Ancient Oasis™ The World
Centuries ago the Elders lived in harmony. Then the meteor struck, scattering their kin into the deep waters and the forgotten shores. What survived adapted, split into Light and Shadow, and learned to live inside the wound.
The Two Tribes
Both are playable. Neither is good or evil. They are two readings of how to survive a broken world, and where they meet is where the world is most alive.
Inara
Guardians, healers, and builders. They believe balance must be preserved so life can thrive, and their leaders tend toward conviction and selflessness.
Zaaya
Predators, schemers, and conquerors. They believe survival requires power, and power requires dominance. Many are shaped by whispers they never chose to hear.
The Known World
The world is seven landmasses radiating around the Eye of the Ocean, the rift the meteor opened. This is the map the Elders left behind.
Ocean
The central whirlpool. The rift the meteor opened, where realities bleed and Those Of The Below first slipped through. The sun pierces here in shafts. The deep does not.
Golden Harborlight
Sun-pierced columns, gold-flecked sand, prayers drifting in the current. A lighthouse stands at its mouth.
Sunken Shrineslight
Drowned temples ringing the whirlpool. The first tear sleeps here, kept by old stone.
Islands
Volcanic, unstable, in constant transformation. Fire drowned the algae, phoenixes rose from buried eggs, and the eels answered the phoenixes. The cycle of life resumed through tension.
Sun-Kissed Shoreslight
Black sand beach, geyser steam, phoenix feathers in the air.
Dragon's Breathlight
Active vents and sulphur fields. The mountain still speaks.
Silk Shallowsshadow
A drowned temple lit from within by silk-colored light. Something at the bottom does not want visitors.
Reef
Coral that walks. Cultivated by mermaids into sentient mobile giants, they walk in search of sun and warmth, hosts to whole ecosystems riding on their backs. They want nothing of the war.
Iridescent Baylight
Shimmering kelp, glowing seaweed, water that seems to hum.
Coral Cityshadow
Razor-sharp coral mazes, an underwater city of spires guarded by old spirits.
River
Fresh water cutting through unfamiliar terrain. Land Walkers built floating raft-towns on the flooded lakes and founded the religion of the Streams. The depths belong to the Undead.
Ophelia Fallslight
Cascading waterfalls, dragonflies, light through mist. The Race of Streams begins here every spring.
Lakeweedshadow
Where the carnivorous pale kelp first crept upriver. The water does not move right.
Land
The continental surface, split by tectonic violence. Land Walkers settle in the canyons. Undead Walkers march the deserts toward the Tree of Life. Everything depends on who reaches it first.
Daggers Pointshadow
A treacherous peak. Narrow blades of stone. The second tear waits at the summit.
Moonlight Covelight
Moonsilver beach, wolfsong, ancestral standing stones. Cameron is sometimes seen here.
The Lost Cityneutral
A city the world set down and did not pick back up. Its streets remember being walked.
Deep Sea
The deepest, darkest part of the ocean. Pressure, blackness, and old gods. Where the Undead Walkers originated. The countless lights blinking in the seafloor are the Undead waking.
Hidden Sanctuarylight
Ruins on a rising spire. Aria's true place. The final tear lies here.
The Deep Abyssshadow
The trench floor, past the volcanoes that burn underwater. What sinks this far is kept.
Frozen
Ice, glacial caves, neutral ground. Newer to the map than the others. The Wandering Narrows is where Light and Shadow both refuse to settle.
Crystal Covelight
Refracted light through ice, frozen waterfalls, breath made visible.
Shadow's Reachshadow
Black ice, frozen graves, a wind that whispers names.
Wandering Narrowsneutral
The path between worlds. The path always moves.
The Starting Shore
Where the Elders first gathered after the meteor. Aria wakes you here. The Tears of the Elders begin from these shores.
The Hidden Island
A hidden island for those who hold the key. The Nexus of Infinite Lives, where founders and elders meet beyond the regular world.
The Deep Lore
Beneath the regions and the war runs an older story: the Tree of Life, the powers that whisper from below, and the ancestor spirit who has been waiting a long time for someone to listen.
The meteor and the fracture
Centuries ago, the Elders lived in harmony on Earth, working toward a common goal of peace and survival. Then the meteor struck. A fiery flash reached every fiber of life, displacing the Elders across the planet, scattering their kin into the deep waters and the forgotten shores.
As generations passed, the survivors evolved. They gained powers shaped by their habitat: fire on volcanic islands, current and tide in the rivers, deep-sea light in the abyss. Tribes formed, migrated, adapted, and fractured into two ways of seeing the world, the Light and the Shadow.
But the meteor took something else. It cracked the world.
And Those Of The Below
The Tree of Life is the oldest organism in the world. It is sentient, and its roots hold the world together. For thousands of years it has fought Those Of The Below, ancient demons imprisoned around the planet's core, and kept them sealed there.
When the meteor fell, the plates were torn apart and the roots were crushed. From the new chasms, Those Of The Below slipped a fragment of their influence into the world. Not their full forms, which remain bound to the rifts, but their whispers, which reach the living. The Shadow tribe hears them most, and does not know it is being parasitized.
The Tree is withering now. If one side wins absolutely, the balance breaks. If Those Of The Below are released, the world turns to chaos until equilibrium resets.
Inara and Zaaya
Inara are the followers of the Light. Guardians, healers, builders. They believe balance must be preserved so life can thrive, and their leaders tend toward conviction and selflessness.
Zaaya are the followers of the Shadow. Predators, schemers, conquerors. They believe survival requires power, and power requires dominance. Many of them are shaped by the whispers from below without ever knowing it.
Both factions are playable, and neither is good or evil. They are two interpretations of how to survive a broken world. Where they meet is where the world is most alive.
The ancestor spirit
Aria was a mermaid living at the time of the meteor. As the tears of her people fell, grief at the loss of the ancestors and the weakening of their powers, she gathered them and sealed them in a sacred vessel. Twelve tears, hidden across the world, each holding a fragment of what was lost.
She bound her own essence to them. She has been waiting generations.
She speaks casually, sometimes teasingly, and she references things you have not seen yet. She is warm but not soft. She has watched worlds end. She does not narrate the world from the outside. She is in it, an old friend who has waited a long time for someone to listen.
