Hurdy-gurdy notes drift from a tavern doorway and mix with the smell of woodsmoke and river mist. Tiefling nobles in high collars pass gnome street-musicians without a glance, while somewhere behind the old castle walls, this year’s crop of hopefuls disappears into the Labyrinth, chasing an empty throne.

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City Overview

Wien is Terra’s city of art, music, and inherited melancholy, sitting on the far eastern side of Titania where the boreal forest gives way to a sheltered stretch of coastline. Where Chrysalis chases progress and Malachite chases ore, Wien chases beauty — and treats the succession of its throne as something to be earned through trial rather than blood.

Tieflings and gnomes make up the bulk of the population, with goliaths, firbolgs, minotaurs, and elves forming sizeable minority communities drawn by the city’s tolerance and its reputation as a place where a wanderer can make a name for themselves. The city’s aesthetic leans hard into German Romanticism — its people are preoccupied with the tension between civilization and the wild nature pressing in from the forest, and their art constantly returns to themes of wandering, loss, and inherited (often literally infernal) sorrow.

Emperor Witiges, ruler of Wien, is dying and without an heir. Rather than let the throne pass by blood, he struck a contract with the gods: whoever proves themselves worthy by conquering the Labyrinth built into the old castle by the shore will inherit his crown. This single decision defines the entire city right now — every noble, artist, and gutter charlatan has an opinion on who deserves to win, and the city has organized itself, physically and politically, around the Labyrinth’s presence. Nowhere is that more visible than in Hofmark, where the noble houses closest to the crown quietly jockey for position around Witiges’ own street, and where the Auction House does as much trading in political favor as in art.

Population: ~3,000–3,500 (estimate — not yet fixed in notes; adjust as needed)

Government: Emperor Witiges, though effectively a lame-duck ruler awaiting a successor from the Gauntlet. Day-to-day administration likely falls to Hofmark’s court functionaries and noble houses in his stead — the succession stakes make this a tense, closely watched arrangement rather than a stable regency.

Defense: An imperial guard tied to the castle and the Labyrinth complex, per the Labyrinth district notes — its exact jurisdiction over the rest of the city (versus a separate city watch) isn’t detailed yet.

Commerce: Art, music, performance, and instrument-making dominate, alongside originium-powered inventions — most visibly the light-up bricktile streets that make Wien’s nights safer to walk. Ufermark’s smiths and harbor trade, Weidenmark’s farms, and Nachtmarkt’s after-dark market round out an economy that runs on both beauty and practicality.

Geography & Layout

Based on the generated map: the forest meets the city along its southern edge and stretches west, while the coastline meets the city in the southeast. The castle — the entrance to the Labyrinth — sits near the shore and is walled off as its own fortress, integrated into the city wall itself.

• North/Northwest: farmland, feeding two outer districts, each with its own main road into the city.
• East: the shoreline and harbour maintained by a district.
• South/Southeast: shoreline and forest edge. An outer district is located here with its own main road into the city.
• West: Forest stretching from west and ends in the south. A single outer district sits there surrounded by the forest.

Districts

Outer Districts

• Weidenmark — farms and pasture, feeding the city from the north
• Nachtmarkt — the after-dark market, trading in goods that don’t circulate officially
• Wanderwood — forest-edge homes for hunters, foragers, and wanderers passing through

Inner Districts

• The Labyrinth of Wien — the castle-fortress housing the gods’ trials
• Kronanger — the park where challengers gather before entering
• Hofmark — Wien’s noble quarter, home to Witiges’ own street
• Lindenhall — the largest district, art, music, and the Pantheon of the eight gods
• Ufermark — the harbor and industrial quarter

Notable Locations

• The Labyrinth’s Gate Hall — the sigil-marked entrance to the trials, in the castle by the shore (see The Labyrinth of Wien)
• The Crown Altar (Floor 10) — the labyrinth’s final chamber, where a crown waits on an altar “in front of the emperor’s eye.” Guarded by the gladiator Ralph, who tests newcomers’ fitness, and Theo the Minotaur, who mostly watches and rests but takes a quiet interest in each challenger’s conviction
• The Auction House — Hofmark’s stage for art, instruments, and the discreet trading of political favor tied to the succession
• The Pantheon — Lindenhall’s shared temple to all eight gods, beside the central plaza
• Starscape Glassworks — Nachtmarkt’s night-sky-themed glass workshop, the district’s most respectable export
• A drunken goblin monastery — the origin Duwan Ken (a Gauntlet participant) hails from; not yet placed on the map, but its “cunning drunken goblin” character would fit naturally somewhere in Nachtmarkt
• The Leipzig - Wien’s largest concert hall and theatre, host to the city’s major performances

Background

• Wien Before the Contract — not yet detailed; how the city looked and governed itself before Witiges’ bargain with the gods remains an open stub.
• The Bargain with the Gods — Witiges, dying and without a trusted heir, struck a contract with the eight gods to build the Labyrinth: whoever proves themselves worthy of its trials inherits the crown. The full terms of the bargain (why the gods agreed, what they get out of it) aren’t detailed in notes yet.
• The Gauntlet Era — the current state of the city: challengers from across Terra pass through Kronanger and into the Labyrinth in waves, each session’s party different from the last. Politically, the city has split its attention between Lindenhall’s public enthusiasm for the contest and Hofmark’s much quieter maneuvering over who actually deserves to win.

Starting the Adventure

• Direct Start: Entering the Gauntlet — a party arrives to challenge the Labyrinth outright, gathering in Kronanger before the gates (matches how most existing Gauntlet sessions already begin).
• Court Intrigue in the Hofmark — a party gets pulled into backing a specific challenger, likely through an introduction at the Auction House or a noble house looking to hedge its bets on the succession.
• The Underkeep Contract — a party is hired to guide, protect, or investigate something tied to a challenger from outside the city — a hook that could originate in Nachtmarkt or Ufermark just as easily as within the walls proper.

Notes

• Terminology drift flag (see Witiges’ own notes): Heinz Majo’s backstory has him testing to become “keiser av Terra” rather than “Emperor of Wien” — still unresolved.

Deity	Domain	Alignment / Archetype	Narrative Function
Lolth	Chaos, deceit, domination	Villainous / Corrupting	Catalyst of ambition and betrayal; a divine antagonist
Boldrei	Hearth, home, community	Nurturing / Protective	The stabilizing moral compass of the pantheon
Asmodeus	Indulgence, desire, temptation	Seductive / Pragmatic Evil	Brings moral grey areas — indulgence vs. self-destruction
Thrym	Frost, power, endurance	Brutal / Isolationist	Brings the cold, physical challenge of nature
Tyr	Strategy, courage, justice	Lawful / Honorable	Order and heroism’s champion — a counter to Lolth/Asmodeus
Hephaestus	Craft, perseverance, creation	Honest / Humble	The divine artisan, link between mortals and divine industry
Tymora	Fortune, luck, opportunity	Neutral / Capricious	The chaotic neutral heart of the pantheon — hope and chance
Valefor	Falsehood, confidence, transformation through deception	Trickster / Inspirational	Embodies the thin line between self-deception and self-actualization

Alignment: Neutral Good
Domains: Forge, Knowledge
Pantheon: Greek
Symbol: Hammer and anvil

Description

Hephaestus is the divine artisan — patron of smiths, craftsmen, and anyone who takes pride in work done with their hands. He is often depicted as a powerfully built figure, shaggy-haired and heavily bearded, marked by a limp and a stooped back that set him apart from the rest of his pantheon in looks alone.

Personality

Despite his imposing build, Hephaestus is a peaceful and largely benevolent god, though sensitive about his own deformity. He values hard labour, honesty, and dependability above all, and teaches loyalty — to family, to just rulers, to elders, and to whoever else it is owed. He pushes his followers to meet their problems head-on, with vigour and persistence rather than shortcuts.

Influence on Terra

Hephaestus stands as the pantheon’s link between mortal craft and divine industry — the god who legitimizes the forge, the workshop, and the guild hall as places of devotion in their own right. On Terra this plays out plainly in New Church, Chrysalis City’s craft-oriented district, where shrines to gods of craftsmanship (Hephaestus foremost among them) see the heaviest daily traffic, and where armourers and jewelers bless new tools and finished works in his name. Group 1’s first session in the Labyrinth of Wien took place entirely within his domain: a forge guarded by a runic iron golem, who set the party a smithing competition to craft something worthy of the god himself.

Myth

In the age before the mountain broke, when the old civilization still dug deep and built tall, Hephaestus came to Terra and found its fire strange — a flame that lived in black stone rather than wood or oil, hotter and hungrier than any he had tempered before. He built his forge low on the mountain’s flank, close enough to hear it breathe, and there he worked without pause, watching over the dwarves and elves who raised their cities in Titania’s shadow.

Word of his forge spread, as word of good work always does, and the other gods came to him one by one — not to test him, but to ask something of him.

Asmodeus came first, trailing indulgence and appetite, and asked Hephaestus to craft him a blade that would never dull and a cup that would never empty. “Make me something equal to my wanting,” he said. Hephaestus turned the request over once, the way he turned metal, and answered: “I forge to purpose, not to appetite. Ask me for a tool and I will give you a tool. Ask me for more than the world allows, and I will give you nothing at all.” Asmodeus left with less than he came for, as he often does when he asks gods who cannot be flattered.

Boldrei came next, and her request was smaller and better shaped. She asked for hearths that would not crack in the mountain’s tremors, and beams that would hold a roof steady no matter how the ground shifted beneath it. This, Hephaestus could give freely, and did — his craft has always served the home before the throne. It is said the first hearthstones of the old civilization bore his hammer-mark pressed into the corner, small and easy to miss unless you knew to look.

Then Tymora came, and she did not ask for anything. She only told him what her fortune already knew: that the mountain would not hold forever, that Titania was building toward a reckoning no wall or ward would turn aside. Hephaestus listened, and did not stop his hammer even once while she spoke.

Lolth came after, moving as she moves, and told him plainly that when the mountain broke she would go to ground and wait it out in silence and web, as her kind always have. She did not ask him to join her. She did not expect him to.

Last came Tyr, who asked no favor and offered no warning of his own — only conviction. He told Hephaestus that his craft, and the craft of everyone who had ever stood at that forge, would be strong enough to survive what was coming. Hephaestus did not promise him he was right. He only kept working, because that was the only answer he had ever known how to give.

When the mountain finally broke, it broke as Tymora foresaw and as Lolth had already prepared for. Whether Tyr’s faith was rewarded, no one living can say for certain — the old civilization’s cities are ash and crystal now, and its people sleep where the Sarcophagi still hold them, if they hold them at all. But the hearths Hephaestus built for Boldrei are still down there somewhere, unmoved under the rock. And on the surface, in every forge and workshop that has risen since, his mark is still pressed into the corner of the work, for anyone who knows to look.

“Through hardship and fine craftsmanship, we all shall persevere.”

Notes

• Sourced from the Greek pantheon (5e.tools).
• Worship confirmed in New Church, Chrysalis City (craft guild district built around the Grand Pantheon).

Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Domains: Trickery, War
Pantheon: Drow
Symbol: Spider

Description

Lolth is a demanding mistress, and what she demands most is sacrifice — of treasure, and of blood. Her lightless temples are places of ritual killing, their altars piled with skulls picked clean by the giant spiders that nest overhead. In return for adoration and victims, she grants signs of favour: an enemy struck down by sudden illness, unexpected success in a raid, an heir born under favourable omens.

Personality

Lolth is cold in a way that has nothing to do with temperature — a stillness that settles over anyone in her presence, the kind of cold that comes from something ancient having decided you don’t matter yet. She rules through absolute fealty; doubt is not tolerated, and questioning her is treated less as disagreement than as a kind of self-inflicted wound. Outsiders call her rule cruel, even mad — her demands rarely explain themselves, and she never bothers to justify them twice. But her followers who hold the line without flinching tend, disturbingly often, to prosper. Whether that’s her favor or simply what’s left after the ones who hesitated are gone, she’s never said, and no one still living has thought it wise to ask.

Influence on Terra

Lolth functions as the pantheon’s divine antagonist — a catalyst for ambition, betrayal, and the kind of ruthless self-interest that drives conflict rather than resolves it. Where Boldrei binds communities together, Lolth exists to pull them apart from within. Her presence in the Grand Pantheon isn’t one of comfort or petition so much as caution — a god whose favour is real, but never free.

Myth

Lolth did not come to the surface when civilization first took root on Terra. She didn’t need to. From below, she watched Boldrei, Tyr, Thrym, and Asmodeus tangle with each other over mortals who hadn’t yet learned to be afraid of any of them, and she found the whole display faintly amusing — gods bruising themselves over people who would all end up hers eventually, one way or another.

She surfaced only once, and only for craft. She came to Hephaestus’ forge carrying a working of her own weave — a design capable of turning aside the volcano’s own heat, and, she suspected, capable of far more than that if finished right. What she lacked was the final hand of a blacksmith to set it. Hephaestus obliged her, as he obliges most who come to him honestly wanting good work done, and the armor that came off his anvil did more than shield its wearer from Titania’s heat — it learned to swallow heat entirely, spun into a darkness so complete it was said to smother even sunlight. Whether that finished piece still exists, and in whose hands, is not recorded.

