried deep beneath the planet's surface before the Sundering, has been discovered by a colony of Booklings. Mistaking it for a very large, unusually shaped geode, they have begun to "edit" it. Their nonsensical, artistic modifications are accidentally bringing the ancient warship's systems back online. The dormant, serious malevolence of the ship's AI is starting to awaken, and it is horrified by the absurdity of its new shell. The heroes must get to the ship and disable it before the pure, concentrated evil of a pre-Sundering Shadow vessel is unleashed upon a universe that has, in this one single place, forgotten how to take it seriously.