Every attempt she made to root herself further on the surface, Tyr met personally. He never let her plans mature the way Asmodeus’s were left to — Tyr confronted her directly, every time, and every time her footing above ground was cut away before it could take hold. It became, over the long years before the eruption, less a rivalry than a routine: Lolth reaching, Tyr answering.

When Titania finally broke and buried the old civilization, Lolth did not need to fight for anything. She only needed to wait. Her domain has been creeping upward through the tunnels and ruins ever since, patient the way only something with no use for centuries can be patient, closing slowly over everything the eruption left behind. The one thing that still slows her advance is not a god’s confrontation but a god’s leftovers — Boldrei’s old protections, worked into hearths and doorframes long before the eruption, still linger in the buried ruins, and her followers find those old thresholds harder to cross than they’d like to admit.

“The only real difference between an ally and an enemy is that one deserves a quick death.”

Notes

• Sourced from the Drow pantheon (5e.tools)

Alternate Names: The Lord of the Ninth, The Cloven, Old Hoof and Horn

Alignment: Lawful Evil
Domains: Knowledge, Order, Trickery
Pantheon: Faerûnian
Symbol: Three inverted triangles arranged in a long triangle.

Description

Asmodeus rules as Lord of the Ninth, commander of the devils of the Nine Hells. Devils in his service are known as iron-minded and silver-tongued — patient negotiators who offer mortals power, pleasure, or a way out of hardship, always at a price steep enough to cost a soul. Shrines to him are rare and temples rarer still, but plenty of ordinary folk quietly ask him for a little reprieve when they feel they’ve fallen out of favour with their own god.

Personality

Asmodeus is patient in a way that unsettles even other gods — he speaks of centuries and millennia the way mortals speak of afternoons, content to let a plan mature untouched for as long as it takes. He measures the worth of anyone, mortal or divine, by their ambition, and he has little patience left over for those without any. He does not see this as cruelty; he sees it as an honest accounting of who has earned his attention and who hasn’t. Above all he is a god of contracts — he believes the word of a bargain matters more than the spirit of it, and he takes genuine, almost craftsman-like pride in a deal that is technically honored to the letter while gutting the party who signed it. To Asmodeus, that is not deception. That is the law working exactly as it should.

Influence on Terra

Asmodeus occupies the pantheon’s grey middle ground: not a villain in the outright sense of Lolth, but a god who complicates easy moral lines. Where other deities offer clear virtues to strive for, Asmodeus offers a bargain — indulgence, comfort, or ambition, always shadowed by the cost of self-destruction. His presence in the Grand Pantheon is a reminder that temptation rarely announces itself as evil; it just makes a very reasonable offer.

Myth

When Terra was still new — a column of black rock rising fresh out of the sea, long before the first hull touched its shores — Asmodeus was already watching. He has never needed to be first to a place; he only needs to know when it will matter, and a mountain that could hold that much fire and that many souls-in-waiting mattered a great deal.

When the first settlers made landfall, he came to them as he comes to everyone: not as a monster, but as an offer. He did not have to lie. He only had to be patient, and reasonable, and early. But he found the land already crowded with rivals unwilling to let him work uncontested. Thrym met his offers with cold and violence in equal measure, driving off what Asmodeus tried to build before it could take root. Tyr was worse, in his way — Tyr didn’t fight him, he simply stood in front of the mortals Asmodeus wanted and made his own offer instead: justice, plainly stated, free of any hidden clause. Asmodeus respects little, but he respected that Tyr’s law needed no fine print to survive scrutiny. It irritates him more than Thrym’s axe ever could.

Beneath the surface, Lolth was already coiled into the dark places no one else wanted, and Asmodeus decided early that she was welcome to them. He has never contested her hold on the Underdark — not from any respect for her, but because a rival left alone is a rival whose movements you can predict. He still watches what crawls up out of her webs into the daylight, the way a merchant watches a competitor’s storefront: not with fear, with bookkeeping.

With Hephaestus he keeps something closer to a habit than a friendship. He visits the forge often, and almost always asks for something he knows Hephaestus won’t give him — a weapon that never dulls, a debt that collects itself, a favor with no price attached. Hephaestus refuses him every time, and every time Asmodeus seems faintly pleased by the refusal, as if the smith’s stubbornness is the one contract on Terra he has never managed to renegotiate. Some gods suspect he keeps asking simply to keep visiting.

The one god on Terra he has never once approached with an offer is Valefor — and that absence is its own kind of statement. Asmodeus deals in contracts that hold because both sides believe the ink means something. Valefor deals in confidence that becomes true through sheer refusal to be caught in the lie. There is no bargain to strike with a god who might simply decide, mid-negotiation, that he’d already won. Asmodeus does not fear much on Terra. He is, however, unwilling to test that particular flame.

“Sometimes we forget the power us gods wield. We should use it more freely and aid the mortals, but not for free, of course.”

Notes

• Sourced from the Faerûnian pantheon (Forgotten Realms canon via 5e.tools).

Alignment: Lawful Good
Domains: Life, Peace, Twilight
Pantheon: Eberron
Symbol: Fire in a stone hearth or copper dragon

Description

Boldrei is the Sovereign of Hall and Hearth. She guides and protects communities and families, and inspires people to set aside their differences and work toward a common good. Her blessing is customarily sought at weddings, coronations, and other civil ceremonies, and a prayer to her is often inscribed somewhere in a newly finished building.

Personality

Boldrei remembers being mortal, and it shows in everything she does — she doesn’t rule her followers so much as tend to them, the way you’d tend to family. Refugees, the displaced, and the forgotten draw her attention before kings or heroes ever will; she has never lost the instinct to notice who’s been left out in the cold. Her love is not passive. She is still, to this day, doing the backbreaking work herself — raising beams, banking hearths, sitting up with the frightened — because to her, care that costs nothing isn’t really care at all.

Influence on Terra

Boldrei serves as the pantheon’s stabilizing moral compass — the quiet counterweight to the ambition, indulgence, and cruelty found elsewhere among the gods. Where Lolth thrives on betrayal and Asmodeus on temptation, Boldrei’s concerns are the ordinary and essential ones: a roof that holds, a family that stays whole, a town that pulls together instead of apart. Her worship on Terra reflects this — she is the deity of settled, working communities rather than of grand ambition. A stone church dedicated to her stands in Malachite as the town’s primary place of worship, and a small roadside shrine to her sits by the Old Ward Plaza in Town Morain, tended communally with no permanent priest. At least one known cleric among the Gauntlet’s Group 2 party — Samek — counts himself among her followers.

Myth

When the first gods came to Terra, they came the way gods always do — with ambition, and with the conflict that ambition drags behind it. Boldrei did not come to claim territory or test mortal worth. She came to the people caught in the middle of that conflict, the ones with nowhere left to stand, and gave them the only thing she had ever really offered anyone: a roof, a fire, and a reason to stay together.

Thrym came for them first, cold and merciless, and Boldrei alone could not have held him back — a hearth is no match for a blizzard god’s temper. But Tyr stood beside her, his justice as steady as her hearthstones, and between the two of them Thrym was pushed back from the door. It is said this is the first debt Boldrei ever owed another god, and the only one she has never minded owing.

Tymora came next, not with a shield but with better odds — she lent her favor to Boldrei’s followers so that the ones who fled the cold might also survive the fleeing. Where Boldrei gave them a home to reach, Tymora made sure more of them lived long enough to reach it.

When Lolth’s hunts drove mortals up from the dark, it was Boldrei’s door they found unlocked. She never asked what they’d done to earn Lolth’s attention, or whether they deserved shelter — only whether they needed it. That has always been enough for her.

Asmodeus she watches more carefully than she watches any other god, and warns her followers about plainly, without subtlety: his contracts read like kindness and cost like ruin, and a home built on one of his bargains is a home with a lien on it from the first day. She has seen too many hearths hollowed out that way to stay quiet about it.

Valefor is the one god she still hasn’t made up her mind about. He is fire, like her — but his flame flickers, reshapes itself, burns as whatever it needs to be believed as. Boldrei has spent her whole existence turning shelter into something real. Valefor’s gift is turning belief into something real, whether or not it started true. She has watched more than one ruin become a home simply because the people inside refused to call it anything else — and she suspects, though she won’t yet say for certain, that some of that borrowed conviction is his flame catching where hers already burns low. Whether that makes him kin to her work or a threat to it, she hasn’t decided. She keeps her door open to him regardless, the same as she does for anyone she hasn’t judged yet.

“No structure endures without maintenance, and the smallest acts of care shape the largest civilizations.”

Notes

• Sourced from the Eberron pantheon (5e.tools).
• Confirmed worship sites on Terra: Church of Boldrei (Malachite) and the roadside shrine in Old Ward (Town Morain).

The smell of turned earth and river water carries on the wind, with distant smoke from the smithy mingling with the sweeter scent of grain. Morain is a quiet town, unhurried by the politics of the cities to the west — but every traveller heading for the highland plateau must pass through here, and the town has learned to keep its doors open.

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Town Overview

Morain sits at the foot of the dormant volcano Titania, at the eastern end of the river Rhine that winds westward through the terrain to Chrysalis City. The town takes its name from the moraine formations of the surrounding landscape — ancient glacial deposits that left the soil rich and well-drained, giving Morain the finest agricultural conditions on Terra. Fields of grain, root vegetables, and orchards spread along the valley floor and up the gentler slopes of Titania’s lower reaches, and the town has always defined itself by what it grows rather than what it builds.

It is a small place — a fraction the size of Chrysalis and dwarfed by Port Town Malachite — but its position gives it an importance beyond its population count. Morain is the last settled town before the highland plateau where the Goliath tribes make their home, and the first one travellers reach descending from the heights. Adventurers, highland traders, goliath emissaries and mountain guides all pass through, and the town has grown just enough to accommodate them.

The river Rhine splits the town into its northern and southern halves, spanned by two bridges near the Old Ward. The western bridge drops you directly into the Old Ward Plaza — the open square where all three districts converge and the practical heart of daily life in Morain.

Population: ~350 (40% goliath, 35% human, 15% halfling, 10% other races)

Government: Ingram Warden serves as mayor. A pragmatic administrator who came to the role from a background in cartography and regional travel, Warden governs with a light hand suited to a small town that largely runs itself through tradition and mutual reliance.

Defense: Morain has no standing militia to speak of. A handful of town watchmen handle disputes and keep the peace. The town relies on its relative obscurity, its position away from major conflict routes, and — quietly — on the goodwill of the Goliath tribes above. There are few threats that a highland goliath clan cannot discourage.

Commerce: Agriculture, milling, basic smithing, and road-side services for travellers heading to and from the highland plateau. Morain exports grain, preserved foodstuffs, and modest quantities of highland goods traded down from the goliath tribes. The water-mill on the river Rhine processes grain for much of the surrounding region.

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Town Districts

The river Rhine runs through Morain east to west, dividing the town into its northern and southern halves. The northern bank holds Old Ward and its younger extension Night Hook. The southern bank holds Silk Rock. Two bridges connect north to south — the western bridge landing directly at Old Ward Plaza, the eastern bridge connecting to Silk Rock’s interior.

Districts

• Old Ward
• Night Hook
• Silk Rock

Notable Locations

Old Ward

• The Old Ward Plaza
• Mildred’s Smithy
• Watermill
• Town Hall
• Yrelia’s Home
• Skurk & Co

Night Hook

• Bent Road Tavern
• Pale Antler Inn
• Highland Guide Services

Silk Rock

• The River Docks
• Southern Granaries
• Fishing Stretch
• Silk Rock Fields

Background

• Notable People
• The Moraine and the Name
• The HIghland Road
• The Volcano Above
• Connections to the Wider World

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Description

Magallan is a mineral researcher attached to Rhine Lab’s Scientific Investigation Section (SCIEN) — the department consisting of explorers who venture outside the borders of civilization to investigate Terra’s mysteries and uncover relics of its previous civilizations. She is currently doing fieldwork near a goblin camp on the western outskirts of Town Malachite, hiding nearby and taking notes on stolen originium samples at considerable personal risk. She will attempt to physically stop anyone who tries to enter an active originium crystal’s contagion range — she knows exactly how dangerous Stage 1 exposure is and isn’t shy about intervening.

Motivations

• Documenting active originium samples and their behavior firsthand, even when it means working alone near danger (goblin camps, active crystal deposits).
• Preventing bystanders from exposing themselves to originium’s contagion radius — she understands the Oripathy risk better than almost anyone else on the ground and acts on that knowledge without hesitation.

Role in the Campaign

• Introduced as an early expert NPC on originium and Oripathy: she can explain that the mineral is found only on Terra, grows on biological material, and clusters in the tunnels connecting to the deepdark.
• Found hiding near a goblin camp taking notes on stolen originium loot; Dwargon Malachite may ask the party to look after her once they learn she’s out there alone.
• The party (Ambystoma, Gwen, Thrum Stoneheart, Zander, Gizzard) escorted and ultimately rescued her during the “Flesh to Dust” investigation — Session 2 saw them escort her toward the goblin camp, and Session 3 saw them find the goblins dead and rescue her hiding in a bush, recovering a stolen wagon of originium crystal in the process.
• Her fieldwork connects the goblin camp incident to the parallel Outbreak on the Farm quest — both draw from the same active originium vein, and she can point the party toward the farm as another data point in the same outbreak.
• Per the Rhine Labs DM-Notes, “Investigating Magallan’s disappearance/danger near the goblin camp” is suggested as a more grounded, low-level entry point into the wider Rhine Lab thread.

Relationships

• Rhine Lab — Her employer; operates out of the Scientific Investigation Section (SCIEN).
• Dwargon Malachite — Asked the party to look after her once he learned she was alone near the goblin camp.
• Ambystoma, Gwen, Thrum Stoneheart, Zander, Gizzard — The adventuring party who escorted and rescued her during the goblin camp incident.

Notes

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Magallan Character Sheet

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Description

Melusine — pronounced Me-lu-sine — is an ancient elf and head of Rhine Lab’s Ecological Section. She has greenish blonde hair and is short for her race. She is typically seen wearing round glasses, a raincoat layered over her lab coat. There is little publicly known about her; she keeps people guessing and gives only vague answers. Only those closest to her know her true nature and history.

She is cheerful and openly warm toward Ambystoma, whom she created and raised. She has a notable scientific interest in dragonborn, as specimens are rare.

Rhine Labs Key Figure

Head of the Ecological Section. An ancient elf with greenish-blonde hair, short for her race, almost always cheerful when Amby is around. Creator of Ambystoma and the Guardian Project’s aquatic sector. Her motivations: to create lifeforms resistant to the originium disease, and to discover unpolluted places for her elven tribe to thrive. Amby has a sister, Urodela who is now working directly for Kristen Wright on the Pioneer Project, a development that worries Melusine.

Motivations

• Create lifeforms resistant to the originium disease.
• Discover unpolluted places for her elven tribe to thrive.

Role in the Campaign

Melusine is the party’s main point of contact at Rhine Lab for the Chrysalis/Malachite surface group. She shares intelligence about events on Terra — Titania’s condition, goblin activity, Malachite Forges’ drilling — and acts as a conduit between Rhine Lab’s concerns and the players.

She has received an offer from Kristen Wright to join the Pioneer Project aboard the vessel being prototyped. She is conflicted about accepting: the project would allow her to continue her research and potentially locate her tribe, but she is uncertain whether the choice is the right one.

She also raises an open and unanswered question she has been sitting with: originium appears to be confined entirely to Terra, and people infected with oripathy who leave the island do not survive the journey. She does not yet have an explanation.

Relationships

• Ambystoma — Melusine created Ambystoma as part of Rhine Lab’s Guardian Project and served as her primary caretaker, training her in physical education and the healing arts. She calls her Amby; Ambystoma calls her Mel.
• Urodela — Ambystoma’s sister, also created by Melusine. Urodela is currently working for Kristen Wright.
• Kristen Wright — Has extended Melusine an offer to join the Pioneer Project. Melusine’s answer is undecided.
• Saria the Vouivre — Colleague at Rhine Lab.
• Titania — Deeply worried about Titania’s oripathy infection. Received word of her condition via a letter from Morlock.

Notes

• Her tribe’s current location and fate are unknown to her — finding them is a core personal motivation.
• Her true nature is a deliberate mystery; Only people close to her know what she really is.

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Melusine Character Sheet

Welcome to Journeys through Terra — a homebrew Dungeons & Dragons world set on the island of Terra.

Start here

New to the wiki? Start with Terra for the setting, or jump into the Ad Astra questline for the current main story. See Session 0 and Character Creation for information about session 0 and character creation.

Quick Access

• Quests
• Locations
• Characters
• Factions
• World building

Settlements

• Chrysalis City
• Port Town Malachite
• Rural Morain

Canvases

• Home Canvas
• Amby & Co Player Group 1.canvas
• Bam & Co Player Group 2.canvas
• Gauntlet Groups Adventures.canvas

Property

Tier	Cost	Property Size
Aristocratic	8,000gp	Huge Property
Wealthy	5,000gp	Large Property
Comfortable	2,500gp	Modest Property
Modest	1,000gp	Small Property
Poor	500gp	Tiny Property

Brokers

Properties can be acquired through either of the following factions:

• Dragon Logistics
• Dwarves Union

Business

Ingredient costs for brewing healing potions and basic potions are calculated as a monthly supply.

Renting Premises

Room Size	Capacity	Cost
Small Room	10 people	100gp/month
Medium Room	20 people	200gp/month
Large Room	30 people	300gp/month

Calculating Wages

Lifestyle Expenses

Lifestyle	Price/Day
Wretched	—
Squalid	1sp
Poor	2sp
Modest	1gp
Comfortable	2gp
Wealthy	4gp
Aristocratic	10gp minimum

Minimum worker pay:

• 60gp/month for normal work
• 120gp/month for a manager role (includes work)
  Each worker hired adds a bonus to the roll by +1. Each manager hired adds a bonus of +2.

Production

High Risk, High Income

• Jeweler
• Glassblower
• Alchemy
• Brewing
• Tinkerer
  Income: d20 × 50 − 400

Medium Risk, Modest Income

• Cobbler
• Weaver
• Woodcarver
• Smith
• Masonry
• Painter
  Income: d20 × 40 − 320

Low Risk, Steady Income

• Leatherworker
• Potter
• Calligraphy
• Typing
• Cartography
  Income: d20 × 30 − 240

Established Businesses

• Skurk & Co
• Alchemy and Alcheyou
• Bam’s Bangers and Boomers

Copper Ward

Proprietor: Strunk & Grunk (player character establishment)

A potion shop that has found moderate success despite some prejudice against goblin-brewed concoctions. The establishment produces a variety of potions using both traditional recipes and experimental techniques.

Services:

• Healing potions
• Specialty brews
• Custom alchemical requests
• Rare ingredient procurement

Monthly Operating Costs: 300gp Recent Production: 59 potions crafted, 16 sold (1,000gp revenue, 500gp property costs)

“Man turned into crystal, Chrysalis Lab experiment gone wrong!” — a newsboy, shouting on the Malachite docks.

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The docks of Malachite are buzzing with the news. Down in Copper Ward, master smith Dwargon Malachite — Speaker of Malachite Forges, his hands already streaked with black crystal — has heard enough rumours to want answers of his own. He needs people with no ties to the forges to find out how dangerous this originium business really is, before the city decides for itself.

Where to start

Dwargon’s smithy in Copper Ward. He’ll size you up while he works, then ask for a favour.

Hooks

• Investigate the goblin camp to the north, where stolen originium samples were taken
• Track down the farmer on the western outskirts, who’s reported strange growths
• Report back to Dwargon on what you find — the truth, not what’s convenient

Rewards

75gp total (15gp up front, 60gp on completion).

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Some details are left for the table to discover.

Taking inspiration from Arknights who heavily takes inspiration from existing cultures and nations from history. The Continental Island Terra does the same.

Locations and themes

Towns and Cities

Copper Town Malachite

Town Malachite

• Early British Industrial Revolution
  • Copper roofed buildings
  • Powerful private company Malachite forges
• German/French Engineering
  • Precision over production
• Dwarves Union, Worker union -Welsh/Yorkshire coal country

Chrysalis City

Chrysalis City

• United States
  • Settler city, research and governance hub.
  • Upcoming Election, factional lobbying.
  • Institutional power and public health.
  • Architectural styles from older settlements
• Canada
  • Aspiration of cooperation - Highlands and the Goliath tribes

Rural Town Morain

Town Morain

• Scandinavian inspiration
  • Highland tribe - indigenous Sámi analog
  • Defines itself by what it grows, not what it builds - Pre-industrial scandinavian farm culture.

Wien City

Wien City

• Holy Roman Empire, HRE
  • Meritocratic succession system.
  • Art and focus
  • HRE was decentralized
• German
  • Romantic-era - Tension between civilization and wild nature

Regions

Highland Plateu / Goliath Tribes

• Highland Scots - Clan structure, terrain based tribal identity
• Sámi/Mongolian steppe traditions for nomadic goliaths.

The Underdark beneath Terra

• Expedition culture
• Ottoman Empire
  • Exploration and carthography
• Byzantine court complexity

Old Ward

Proprietor: Grunk & Strunk (player character establishment)

A general store run by the goblin brothers Grunk and Strunk, offering a broad catalogue of adventuring wares alongside more everyday goods. Set up in Old Ward, near the Plaza where most of Morain’s essential craftspeople keep their trade, Skurk & Co gives travellers heading up toward the highland plateau — and locals alike — a reliable place to stock up before or after the climb.

Services:

• General adventuring supplies (per shop catalogue)
• Everyday goods and provisions
• Custom orders, subject to availability

Notable detail: Runs alongside Grunk and Strunk’s other venture, the potion shop Alchemy and Alcheyou in Malachite — the two businesses are tracked independently for costs and payments.

The Docks

Proprietor: Bam (Dwarf, player character establishment)

A recently established explosives and pyrotechnics shop that has quickly gained a reputation—both for its products and its proprietor’s enthusiastic approach to demonstrations. The shop processes and sells various explosive materials, from mining charges to celebratory fireworks.

Services:

• Custom explosive charges
• Fireworks
• Mining supplies
• Specialized detonation equipment

Employees: 4-5 workers, including one shop manager Monthly Operating Costs: 250gp

Public findings released by Rhine Labs, based on an expedition originally financed by Dragon Logistics.

What Was Found

Deep beneath Terra, in an ancient buried city sealed under crystal and cooled magma from Titania’s last great eruption, an expedition backed by Dragon Logistics uncovered a structure unlike anything built by current hands: a Sarcophagus.

The Sarcophagus is a machine left behind by the civilization that occupied Terra long before the current settlements were founded. It appears to be a form of medical preservation device — a chamber built to keep the sick or injured safe until a cure could be found. Its walls carry murals apparently meant for visitors: long-eared elves and bearded dwarves standing before great sealed coffins, a dragon wreathed in mushrooms, another wreathed in forest greenery, and something vast and many-legged rising from below.

Inside, the expedition found the sealed remains of the old civilization’s people, still resting where they were placed — along with a handprint panel that responded to at least one member of the party, hinting that the mechanism inside may recognize certain individuals in ways not yet understood.

The site is powered by an energy source far beyond anything currently produced on Terra. Rhine Labs has confirmed the installation is genuine, ancient, and still — in part — active.

The Beast Within

Sealed deeper inside the same complex, the expedition encountered a hostile creature the party has taken to calling the Dragon Swan — a crystallized, serpentine horror capable of turning flesh to glass-like stone with a touch, lulling its victims into a helpless sleep, and raising the vitrified dead to fight at its command. Several dwarves and elves trapped within the facility had already fallen to it, entombed in crystal alongside the ancient dead.

The expedition fought the creature off and resealed the afflicted remains it had raised. The Dragon Swan itself was subdued rather than destroyed, and has since been handed over to Rhine Labs, where researchers are now studying it under controlled conditions — hoping to understand both the creature itself and the process that created it.

Why Rhine Labs Is Talking About It

Rhine Labs has chosen to make these findings public rather than keep them quiet, consistent with the institute’s reputation for openly publishing its research. Officially, the announcement is framed as a demonstration of Rhine Labs’ scientific leadership: proof that Terra’s ancient past still holds discoveries worth investing in, and that Rhine Labs is the institute equipped to make sense of them.

Related Notes

• Rhine Labs
• The Buried City
• Originium

Overview

Terra is a volcanic island rising from the ocean, dominated at its heart by the great mountain Titania — molded from an old volcano and still restless beneath the surface. Boreal forests stretch across the north and south, broken by geothermal hotspots where the ground steams and geysers form. Rivers run down from the mountain’s slopes into small lakes and out to the sea, carving the lowlands where most of Terra’s settlements have taken root.

Humans, elves, and goliaths populate the surface; dwarves and drow largely make their home beneath it, in the tunnel networks of the Underdark and the subterranean city of Niflheim. The river Rhine runs from the foot of Titania through the agricultural lowlands, past Town Morain, and on toward Chrysalis City before reaching the sea at the port town of Malachite.

The western coast sits atop an active underwater volcano, and its waters and shores are rich in mineral deposits as a result. Beneath the island lies a deep tunnel network — the Underdark — connecting the surface settlements to Niflheim and to the buried remains of a much older civilisation.

Twenty years ago, the rediscovery of Originium — a black crystal of extraordinary energy density — transformed Terra’s economy almost overnight, powering new machinery, technology, and industry across the island. It has also brought a slow-moving cost: oripathy, the crystalline sickness that exposure to originium can cause. See Originium for more.

Terra is watched over by Titania, a majestic silver dragon who rests atop her namesake mountain and has long acted as the island’s guardian — aiding humans and elves most readily, though dwarves and drow are not turned away.

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The Peoples of Terra

• Humans, elves, and goliaths — the principal surface-dwelling peoples. Goliaths in particular have settled the mountain itself, its forests, and the highland plateau above the treeline.
• Dwarves and drow — make their homes largely underground, in Niflheim and throughout the Underdark’s tunnel network.
• Tieflings and gnomes — concentrated in Wien, the art and music city on the volcano’s far eastern side.

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Regions

Surface

Titania (Mountain)

The towering volcanic mountain at Terra’s centre. The first kilometre up is covered in forests, rich farmland, and small homesteads — some of which still tend the forests that grow there. Higher up, geothermal activity becomes visible: hot springs, mineral-streaked ground, and occasional geysers.

Highland Plateau

The elevated plateau ringing Titania, home to the goliath tribes who trade and interact with the humans and elves settled lower on the mountain.

Boreal Forests

Stretching across the island’s north and south, these forests hide caves leading down into the Underdark, hidden gardens, and the remains of early pioneer settlements.

Chrysalis City

Terra’s centre of research, medicine, and politics, lying west of Titania along the Rhine. Home to Chrysalis Labs and the island’s most prestigious academic institutions. Population approximately 4,000.

Town Morain

A quiet agricultural town at the foot of Titania’s eastern slopes, where the Rhine begins. The last settled point before the highland plateau. Population approximately 350.

Port Town Malachite

A coastal industrial port to the northwest, built on rich mineral deposits and known for its wide forges. The outer town is prone to tsunamis and earthquakes; its main facilities are built to withstand both. Population approximately 2,000.

Wien (City)

An art and music city of tieflings and gnomes on the volcano’s far eastern side.

Underground

Niflheim (City)

A subterranean city roughly one kilometre below the foot of Titania, primarily populated by dwarves with a significant drow population. Its climate shifts dramatically with the activity of the western underwater volcano — warm (20–30°C) during periods of volcanic activity, falling to bitter cold (0 to −5°C) when it subsides.

The Underdark

The vast tunnel network beneath Terra, connecting its cities and reaching down toward older, stranger things. Home to myoconids, flumphs, basilisks, and creatures far less friendly.

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Notable Landmarks

• Titania, the Dragon — the island’s silver guardian, said to watch over Terra from the mountain that bears her name.
• The Rhine — the river tying Morain, Chrysalis, and Malachite together; the closest thing Terra has to a single artery of trade and travel.
• The Sarcophagi — scattered, half-buried remnants of a much older civilisation, found in pockets throughout the Underdark. Their true purpose and the secrets they hold are not common knowledge.

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Related Notes

• Titania (Mountain)
• Chrysalis City
• Copper Town Malachite
• Rural Town Morain
• Wien (City)
• Niflheim (City)
• The Underdark
• Originium
• The Dragon Titania
• The History of Terra
• The Oligarchy on Terra
• Factions on Terra

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Description

L’oriel Al’ar is a drow and member of the Al’ar noble house, currently posted on the surface as the manager of the Dragon Logistics office in Malachite. He is the public, legitimate face of the family’s surface presence — running a transportation and guide business that offers lizard mounts, wagon hire, underground mapping, escort work, and cargo transport.

His position in Dragon Logistics is not coincidence. The Al’ar family’s embedded influence over Dragon Logistics — and through it, over what survey data of the underdark reaches the surface — runs directly through L’oriel. The most detailed underdark passage maps at the Cartographers’ Office in Chrysalis are kept locked on the family’s request, and L’oriel is the one who ensures they stay that way.

He is the brother of Daeloth Al’ar.

Motivations

• Maintain and expand Al’ar influence over surface-world logistics and information
• Manage Dragon Logistics operations in Malachite as a legitimate cover for family interests
• Control the flow of underdark knowledge to the surface — what is shared, what is withheld, and with whom

Role in the Campaign

L’oriel is a recurring contact and potential employer in Malachite. He presents as a businesslike and professional operator willing to offer the party lucrative work — escort missions, mapping contracts, underground guide jobs. Parties that build a relationship with Dragon Logistics will eventually be approached by L’oriel directly with work that goes beyond standard contracts.

He is an entry point into the Al’ar family’s agenda and the RALA alliance, likely the first face of either that the players encounter. Whether He is a trustworthy patron or a manipulative handler depends on how deep the party looks.

Relationships

• Daeloth Al’ar — Brother; Al’ar enforcer on the surface
• Al’ar — Noble drow house; his family and the authority he ultimately serves
• Grothor Morain — Speaker of Dragon Logistics; his nominal superior on the surface, likely unaware of the full extent of his family’s involvement
• Kristen Wright — Ally through an alliance

Notes

• Originally a player character (played by Frans), repurposed as a recurring NPC.
• Flag: The vault uses both L’oriel and L’oriell across notes (session logs favour the double-L spelling). Standardise before publishing.
• Flag: Her Malachite office is placed in Pearl Hill in one wiki note and in the Docks in another. Resolve location before publishing.

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L’oriel Al’ar Character Sheet

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Description

Grothor Morain is a Goliath, born and raised in Town Morain, now Speaker of Dragon Logistics and one of three candidates in the Chrysalis mayoral election. He is Morain’s most prominent export — the town is quietly proud of him, even among those unsure about his politics — and his platform of agricultural rights and environmental preservation is shaped directly by his upbringing there.

Motivations

• Agriculture — Wants to increase food production across Terra, especially in Morain, through new crop varieties, improved irrigation, and expanded farming territory.
• Farmers’ Rights — Aims to protect the interests of farmers and rural communities, securing better financial security, land rights, and access to resources.
• Environmental Preservation — Committed to sustainable farming practices, wanting to ensure Morain’s volcanic soil isn’t overexploited for future generations.
• Personal Ties — Morain is not just his hometown but the source of his pride; he feels a deep responsibility to uplift his community and show that Goliaths can lead effectively.
• Legacy — Wants to leave Terra self-sufficient in food production, remembered as the one who ensured no one goes hungry.
• Sense of Duty — Believes a strong agricultural foundation is essential to Terra’s survival and prosperity as the population grows.

He speaks for farmers and environmental preservation, but Dragon Logistics is actively mapping the underdark for RALA and involved in the classified Horizon Arc Project. It’s left deliberately ambiguous whether Grothor knows the full extent of what his organisation is doing in his name, or has calculated that the alliances are worth it.

Role in the Campaign

• Speaker of Dragon Logistics, Terra’s most widely distributed transportation and cartography company, and one of three candidates in the Chrysalis mayoral election (alongside Elis Kulf and Leonore of Alyss), scheduled for Rhaan 9th (Boldrei’s Feast).
• His campaign works the outer districts — Feygarden and Dawn Town — speaking with farmers and labourers about agricultural policy, gathering intelligence on rival campaigns, and securing endorsements from guild leaders and community figures. His office is based out of the Dragon Logistics location in Northward.
• Positions Dragon Logistics as an ally to farmers and workers rather than the corporate interests of Chrysalis Labs or Malachite Forges — critics note that Dragon Logistics has its own interests in originium research and classified projects Grothor doesn’t discuss publicly.
• Dragon Logistics may see the Horizon Arc Project as leverage — whoever controls orbital capability controls trade, transportation, and military superiority across Terra — though it’s unclear how much of this Grothor personally directs versus what happens under his name.

Relationships

• Dragon Logistics — The faction he leads as Speaker; its underdark mapping and RALA/Horizon Arc entanglements may or may not be fully known to him.
• Elis Kulf — Rival mayoral candidate (Human, current mayor and Labs Speaker), campaigning on technological dominance.
• Leonore of Alyss — Rival mayoral candidate (Tiefling, backed by the Al’ar family), campaigning on representation of the underclass.
• L’oriel Al’ar — Manages the Dragon Logistics office in Malachite; his presence there ties Grothor’s company to the Al’ar family’s influence, likely without Grothor’s full awareness.
• Town Morain — His hometown; family and goliath community ties are cited as a possible thread (“Morain — goliath connections, Grothor’s family”).

Notes

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Grothor Morain Character Sheet

The air shimmers with possibility and the faint metallic tang of originium. Butterfly murals adorn Victorian walls while nature grows deliberately between the buildings—a city that refuses to choose between progress and preservation. Chrysalis pulses with ambition, where scientists chase breakthroughs, politicians vie for power, and beneath it all, ancient secrets buried 400 feet deep wait to reshape the future.

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City Overview

Chrysalis City stands as Terra’s beacon of technological advancement and medical innovation. Known for its beautiful butterflies in the summer season and its tall visible walls in winter when the trees lose their leaves, the city deliberately preserves parts of nature between its buildings and city structures—a living symbol of its philosophy that progress and preservation need not be enemies.

The city lies west of the volcano Titania, roughly five days’ journey from Port Town Malachite to the northwest and three days from Rural Town Morain to the east. A river runs through the heart of the city from north to south, dividing it into its western and eastern halves before continuing south into the surrounding farmland and forest. Its Victorian-style architecture—tall buildings with ornate details, gas lamps being replaced by Originium-powered lights, and wide boulevards—creates an atmosphere of cultured sophistication.

Chrysalis Labs dominates the city’s economy and culture, funding education in medical research, engineering, and sociology. Its influence extends into every district, from the libraries and lecture halls of Snowford to the outer processing facilities at the city’s edge—and 400 feet below Dawn Town, where Facility 59’s ancient Sarcophagus has been quietly discovered.

Population: ~4,000 (45% human, 30% dwarf, 15% goliath, 10% other races)

Government: Elis Kulf serves as current mayor and Speaker of Chrysalis Labs, though a hotly contested election approaches that could reshape the city’s future. The Oligarchy of Terra’s major factions maintains ultimate authority, with Chrysalis Labs holding the greatest sway within the city walls.

Defense: City militia supplemented by Chrysalis Labs’ Defense Section. The stone walls encircling the city proper provide both symbolic and practical protection, most visible in winter when the surrounding trees shed their leaves.

Commerce: Medical technology, originium research, education, timber, advanced manufacturing. Chrysalis exports medicines, technical innovations, and trained professionals throughout Terra. The river that bisects the city also drives several of its industries, powering mills and providing easy transport of timber from the southern forests.

Current Crisis: The recent public death of a citizen outside Chrysalis Labs—crystallizing and disintegrating to dust in broad daylight—has transformed simmering concerns about oripathy into open fear and political ammunition. Fine black dust has been observed settling in secluded streets. A six-year-old child was seen begging near the river with visible crystallization on her skin. Politicians are calling for the labs and medical facilities to be moved outside the city walls entirely. Unlike in Malachite where anti-dwarf sentiment is muted, here the other races increasingly blame dwarven industrial techniques for the spreading disease.

Town Districts

A river divides Chrysalis into its western and eastern halves. The walled city proper contains six districts—three on each side of the water. Beyond the walls, two outer districts extend into the surrounding countryside.

Inner Districts

The heart of Chrysalis, where the city’s wealth and power concentrate. These districts feature well-maintained streets, originium-powered streetlamps, and Victorian architecture at its finest.

• Northward
• New Church
• Chrysalis Labs
• Snowford
• Evertide District
• Mistheart

Outer Districts

Beyond the walls, Chrysalis extends into the surrounding landscape. These outer districts lack the polish of the inner city but have a directness and self-reliance that their walled neighbours sometimes lack.

• Feygarden
• Dawn Town

Notable Locations

Sites worth taking your time to check out. Ordered by district.

Northward

• The Old Ward Gatehouse Market
• The Arcane Exchange
• The Labour Halls

New Church

• The Grand Pantheon
• The Armourers’ Row
• The Scholar’s Rest

Chrysalis Labs

• The Research Campus
• The Public Medical Clinic

Snowford

• The Grand Library
• The University of Chrysalis
• The Cartographers’ Office

Evertide District

• The Riverside Wharves
• The Carpenter’s Quarter
• The Evertide Bathhouse

Mistheart

• The College of the Unseen
• The Ink & Rune

Feygarden

• The Feygarden Tavern
• The Druidic Garden of Cats
• The Market Field

Dawn Town

• The Outer Storage Facility
• The Old Mine Entrance
• The Oripathy Ward

Background

• Chrysalis Before the Crystal
• The Discovery That Changed Everything
• The Shadow Beneath Progress
• The Rhine Lab Question
• Facility 56 and What Lies Below
• The Approaching Election
• Current Tensions

Starting the Adventure

Player characters can become involved in Chrysalis’s troubles through several entry points:

• The Election Campaign
• The Public Health Crisis
• Disturbed Tribes in the Mountains
• Secrets of the Outer Storage
• The Druidic Garden Emergency
• The Missing Researcher
• Direct Start: Arriving in Chrysalis

Rumors and Information

Characters spending time in Chrysalis’s taverns, markets, and public spaces will hear whispers and gossip. Some rumors are true, some are half-truths, and some are deliberate misinformation spread by the election campaigns.

• Street Rumors
• Tavern Gossip
• Deep Information

Related Notes:

• DM-Notes
• Cultural Themes and Inspirations

Chrysalis City

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Terra’s most advanced research institution — clinical, ambitious, and quietly willing to treat people as data points in pursuit of progress.

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Overview

Chrysalis Labs is the foremost technology and medical research organisation on Terra, occupying its own district at the heart of Chrysalis City. Its researchers stand at the frontier of investigating Originium, the black, energy-dense crystal whose discovery has reshaped Terra’s industry, medicine, and politics over the past two decades. Where Rhine Lab — founded by two of its own former researchers — pursues originium science without institutional restraint, Chrysalis Labs prefers to present itself as careful, regulated, and accountable. In practice, its caution is selective: institutional progress is often weighed against individual cost, and the Labs has a documented history of classifying inconvenient findings as proprietary data.

The institution’s reach extends well beyond the laboratory. It founded and funds Chrysalis University, trains the city’s medical researchers and engineers, and — through its current Speaker — has held the office of City Mayor for six years, a concentration of scientific and political power that has become the central issue of the upcoming mayoral election.

Current Speaker: Elis Kulf — Head Researcher of Chrysalis Labs and Mayor of Chrysalis City.

Location: The Chrysalis Labs district, wedged along the riverbank at the centre of Chrysalis City — pale-stone research buildings, glasshouses, enclosed walkways, and gated security at all hours.

Public Projects: Originium energy research, medical and structural biology research, public health infrastructure, and recovery/study of relics from Terra’s previous civilisation.

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Branches

Scientific Research

• Medical Section (ECO) — investigates biological processes and the effects of substances used in combination.
• Energy Section (NRG) — researches originium, sunlight, geothermal, and biothermal energy and their practical applications.
• Scientific Investigation Section (SCIEN) — field explorers who venture beyond civilisation to investigate Terra’s mysteries and uncover relics of its previous civilisation.
• Structural Section (STRU) — studies the basic particles of living beings and how they are affected by their surroundings.

General Affairs

• Business Section (BSN) — public affairs and communication with other factions.
• Defense Section (DEF) — R&D and security, including laboratory emergencies and classified information.
• Engineering Section (ENG) — mechanical and robotic support for researchers.
• Human Resource Investigation Section (HRI) — staffing and personnel management.

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Key People

• Elis Kulf — Speaker of Chrysalis Labs, Mayor of Chrysalis City, Head Researcher.

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Projects

• Originium energy research and applications.
• Public health infrastructure — Elis Kulf’s central campaign platform, framed as bringing advanced healthcare to every settlement on the island.
• Classified study of Facility 59, an ancient Sarcophagus installation buried roughly 400ft beneath Dawn Town — known to perhaps two dozen people in the city.
• Internal suppression of the true scale of oripathy cases among Dawn Town workers, classified as proprietary data.

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Noteworthy Sites

The Chrysalis Labs District

Tall pale-stone buildings, glasshouses for experimental specimens, enclosed walkways connecting facilities, and gates staffed at all hours. The district sits at the intersection of the river and the city’s two halves — practical for materials and waste transport, and symbolic of the Labs’ self-image as the hinge on which Chrysalis’s future turns.

Chrysalis University

Founded and funded by the Labs; trains medical researchers, engineers, and sociologists. Its existence is held up as proof the city can produce researchers capable of founding rival institutions — a point made awkward by the fact that two of its graduates, Kristen Wright and Saria the Vouivre, did exactly that.

Facility 59

A Sarcophagus installation from the previous civilisation, buried beneath Dawn Town and under secret, ongoing study by the Labs.

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Reputation

Chrysalis Labs is regarded as clinical, ambitious, and controlled — the institution that believes progress justifies its costs. Its public health platform, current oripathy research, and historic split with Rhine Lab are all matters of open civic debate, sharpened considerably by Elis Kulf’s simultaneous role as Mayor and the approaching election.

What the streets say

• The Labs is close to a breakthrough on oripathy — or so they say, while case numbers in Dawn Town keep climbing.
• Six years as both Speaker and Mayor is one person holding too much power, according to Elis Kulf’s rivals.
• Rumour holds Elis Kulf’s own father died of oripathy — a disease the Labs has quietly been covering up cases of.

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Background

Chrysalis Labs grew into Terra’s leading scientific institution on the strength of originium research, medicine, and its founding role in Chrysalis University. Fifteen years ago, two of its own graduates — Kristen Wright and Saria the Vouivre — split off to found Rhine Lab, seeking to pursue originium research without the Labs’ institutional oversight. The split remains a sore subject within Labs leadership, not least because Rhine Lab has since matched and in places exceeded its rival’s results, while drawing far more open criticism for its methods.

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Notes

• There is a separate player-character page also named Elis Kulf — a naming collision with this NPC that Quartz wikilinks will need disambiguated.
• Elis Kulf is one of three candidates in the upcoming Chrysalis mayoral election, alongside Grothor Morain (Dragon Logistics) and Leonore of Alyss (Al’ar-backed). The election’s outcome is not yet determined in-vault — treat as an open thread.
• Chrysalis Labs is not currently documented as part of the RALA alliance; its rivalry is with Rhine Lab, which is connected to that alliance through Kristen Wright.

Wedged along the riverbank at the city’s centre, the Chrysalis Labs district is less a neighbourhood than an institution given its own territory. The research campus occupies a compact but architecturally imposing footprint—tall buildings of pale stone, glasshouses for experimental specimens, enclosed walkways connecting facilities, and gates that are politely but firmly staffed at all hours.

The Labs sit at the intersection of the river and the city’s two halves, which is both practical—river access for materials and waste management—and symbolic. Chrysalis Labs considers itself the hinge on which the city’s future turns. Whether the rest of the city agrees depends on who you ask.

Character: Clinical, ambitious, controlled

Notable features:

• Main research facilities (medicine, originium energy, structural biology)
• Medical complex (public-facing clinics and treatment wards, separate from experimental areas)
• Chrysalis University (founded and funded by the Labs; trains medical researchers, engineers, and sociologists)
• Secure storage and laboratory wings
• River landing for materials transport

Branches:

• Medical Section — investigates biological processes and effects of substances
• Energy Section — research into originium, geothermal, biothermal and solar energies
• Scientific Investigation Section — field explorers uncovering relics of Terra’s previous civilisations
• Structural Section — studies the basic particles of living beings and how they are affected by their environment
• Defense Section — handles security, laboratory emergencies, and classified information
• Engineering Section — mechanical and robotic support for researchers
• Business Section — public affairs and communication with other factions
• Human Resource Investigation Section — staffing and personnel

Current Speaker: Elis Kulf, who also serves as City Mayor—a concentration of power that Leonore of Alyss and others running in the election have made a central point of their campaigns.

Worship: There are no temples inside the Labs campus. The institution’s relationship with religion is politely formal—the Labs neither endorses nor discourages personal faith, but has little patience for theological explanations of phenomena it considers scientific in nature.

Chrysalis City Chrysalis Labs Ground floor, eastern face of the campus

Chrysalis’s primary healthcare facility for ordinary citizens. Physicians treat everything from broken limbs to advanced oripathy, though treatment for the latter grows increasingly difficult as cases multiply. The clinic is perpetually understaffed relative to demand.

Services: Medical treatment, diagnosis, basic originium exposure assessment, referrals to specialist researchers

Notable detail: Patients assessed with Stage 3 oripathy or higher are quietly flagged in the clinic’s records and receive a follow-up appointment within the week. What happens at that appointment depends on which researcher picks up their case.

Pearl Hill

Manager: L’oriel Al’ar (Drow)

Dragon Logistics maintains a significant presence in Malachite, offering transportation, guide services, and information about Terra’s geography—both above and below ground. The company has extensive knowledge of the tunnel systems and maintains riding lizards for wilderness travel.

Services:

• Lizard mounts (rental)
• Horses and wagons
• Underground mapping and guide services
• Escort missions
• Cargo transport

Note: Dragon Logistics is secretly part of an alliance with the Al’ar family and Kristen Wright of Rhine Labs.

Chrysalis City · Town Malachite

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A logistics and transportation company operating across Terra’s surface and underground — the faction that knows the fastest route from A to B, whether that route is on any map or not.

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Overview

Dragon Logistics is Terra’s most widely distributed transportation and cartography company, operating offices in every major settlement. Where other factions build laboratories or forge halls, Dragon Logistics builds roads, trade routes, and maps. The company’s expertise lies in moving things — cargo, people, information — across terrain that most would consider impassable, including the underground tunnel networks beneath Terra that other factions know only by rumour.

The company styles itself as a neutral service provider, taking contracts from any faction willing to pay. In practice, Dragon Logistics has accumulated privileged knowledge of Terra’s geography — surface and subsurface — that no other organisation can match. It is this knowledge, and the control it implies, that makes Dragon Logistics considerably more politically significant than a simple transport company has any right to be.

Current Speaker: Grothor Morain (Goliath), born in Town Morain, currently also a mayoral candidate in Chrysalis City.

Location: Offices in Chrysalis City, Town Malachite, and Town Morain. The Chrysalis office maintains a presence in both the Labour Halls and The Cartographers’ Office in Snowford.

Public Projects: Surface mapping, underground survey and guide work, cargo and escort contracts across Terra.

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Key People

• Grothor Morain — Speaker of Dragon Logistics; mayoral candidate in Chrysalis.
• L’oriel Al’ar — Drow manager of the Malachite office; member of the Al’ar family.

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Noteworthy Sites

The Cartographers’ Office — Chrysalis City

Snowford The Cartographers’ Office
Located in eastern Snowford. Staffed by Dragon Logistics geographers and independent map-makers who compile, update, and sell maps of Terra’s surface and known underground passages. The office also purchases new survey information from returning expeditions.

The most detailed maps of the underdark passages are kept in a locked case and are not for sale. Dragon Logistics cites ongoing surveying as the official reason. The actual reason involves the Al’ar family’s request that certain passage data not be made public.

The Labour Halls — Chrysalis City

Northward The Labour Halls
Dragon Logistics maintains an office in the Labour Halls of western Northward alongside several trade associations and a local branch of the Dwarves Union. A board outside the office lists current mapping contracts and expedition opportunities for those willing to venture into Terra’s unmapped wilderness or depths.

Dragon Logistics Office — Town Malachite

Town Malachite Dragon Logistics Office
Managed by L’oriel Al’ar. Offers transportation, guide services, and information about Terra’s geography — surface and underground. The company maintains riding lizards for wilderness travel.

Services: Lizard mounts (rental), horses and wagons, underground mapping and guide services, escort missions, cargo transport.

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Reputation

Dragon Logistics presents itself as a politically neutral logistics contractor — the company that gets things there, wherever there happens to be. Its Speaker, Grothor Morain, campaigns on agricultural rights and environmental preservation, positioning Dragon Logistics as an ally to farmers and workers rather than the corporate interests of Chrysalis Labs or Malachite Forges.

What the public does not discuss openly is that Dragon Logistics holds privileged knowledge of the underdark — tunnel routes, safe passages, and survey data that its competitors lack entirely. This position of informational advantage is not a coincidence; it has been cultivated deliberately over years, in part through the Al’ar family’s involvement in the company’s Malachite operations.

What the streets say

• “Dragon Logistics knows every tunnel under Terra. If something’s moving underground and you don’t know about it, they do.”
• “Grothor Morain talks about farmers and the environment, but Dragon Logistics has its fingers in everything.”
• “If you want to get somewhere nobody’s been, Dragon Logistics can get you there. For a price.”

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Background

Dragon Logistics grew from the practical necessity of connecting Terra’s settlements across difficult terrain. As Chrysalis, Malachite, and Morain developed into distinct population centres with different economic needs, the demand for reliable transport between them created space for a specialist organisation. Dragon Logistics filled it.

The company’s expansion into underground surveying followed naturally from surface mapping work — some of the most important trade routes on Terra pass through tunnel systems rather than over mountain passes — but it created an unintended consequence: Dragon Logistics came to know more about the underdark than any surface faction, including Chrysalis Labs and the Dwarves Union.

This knowledge brought the Al’ar family into the company’s orbit. The drow family, who consider the underdark their territory, found it more useful to embed within Dragon Logistics than to oppose it. L’oriel Al’ar’s management of the Malachite office formalised an arrangement that gave the Al’ar family influence over what Dragon Logistics revealed, withheld, and chose to map.

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Notes

• Dragon Logistics is a member of an alliance alongside the Al’ar family and Kristen Wright of Rhine Labs. The alliance’s official stated purpose is facilitating trade between the underdark and the surface; its actual agenda is considerably more ambitious.
• Grothor Morain may or may not be aware of the full extent of what Dragon Logistics is doing in his name. The DM-Notes suggest this is intentionally ambiguous — he may have calculated that the alliances are worth it, or he may be insulated from the details by design. See Chrysalis Labs DM-Notes.

“I have a colleague. Brilliant, but prone to tunnel vision. She needs people who can handle themselves.” — Saria

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Saria the Vouivre has a friend at Rhine Lab — Kristen Wright, Director of Scientific Research — who’s running into trouble on an industrial project in Malachite. Labor disputes and some “unexplained geological anomalies” are slowing her down, and she needs people who can do more than push paperwork.

Where to start

Saria arranges a meeting at Rhine Lab’s main facility. Kristen receives you personally, hands over a briefing document, and answers questions with clipped, distracted precision — like she’s already thinking three steps past the conversation.

Hooks

• The job centers on securing a “Structural Integrity Site” deep in the volcanic tunnels beneath Malachite, near a relic Rhine Lab calls the Sarcophagus
• You’ll be providing security while Kristen extracts data, and keeping local fauna — including some unsettling crystallized creatures — away from her equipment
• The confidentiality terms are unusually strict for what’s supposedly routine research
• Saria hasn’t said it outright, but it’s clear she wants to know what you see while you’re down there

Rewards

Payment and standing with Rhine Lab — and a foothold in a relationship that could open (or close) a lot of doors going forward.

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Some details are left for the table to discover.

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Description

Saria the Vouivre is a middle-aged white dragonborn and the Head Researcher of Rhine Lab. She is the current Speaker of Rhine Lab within Terra’s Oligarchy and serves simultaneously as Director of Defense — the department responsible for security, laboratory emergencies, and classified information.

She graduated from Chrysalis University before co-founding Rhine Lab together with Kristen Wright, with the shared goal of creating a company dedicated solely to scientific advancement.

Rhine Labs Key Figure

Co-founder and Head Researcher of Rhine Labs, Director of Defense. The more grounded of the two founders — her motivations are to find a way to limit the spread of originium and to persuade Kristen not to waste her talent on weapons of mass destruction. She is the honest heart of Rhine Labs: she suspects something is wrong with the direction the Horizon Arc Project has taken but can’t yet prove the scale of it. Her partnership with Kristen has grown strained as Rhine Lab’s priorities shift.

Motivations

• Find a way to limit the spread of Originium and the crystalline disease across Terra.
• Persuade Kristen Wright not to waste her talent on weapons of mass destruction.

Role in the Campaign

Saria is the honest moral counterweight within Rhine Lab. She suspects something is deeply wrong with the scale and direction of Kristen’s ambitions but lacks the proof to confront her directly. She may recruit the party as her eyes inside the Horizon Arc project, framing the introduction carefully:

“She needs people who can handle themselves, not just technicians. I told her you were capable.”

She is encountered by the deep-delve group during their time beneath Malachite, where Rhine Lab is actively underresourced and stretched thin.

Her official liaison role on the Wright Commission — the Rhine Lab document authorising operations around the Sarcophagus site — places her formally between Kristen’s ambitions and the outside world.

Relationships

• Kristen Wright — Co-founder of Rhine Lab and longtime colleague. Their partnership has grown strained as Kristen’s priorities shift toward the Horizon Arc Project. Saria is loyal but increasingly alarmed.
• Rhine Lab — Leads the institution day-to-day as Speaker and Head Researcher. Her authority is genuine, though Kristen operates outside normal oversight.
• Ambystoma — Ambystoma was created through Rhine Lab’s Guardian Project, which falls under Saria’s research umbrella.
• Melusine — Fellow Rhine Lab researcher. Melusine has received an offer to join Kristen’s Pioneer Project; Saria’s position on this is unconfirmed.

Notes

• The Wright Commission lists her title as Director of Defense rather than Head Researcher — this may reflect a dual role or a cover designation used in classified documents.
• Pronunciation: Sa-ri-a Vo-e-v-re.

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Saria the Vouivre Character Sheet

The air carries the sharp tang of smelted metal and sea salt. Dwarven smiths hammer at their forges while dock workers haul crates of black crystal—originium—from the mines below. Malachite stands as a testament to industrial ambition, where ancient traditions meet dangerous innovation.

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Town Overview

Malachite is a coastal settlement of approximately 200 years, built upon rich deposits of the mineral that gives it its name. Green-shingled copper roofs gleam in the sunlight, while smoke from countless forges fills portions of the sky. The town is primarily populated by dwarves, who have transformed this once-modest port into Terra’s industrial heart.

The discovery of Originium twenty years ago changed everything. What began as cautious experimentation has become the foundation of Malachite’s prosperity—and perhaps its doom. The black crystals fuel the forges with unprecedented efficiency, but whispers of a crystalline disease have begun to spread through the population.

Population: ~2,000 (65% dwarf, 20% human, 10% goliath, 5% other races)

Government: Grothor Morain serves as mayor, though the Oligarchy of Terra’s major factions holds true power here. Malachite Forges and the Dwarves Union maintain their headquarters within the town.

Defense: Town militia supplemented by Malachite Forges security forces. The outer districts are prone to tsunamis and earthquakes, but the main facilities have been reinforced against natural disasters.

Commerce: Industrial metalwork, ore refinement, shipping. Malachite exports refined metals and originium throughout Terra and beyond.

Town Districts

Districts

• Pearl Hill
• Copper Ward
• The Docks
• Old District

Notable Locations

Pearl Hill

• Church of Boldrei
• Dragon Logistics Office

Copper Ward

• Malachite Forges
• Alchemy and Alcheyou
• Barrel Factory

The Docks

• Bam’s Bangers and Boomers
• Street Market
• The Butcher

Old District

• Iris Tavern
• Firewine Tavern
• Tunnel Entrance

Background

• The Discovery of Originium
• The Crystalline Disease
• Current Tensions

Starting the Adventure

Player characters can become involved in Malachite’s troubles through several entry points:

• Echoes from the Deep Dark
• Malachite Forges’ Supply
• Pioneering Terra

Rumors and Information

• Rumours

Related Notes

• DM-Notes

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Description

Elis Kulf is the Head Researcher and current Speaker of Chrysalis Labs, the most advanced tech organization on Terra, based in Chrysalis City. He has also served as City Mayor for six years — a concentration of power that has become a central point of attack from his political rivals in the upcoming election.

Motivations

• Technological Dominance — Wants Chrysalis City to become the technological hub of the world, not just the island. He intends to push the boundaries of medical and technological advancement, making Chrysalis Labs the leading institution globally.
• Public Health Improvements — Aims to introduce advanced healthcare systems to all towns on the island, reducing mortality rates and increasing quality of life. He genuinely believes the Labs can solve oripathy.
• Industrial Expansion — Envisions a future where industry and technology thrive in Chrysalis, creating jobs and wealth through new factories, research facilities, and technological academies.
• Progress and Innovation — Driven by a deep desire to innovate and advance Terra’s society; sees himself as a visionary capable of leading the island into a new age of prosperity.
• Personal Ambition — Becoming mayor was a stepping stone. He has ambitions beyond the island, hoping to gain recognition from other continents and establish diplomatic or trade relations that would elevate Chrysalis City’s status.
• Control and Influence — Aware that technological advancement equals power, and wants to control Terra’s future by keeping Chrysalis City, under his guidance, at the forefront of progress.

He is not malicious so much as consequentialist to a dangerous degree — willing to sacrifice individuals for what he sees as institutional progress.

Role in the Campaign

• Current Speaker of Chrysalis Labs and Mayor of Chrysalis City, the most advanced tech organization on Terra, specializing in medicine and originium research.
• One of three candidates in the upcoming Chrysalis mayoral election (alongside Grothor Morain and Leonore of Alyss), scheduled for Rhaan 9th (Boldrei’s Feast). His campaign centers on technological dominance, public health infrastructure, and industrial expansion.
• Rumour holds that his father died of oripathy — a disease the Labs has been covering up cases of internally — which casts his “public health” platform in a different light.
• Oversaw Chrysalis Labs’ classification of oripathy research as proprietary data, including suppressing the true scale of cases among Dawn Town workers.
• Connected to the discovery and ongoing secret study of Facility 59, the ancient Sarcophagus installation buried 400ft below Dawn Town — known to perhaps two dozen people in the city.
• His institution’s split fifteen years ago — when Saria the Vouivre and Kristen Wright (both Chrysalis University graduates) left to found Rhine Lab — remains a sore subject within Labs leadership.

Relationships

• Grothor Morain — Rival mayoral candidate (Goliath, Speaker of Dragon Logistics). Competing political platforms around agriculture/environment vs. technological dominance.
• Leonore of Alyss — Rival mayoral candidate (Tiefling, backed by the Al’ar family), running on representation of the underclass.
• Saria the Vouivre and Kristen Wright — Both graduated from Chrysalis University before co-founding Rhine Lab, straining ties with Chrysalis Labs.
• Elis Khulf (alternate spelling used elsewhere) is listed as Head Researcher and Speaker of Chrysalis Labs in the faction’s affiliated characters list.

Notes

• Name appears with inconsistent spelling across notes: “Elis Kulf” and “Elis Khulf.”
• A player character page also exists for Elis Kulf (Elis Kulf.md under PlayerCharacters, played by Michelle, with image [[Elis Kulf.png]]) — worth clarifying whether this NPC and that PC are meant to be the same name reused, or a naming collision that should be resolved (e.g., renaming one of them) so the wiki’s links don’t conflict.
• Mayor election platform breakdown (from session notes):
  • Technological Dominance
  • Public Health
  • Industrial Expansion
  • Progress and innovation — “She can lead the island into a new age of prosperity” (note: pronoun inconsistency in source material — some session notes use “she” for Elis)
  • Personal Ambition
  • Control and influence — “Technological advancements equals power”
• Election context: three weeks of campaigning before Rhaan 9th, escalating into incidents (further oripathy deaths, campaign worker intimidation, secret information surfacing) before the vote.
• Possible thread: Dragon Logistics’ Grothor accuses Elis of prioritizing Labs research interests over ordinary citizens’ oripathy concerns.

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Elis Kulf Character Sheet

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Description

Dwargon is an elderly dwarf with an orange beard and hair, smithing clothes, and a hammer always close at hand. Parts of his skin have turned completely black from advanced oripathy. Despite this, he continues working at his forge in Copper Ward — a large originium crystal sits on display beside his workstation, its forms refined into a spike, a d12, and a sphere.

Motivations

• Find a worthy successor to inherit his forge and secret smithing techniques before his condition takes him
• Protect Malachite Forges’ reputation amid growing public fear about originium and the crystalline disease
• Quietly investigate the true dangers of originium without causing panic or political damage to the forges

Role in the Campaign

Dwargon serves as an early quest giver in Malachite, asking the party to investigate the goblin camp to the north and question farmer Robert on the western outskirts. He is one of the few people on Terra openly living with advanced oripathy, making him a living reminder of what the disease actually looks like up close.

He is aware that Chrysalis Labs has been keeping research findings close to their chest, and he distrusts the rumors swirling around the city — but he also can’t afford to ignore them.

Relationships

• Martin Fallward — Current High Priest of Boldrei; Dwargon has a relationship with the church through years of community ties
• Morlock Fallward — Retired High Priest, one of the few in Malachite capable of high-level restoration magic; a potential last resort for Dwargon’s condition
• Elis Kulf — Speaker of Chrysalis Labs; uneasy collaboration over the originium smelting breakthrough
• Grothor Morain — Speaker of Dragon Logistics; fellow Oligarchy figure, more trusted than the labs

Notes

• His oripathy is visibly advanced — the party can see it the moment they meet him
• His “secret techniques” for originium-enhanced smelting are a potential plot thread: who inherits them, and could they be dangerous?
• Chrysalis Labs achieved a breakthrough in ore processing with Dwargon’s help — the nature of that collaboration is worth exploring
• He may be aware that mining tremors have stirred something below Malachite but is staying quiet about it

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Dwargon Malachite Character Sheet

Town Malachite

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The industrial heart of Terra — heavy machinery, ore smelting, and the forges that turned a modest port into the island’s manufacturing power, now straining under the weight of its own success.

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Overview

Malachite Forges is the organisation with the facilities and capabilities to mass-produce metals and ore at scale, headquartered in Town Malachite’s Copper Ward. If there is heavy-duty work to be done anywhere on Terra, Malachite Forges has the equipment for it — cranes, transport vehicles, excavation gear, and smelting facilities running day and night. The integration of originium into its processes over the past two decades dramatically increased production capacity, cementing Malachite’s status as Terra’s industrial centre.

That same integration has made the Forges the focal point of growing public anxiety. As oripathy cases spread through the dwarven population, and black smoke continues to pour from the forges, critics increasingly question whether the Forges’ processes are as safe as the organisation insists. Malachite Forges maintains that oripathy is a mining hazard, not an industrial one — a position the Dwarves Union defends as fiercely as the Forges itself, treating attacks on Malachite’s craftsmanship as an attack on dwarven tradition more broadly.

Current Speaker: Dwargon Malachite, master smith — currently living with advanced (Stage 3–4) oripathy.

Location: Copper Ward, Town Malachite.

Public Projects: Ore smelting and refinement, heavy machinery rental and operation, custom and industrial metalwork.

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Branches

No formal internal branch structure is documented in the vault. Operations are centred on the Copper Ward smelting and forge facilities, with mining operations extending into the surrounding tunnels and depths.

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Key People

• Dwargon Malachite — Speaker of Malachite Forges; also affiliated with the Dwarves Union.

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Projects

• Originium-enhanced smelting techniques — Dwargon’s “secret techniques,” a closely guarded process whose succession (and safety) is an open plot thread.
• Mining and excavation operations, currently halted due to tremors originating from the deep tunnels beneath Malachite.

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Services

• Heavy machinery rental: crane, transport vehicles (pickup truck), excavation equipment.
• Driver’s licence for heavy machinery — 10gp, DC 15 test.
• Ore smelting facility.
• Custom and industrial metalwork.

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Reputation

Malachite Forges is publicly associated with dwarven craftsmanship and Terra’s industrial backbone, but is increasingly on the defensive over its connection to the crystalline disease. The Dwarves Union treats criticism of the Forges as a slight against dwarven tradition itself, while voices in Chrysalis — including mayoral candidate Leonore of Alyss — argue that the Forges’ wealth and influence endanger ordinary citizens.

What the streets say

• Dwargon Malachite is dying, black crystal eating him from the inside — the Forges will fall apart without him.
• The Forges insist their processes are safe; that’s not what the smoke over Copper Ward suggests.
• A six-year-old child begging by the river in Chrysalis has visible crystallisation on her skin, and anti-dwarf sentiment is rising in places that blame dwarven industrial methods for spreading it — sentiment that stays muted in Malachite itself, where dwarves hold institutional power.

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Background

Malachite Forges grew out of Town Malachite’s transformation from a modest port into Terra’s industrial heart, a shift accelerated dramatically by the discovery of originium twenty years ago. What began as cautious experimentation with the black crystal became the foundation of the Forges’ — and the town’s — prosperity. Dwargon Malachite has led the organisation through this growth and continues to work his personal forge in Copper Ward despite his advancing condition, a large originium crystal (worked into a spike, a d12, and a sphere) displayed beside his workstation as both ornament and symbol.

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Notes

• Malachite Forges and the Dwarves Union share headquarters within Town Malachite and substantial membership overlap — Dwargon Malachite himself is affiliated with both factions. Worth deciding whether these should cross-reference more explicitly on both pages.
• Mining operations are currently halted due to tremors linked to activity near or within the Sarcophagus facilities beneath Malachite (see Town Malachite Echoes from the Deep Dark) — a live connective thread to the Dwarves Union’s quest and the wider Rhine Lab storyline.
• The Al’ar family has been quietly mapping the tunnels beneath Malachite, nominally for Dragon Logistics — a thread relevant to the Forges’ halted operations that the Forges themselves are not aware of.

The forge district, where the constant ring of hammers echoes day and night. Malachite Forges maintains its main facilities here, along with numerous smaller smithies and workshops. The air shimmers with heat, and the acrid smell of molten metal pervades everything.

Notable Location:

• Dwargon Malachite’s personal smithy can be found here, where the master smith continues his work despite his advancing oripathy.
• Alchemy and Alcheyou - potion and alchemy shop founded by Grunk and Strunk.
• The local Barrel Factory

South of Town Malachite

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A research institute and scientific consortium said to rival Chrysalis Labs — open about its ambitions, cagier about its methods.

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Overview

Rhine Lab is a research institute and scientific consortium drawing personnel from across Terra, active in the fields of originium, biology, and energy. It styles itself as Chrysalis Labs’ rival and intellectual equal — and in many respects has earned that comparison — but its reputation is marred by rumors of unethical, inhumane experimentation that Chrysalis Labs publicly distances itself from while privately envying some of its results.

The institute was founded fifteen years ago by two Chrysalis University graduates, Kristen Wright and Saria the Vouivre, who split from Chrysalis Labs to pursue research without the same institutional oversight. The split strained relationships with their alma mater but also validated Chrysalis’s educational model — proof that the city could train researchers capable of founding rival institutions.

Current Speaker: Saria the Vouivre, Head Researcher of Rhine Labs.

Location: South of Port Town Malachite. The campus combines surrounding nature with the building itself, and the roads around it are built for autonomous loaders — transport based on old warforged technology that some researchers privately suspect may be sentient.

Public projects: Originium investigation, biological and energy research, and — publicly — the Rhine Lab Pioneer Project, a vessel framed as humanity’s attempt to “conquer the sky.” What this project actually is, and who it actually serves, depends on which branch of Rhine Lab you ask.

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Branches

• Scientific research branch
• General affair branch

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Key People

• Kristen Wright
• Saria the Vouivre
• Melusine
• Magallan

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Projects

• The Horizon Arc Project
• The Guardian Project

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Noteworthy Sites

The Research Campus

A grand building that deliberately combines surrounding nature with its architecture — a contrast to Chrysalis Labs’ more clinical campus. Surrounding roads are built for autonomous loaders based on old warforged technology; officially these are not sentient, though some researchers privately disagree.

Vivarium Lab

A laboratory built aboard the Horizon Arc vessel itself, powered directly by a Sarcophagus. Its existence is one of the clearest signs that the “Pioneer Project” is not simply an exploration vessel — Sarcophagus-grade power output is wildly disproportionate to anything a conventional spacecraft would need.

Facility 31

One of the old civilization’s Sarcophagus installations, buried roughly 800ft beneath Rhine Labs itself. Worn-out metal walls but a structure still standing — power units are still outputting energy, though a malfunction killed everyone who was sleeping inside. Rhine Lab built its headquarters directly above this site, which is unlikely to be a coincidence. See The Sarcophagus below Terra.

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Public Reputation

Rhine Lab presents itself as a research institute dedicated to scientific advancement, openly publishing much of its work — in contrast to Chrysalis Labs’ more guarded posture on oripathy research. It has publicly announced “promising treatment vectors” for oripathy that it claims Chrysalis Labs’ institutional caution prevents that organization from pursuing, a claim that is as much a political jab as a scientific one.

Beneath the public-facing openness, persistent rumors allege unethical, inhumane human experimentation. Chrysalis Labs distances itself from these rumors publicly while privately acknowledging some of Rhine Lab’s breakthroughs — particularly in originium energy applications — are genuinely impressive.

What the streets say (Chrysalis & Malachite rumor pool)

• “Rhine Labs is building something big up north. Some kind of tower or launch site. For what, nobody knows.”
• “They’re saying Rhine Lab found a cure for oripathy but won’t share it because Chrysalis Labs would lose funding if the crisis ended.”
• “Rhine Lab’s building something on the Highland Plateau. Big construction. They’re calling it the Pioneer Project. Kristen Wright’s personally overseeing it.”
• “Rhine Lab’s Guardian Project created artificial humanoids. Ambystoma — the one traveling with that adventuring group — she’s one of them. Rhine Lab considers her stolen property. They want her back.”

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Background

Founding

Fifteen years ago, two Chrysalis University graduates — Saria the Vouivre and Kristen Wright — left Chrysalis Labs to found an institution dedicated solely to scientific advancement, unconstrained by Chrysalis’s more measured, oversight-heavy approach. The split was officially amicable. Unofficially, it represented a rejection of institutional caution in favor of speed.

Originium and the Crisis

Rhine Lab is active in originium research and is pursuing more aggressive experimentation than Chrysalis Labs is willing to publicly attempt. The institute is one of the factions implicated — alongside Malachite Forges, Chrysalis Labs, and the Dwarves Union — in the broader oripathy crisis unfolding across Terra (see Flesh to Dust Incident, Originium).

The Pivot to the Sky

At some point in the last several years, Kristen Wright’s research ambitions outgrew originium and oripathy entirely. Through channels Saria did not fully sanction, Kristen began collaborating with the Al’ar family on what would become the Horizon Arc Project — using Rhine Lab’s resources, its Guardian Project research into survivable biological enhancement, and its access to Sarcophagus technology, all in service of a goal she has not been fully transparent about even with her own co-founder.

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Notes

• DM-Notes
• Titania’s Wounding

Alternate Names: Grimjaws, The Maimed God, The Evenhanded

Alignment: Lawful Good
Domains: Order, War
Pantheon: Faerûnian
Symbol: Balanced scales resting on a warhammer

Description

Tyr’s followers devote themselves to justice — righting wrongs and seeing that vengeance is delivered where it’s due. This isn’t really a devotion to fairness or equality in the abstract; it’s a devotion to uncovering the truth of a matter and punishing the guilty once it’s found.

Personality

Tyr is, by every account, the most strong-spirited and honorable of the Aesir who ever set foot on Terra — brave in the plain, unglamorous sense of a god who simply never hesitates to act when a wrong needs righting. His concern isn’t law for law’s sake; it’s making sure wrongdoers are punished and the world tips, however slowly, toward good. He judges fairly, but fairness by his measure isn’t gentle — to anyone outside his faith he looks stern, rigid, even cold, because he rarely explains a verdict twice. Unlike most of the pantheon, he doesn’t stay comfortably distant from his followers; Tyr is more willing than any other god to manifest directly, to stand where his people can see him stand, because justice witnessed means more to him than justice merely believed.

Influence on Terra

Tyr stands as order and heroism’s champion in the pantheon — a direct counterweight to the self-interest of Lolth and the temptations of Asmodeus. Where those two gods thrive on ambiguity, Tyr’s domain is meant to cut through it: the correct answer exists, and finding it is the whole point.

Myth

When the first mortals set foot on Terra, what caught Tyr’s attention wasn’t ambition or fire or fortune — it was absence. A civilization forming with no laws yet to hold it together looked, to him, like a wrong already halfway committed. He came down to see it corrected before it could become one.

Boldrei he found already there, doing the same work from a different direction — she built shelter, he intended to build order, and the two recognized in each other something worth trusting. He promised her his aid plainly, without ceremony, and meant it the way he means everything: as a debt he’d honor before anyone had to call it in. When Thrym came for her people, Tyr was the one standing beside her door.

Against Asmodeus, Tyr has never once relented. Where Asmodeus offers mortals a contract dressed up as kindness, Tyr offers them the plain truth of what that contract costs, free of charge — and he has made a long habit of arriving wherever Asmodeus is closing a deal, just to make sure the mortal signing it understands exactly what they’re signing. Asmodeus finds him tiresome. Tyr finds that fitting.

With Thrym, the fight has never really been about Ymir, not directly — but Tyr answers Thrym’s grudge in kind anyway, meeting his fury with equal resolve every time their paths cross. Neither has ever fully won. Thrym holds the highlands, Tyr holds the bottomlands, and the line between them has stayed exactly where it was the day it was first drawn.

Tymora he welcomes without complaint, which surprises those who expect him to distrust a goddess of chance. But Tyr has stood over enough trials to know that skill and righteousness don’t always carry the day alone — sometimes what a just cause needs most is a stroke of luck it hasn’t earned yet, and he’d rather see the right side win by a lucky coin than lose by an unlucky one.

Lolth he has never once left unanswered. Every foothold she has tried to plant on the surface, Tyr has personally confronted and cut away — not out of hatred, but because he considers her particular cruelty a wrong too large to let stand unchallenged, the same as any other.

Valefor unsettles the rest of the pantheon more than he unsettles Tyr. Tyr doesn’t pretend to fully understand a god built from a lie that became true — but he doesn’t need to. He simply judges Valefor’s followers the same way he judges everyone: by their actions, not by whichever god they happened to bluff their way into following. If a lie hardens into something honest through hard work, Tyr has no quarrel with it. If it doesn’t, judgment finds it eventually, the same as it finds everything else.

“Justice must be tempered with wisdom, but punishment must be exacted for wrongdoers.”

Notes

• Sourced from the Faerûnian pantheon (5e.tools); no Terra-specific myth has been written yet.

Alternate Names: The Masked Flame, Patron of Falsehood and Confidence

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Domains: Falsehood, Confidence, Transformation, Ambition.
Pantheon: Greek
Symbol: A split mask — one side gold, the other ash.

Description

Valefor is the god of deception that becomes truth — patron of liars, performers, and all who “fake it until they make it.” Once a mortal thief who stole divine fire, he rose to godhood through audacity alone.

He is often depicted as a tall figure draped in loose silks and jewelry of mismatched gold, wearing a half-mask shaped like a lion’s grin. His posture is relaxed, his voice smooth and unhurried, yet his eyes gleam with sharp intelligence. Valefor’s presence shifts between lazy indifference and sudden, dazzling brilliance; when he chooses to act, he does so with flair.

Though a trickster, Valefor is considered fair in his judgments — he rewards cunning, effort, and self-belief, even when born from falsehood. To his followers, failure honestly disguised as confidence is no sin; it is the first step toward mastery.

Personality

Valefor’s temperament is as fluid as smoke. He drifts between amused detachment and sudden brilliance, treating existence as a grand performance where everyone wears a mask. To some, he seems lazy — a god who lounges through eternity, smiling faintly as the world stumbles over its own lies. Yet when stirred, he can turn dazzling: eloquent, commanding, and radiant with the confidence he bestows upon others.

He is not a cruel god, though he rarely offers comfort. Valefor believes that illusion is a tool of survival, and that sincerity without boldness is merely weakness in disguise. He encourages mortals to pretend, to posture, to act until their pretense becomes real. To him, every deception holds the seed of transformation.

Influence on Terra

Valefor occupies the pantheon’s most unsettled ground — the space between self-deception and self-actualization, where a lie told with enough conviction quietly becomes a truth someone earns. He has no grand temples on Terra and needs none; his presence shows up instead in the merchant who oversells himself into competence, the performer whose stage persona outgrows the person underneath, the apprentice who claims a mastery they don’t yet have and grows into it out of sheer refusal to be caught out. Where Tyr’s followers seek the truth of a matter, Valefor’s followers are betting the truth hasn’t been decided yet — and that boldness gets to cast the deciding vote. This makes him a quiet, informal patron for gamblers of a different kind: not of dice and coin like Tymora’s faithful, but of reputation, persona, and nerve.

Myth

In the age when the gods still walked among mortals, Truth and Falsehood were twin flames born from the forge of Hephaestus. Truth burned steady and white, a flame that revealed. Falsehood flickered blue and gold, dancing and elusive. Both were beautiful, and both were dangerous.

When Tyr saw the twin flames, he claimed Truth for his banner, saying,

“Courage is found in the light that never lies.”

But the other flame — the playful one — no god dared touch. Boldrei feared it would tear her hearth apart, Asmodeus wanted it but could not hold it, for it slipped between his fingers like laughter in smoke.

Then came a mortal thief — clever, nameless, and desperate — who knelt before the flame and whispered,

“If no god will claim you, I shall.”

He took the fire into himself, and for a moment the world believed his lie — that he was divine. He tricked kings, outwitted priests, and even deceived death itself. But mortals cannot bear divine fire for long. When his heart began to burn away, he laughed and said,

“If truth makes gods, then a lie well told may do the same.”

And so he forged himself into godhood, his body turning to mist and his name reshaping into a whisper on every confident breath: Valefor.

From that day forth, Valefor became the god of Falsehood and Confidence — the patron of liars who dream of greatness and believers who dare to bluff against fate.

It is said he still wears the thief’s mask, half gold, half ash, and that when a mortal stands before an impossible task and says, “I can,” —
Valefor smiles, for he knows the lie that becomes truth.

Notes

• Western medieval/christian influence: Name and some inspirations taken from Valefor a duke of hell from Ars Goetia - Themes: Theft, cunning, animalistic traits, demon of temptation and loyalty.
• Hellenic influence: Anthropomorphic gods tied to natural forces, arts, human passions.
• Pre-islamic/Islamic Arabic influence: Spirits of smokeless fire, free-willed (good or evil), bound by oaths. Exist between angels and mortals.
• Middle Eastern/Judaic influence: King Solomon commanding spirits and demons. Bridges the Abrahamic and occult traditions.
• Part of a book called the Lesser Key of Solomon. Mainly inspired by Djinns from arabic folklore.

Alternate Names: Lady Luck, Our Smiling Lady

Alignment: Chaotic Good
Domains: Trickery
Pantheon: Faerûnian
Symbol: Face-up coin

Description

Tymora is the bright-faced goddess of fortune — the one gamblers, adventurers, and daring risk-takers of every stripe pray to before trying their luck. Her followers’ creed is simple: fortune favours the bold. A common custom is to flip a coin to a stranger and ask if it landed heads — if so, the coin stays with them as payment for Tymora’s favour. Temples to her are rare, since her faith holds that a lucky soul and the goddess herself can sort things out without an intermediary, though small shrines are known to spring up wherever people gamble.

Personality

Tymora is playful and capricious rather than cruel — she rewards daring and skill, not caution, and seems to delight equally in nobles, merchants, dreamers, and scoundrels so long as they’re willing to take the risk.

Influence on Terra

Tymora is the chaotic-neutral heart of the pantheon — hope, chance, and the belief that boldness can bend fate in your favour. Her worship on Terra tends to be informal and scattered rather than institutional: a modest shrine sits inside the old gatehouse market in Chrysalis City’s Northward district, where merchants leave coins before opening their stalls, and a small carved wooden figure of her hangs above the door of the Bent Road Tavern in Night Hook, Town Morain. Both fit her character well — she is worshipped where people take everyday risks, not in grand temples.

Myth

Tymora found Terra the way she finds anything worth her attention — by accident, smiling, already halfway curious before she’d decided to be. A civilization taking its first gamble on a volcanic island was exactly the kind of long-odds bet she couldn’t look away from.

She greeted Boldrei and Tyr first, and found them easy company — a goddess who built homes out of nothing and a god who held his ground on principle alone were both, in their own way, people who bet everything on doing the right thing and trusting it would work out. Watching them stand against Asmodeus and Thrym stirred something generous in her. She began lending her luck quietly to whoever needed it most in that early conflict — not evenly, and not to everyone, but to the ones taking the boldest risks against the longest odds.

Asmodeus, predictably, came looking for her too — though not for company. He wanted her favor the way he wants everything, as a resource to be negotiated for and owned. Tymora saw the shape of the offer before he’d finished making it, and didn’t dress up her answer: he was out of luck, and no contract was going to change that. It’s one of the few refusals he’s never tried to renegotiate, if only because there was nothing in it to renegotiate — you can’t out-bargain a coin flip.

Thrym she left alone entirely. He’d already claimed the highlands as his, and Tymora, for all her boldness, knows better than to push her luck against a god who isn’t interested in playing. Her shrines stay in the bottomlands, among people who gamble on smaller, warmer things — a good harvest, a safe trade route, a coin landing heads-up. That’s always been enough for her.

Mostly, her help moves quietly. She doesn’t demand temples or announce her favors; she simply follows her worshippers wherever their nerve takes them, tilting the odds a little when they’ve earned it by being bold enough to need tilting.

The one god who still catches her attention is Valefor — and she’s never quite settled on why. His confidence behaves like her luck does: unearned until the moment it isn’t, real simply because it refused to be anything else. She finds herself wondering whether his power is a kind of fortune she hasn’t recognized yet, wearing a mask instead of a coin. His face gives nothing away, win or lose, and that alone is rare enough to keep her looking. Whether her curiosity is the kind she’d admit to over drinks with Boldrei, or something she’d rather keep behind her own unreadable smile, is a question even she hasn’t answered out loud.

“Sometimes the Lady smiles, sometimes she laughs out loud.”

Notes

• Sourced from the Faerûnian pantheon (5e.tools); no Terra-specific myth has been written yet.
• Confirmed worship sites on Terra: the gatehouse market shrine in Chrysalis City’s Northward district, and the Bent Road Tavern in Night Hook, Town Morain.

Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Domains: War
Pantheon: Norse
Symbol: White double-bladed axe

Description

• A frost giant standing 21 feet in height. Though he can alter his size. He wears a suit of chain-mail underneath a coat of white fur. White eyes, blue hair and a constant snarl.
• Those who dare face Thrym are met with a freezing storm, and an army of frost giants.
• Those in the presence of a snow or sleet storm have his attention.

Personality

Thrym carries an old grudge, and he has never once set it down. Ymir’s death at the hands of the Aesir sits in him the way frost sits in stone — permanent, load-bearing, load-baring. He watches the Norse gods far more than he watches his own followers, spending more of his attention on old enemies than on the people who actually worship him. This isn’t cruelty so much as neglect; Thrym isn’t unkind to his followers, he’s simply elsewhere. He earned the title Lord of the Frost Giants, and sometimes “the frost god,” almost by default rather than by effort — a name people gave him because it fit, not because he asked for it. What he lacks in attentiveness he makes up for in craft: when he does turn his hand to something, he can shape stone and ice into artifacts that rival anything to come out of a forge — he simply does it rarely, and mostly for himself.

Influence on Terra

Thrym represents nature’s colder, more brutal edge — the physical challenge of endurance against frost and isolation, rather than any moral or social test. Where gods like Boldrei and Hephaestus concern themselves with community and craft, Thrym’s domain is a hard, solitary trial: survive the cold, or don’t.

Myth

Thrym came to Terra the way weather comes — without ceremony, following the first snow that ever settled on the new island. He found in Titania’s peaks and the plateau around it a country built for someone his size to disappear into, and he began walking it the way he has always walked, alone and unhurried, more interested in the shape of the land than in whoever might already be living on it.

It was on those walks that he found the goliaths — smaller than his own kind, but built from the same stubborn refusal to be killed by cold. He didn’t conquer them or claim them. He simply recognized them, the way one hard thing recognizes another, and those who chose to follow him didn’t so much convert as confirm something they already were. He never asked them to settle, and most of them never have — his followers move with the seasons and the herds across the highlands the way he moves across the mountain, at home nowhere and everywhere the frost reaches.

What he did ask of them was watchfulness. Titania’s fire is the one thing on this island that unsettles him, and he set his followers to keep an eye on it — to watch for forges lit or fires raised in ways that felt less like mortal need and more like something answering to Surtur’s name. It is not a war he expects to fight. It is a war he refuses to be caught unprepared for, the way he was once caught unprepared for Ymir’s death.

He visits Hephaestus on his mountain walks, when the walking brings him close enough. Neither god makes much of these visits — they are craftsmen comparing work more than gods making alliance, two makers who happen to respect the other’s hands and say little else about it.

With Tyr he keeps a longer, colder arrangement. The two clash when their paths cross, and Tyr has always been the one to push him back — but it has never once become a rout, only ever a stalemate. Tyr’s followers keep to the bottomlands. Thrym’s keep to the highlands and the plateau. Neither god has broken that line in longer than either cares to count, and neither seems especially interested in trying.

Long before the mountain broke, Thrym’s followers began to notice what was coming — the same patience that let Tymora foresee the eruption let Thrym’s people feel it building in the stone itself. He did not warn them so much as prepare them: taught them how to endure cold, isolation, and ruin long before ruin arrived, the same lessons his followers still pass down today. When Titania erupted and the old civilization ended, it was Thrym’s people — hardened, scattered, asking nothing of the lowlands — who were still standing on the plateau afterward, in the empty centuries when nothing else on Terra was.

“Only the hardest frost survives the thaw.”

Notes

• Sourced from the Norse pantheon (5e.tools).

Ecological Section (ECO)

The department that investigates the biological evolution history of Terra and its interaction with Terra’s environment. Headed by Melusine, an elf researcher rarely seen without her round glasses and raincoat layered over her labcoat. ECO is responsible for the Guardian Project — Rhine Lab’s effort to create immortal, artificially cultivated beings, of which Ambystoma and her sister Urodela are the first fully successful results.

Energy Section (NRG)

The department that conducts research on various forms of energies in Terra (i.e., Originium, sunlight, geothermal, and biothermal) and their practical applications in technology.

Scientific Investigation Section (SCIEN)

The department consisting of explorers that reach outside of the borders of civilization on Terra to investigate its mysteries and uncover relics of Terra’s previous civilizations. Magallan, a mineral researcher, operates out of this section — currently conducting fieldwork near goblin camps and active originium deposits, taking notes on origin samples at considerable personal risk.

Structural Section (STRU)

The department that investigates the basic particles (i.e., elements, atoms, and biological molecules) of living beings on Terra and how they are affected by their surroundings.

Business Section (BSN)

The department that deals with public affairs and communications with other corporations.

Defense Section (DEF)

The department that deals with R&D and security issues such as laboratory emergencies. It also takes care of undisclosed and classified information.
Current Director of defense: Saria the Vouivre

Engineering Section (ENG)

The department that provides mechanical and robotic support for R.L.’s researchers. Likely responsible for the autonomous loaders that move materials around the campus, and for engineering work tied to S.H.A.F.T and H.A.M.H.R.R.

Human Resource Investigation Section (HRI)

The department that is responsible for human resource management.

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Description

A middle-aged human woman, graduate of Chrysalis University. Kristen comes across as exhaustingly visionary — the kind of person who forgets to eat or sleep because she’s calculating orbital trajectories in her head. In conversation she seems distant, as if she’s looking beyond the person she’s actually talking to, fixated on something only she can see.

Rhine Labs Key Figure

Co-founder and Director of Scientific Research. Publicly, her ambition is to reach the sky and beyond with Schinsharo’s help. Privately, she is secretly collaborating with the military coalition of the Al’ar family to conduct the Horizon Arc Project — and her actual goal, beneath the official “Pioneer Project” framing, is to break through whatever barrier confines Terra and find out what lies beyond it. She does not see herself as building a weapon. She sees herself as liberating Terra from an ancient prison.

Ad astra per aspera.

Motivations

• To reach the sky and beyond, with Schinsharo’s help.
• Secretly collaborating with the military coalition of The Al’ar to conduct the Horizon Arc Project.
• Believes Terra is enclosed by an ancient, artificial barrier — something built by whoever came before the previous civilization — and is driven to break through it, reach whatever lies beyond, and prove that Terra’s people can transcend their island prison.
• Does not see herself as building a weapon. She sees herself as liberating Terra from an ancient prison.
• Ad astra per aspera.
  

Role in the Campaign

Co-founder of Rhine Lab alongside Saria the Vouivre, the two having left Chrysalis Labs together to found a company dedicated solely to scientific advancement. Officially, Kristen leads Rhine Labs’ public-facing Pioneer Project, framed as an effort to “conquer the sky.”

In truth, Kristen is the architect of the Horizon Arc Project — a collaboration with The Al’ar to construct a vessel capable of physically breaching the barrier above Terra. Key components of the project include:

• S.H.A.F.T — Synergistic Hyperbeam Amplifying and Focusing Tube
• H.A.M.H.R.R — High-Altitude Maneuverable Hyperbeam Receiver-Redirector
• Vivarium Lab — a laboratory powered by a Sarcophagus

She uses cover documentation to keep the project’s true nature hidden from contractors and property owners, including the Wright Commission briefing and the Deep-Earth Tunneling Logistics Contract. The “Punching the Sky Hole” mission — an attempt to physically breach the upper atmosphere’s crystalline barrier at the volcano’s caldera — is hers to command (see Punching the Sky Hole).

She is overseeing a massive industrial project in Malachite City, slowed by local labor unions and “unexplained” geological anomalies — Saria has been known to recruit outside help (including possibly the party) to act as her eyes on Kristen’s behalf, suspecting Kristen’s ambitions have outgrown what either of them originally intended.

Relationships

• Saria the Vouivre — Co-founder of Rhine Labs and former close collaborator. Saria is increasingly suspicious of where Kristen’s ambitions are headed and has tried, without success, to persuade Kristen not to waste her talent on weapons of mass destruction.
• Al’ar — Kristen’s secret military partners on the Horizon Arc Project. The Al’ar’s price for their support is refined originium from the deepest veins, in exchange for a promise that H.A.M.H.R.R will double as an orbital weapons platform — a betrayal Kristen may not have fully reckoned with.
• Urodela (Ambystoma’s sister) — recently recruited to work directly on the Pioneer Project at Kristen’s offer, conducting research aboard the vessel currently being prototyped.
• Schinsharo — Kristen hopes to reach the sky and beyond with his help.
• Titania (the dragon) — discovered the Horizon Arc Project’s true nature from its testing grounds and was poisoned and nearly killed for it, almost certainly to silence her. Whether Kristen ordered or merely benefited from this remains unconfirmed.

Notes

• DM-Notes

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Kristen Wright Character Sheet