The four peoples
Dwarves, Elves, Humans and Orcs share the land of Aysol.
No people has a homeland or a capital. They live scattered in villages across Aysol — each village mostly one people — and no region belongs to any of them. The city is the only place the whole world meets.
Each village has lived beside whichever spire is nearest, and how it regards that spire — worship, fear, dependence, exploitation — differs village by village, not people by people. Neighbouring villages of different peoples can disagree about the same spire.
| People | Notes |
|---|---|
| Humans | The most common people — four villages |
| Dwarves | Two villages |
| Elves | Two villages; live about two centuries, not forever. The oldest remember when the spires were quiet, but nobody alive remembers the actual sealing |
| Orcs | Two villages |
The hero is human — raised by elves' neighbours and then by a mixed caravan. See The Hero.
Still in development — details may change
Village names beyond their region and stance are still being written.
The factions
Factions cut across the peoples rather than being them. Claimants, restorers, opportunists and keepers can be drawn from any people.
The claimants
Those who want the Guardians' power. One movement that fractured, rather than four separate cults — they share a history and fight each other as well as the hero. Each branch has attached itself to a different spire and believes that Guardian's power is owed to it. Their casters borrow from that spire's own leak, so each branch fights in its spire's element.
Numerous, poorly equipped, ideologically loud: the standard encounter across the world. Each branch has its own camp and a branch leader as a lesser boss — see examples on the Enemies page.
The restorers
Those who want the failing seal restored. They believe unsealing is a catastrophe — which is correct — and have worked out what they think is the only fix: the seal needs a vessel that can hold all four elements, and the hero is one. Their goal is to put the hero in a spire.
Fewer than the claimants, better equipped, present throughout the story. They reuse the Guardians' own logic — the Guardians solved this problem once, by doing it to themselves — and chase a solution that has already failed once.
Opportunists
Bandits and looters working the collapse. No ideology, just danger: the heartland's bandit chief, who led the ambush that killed the hero's caravan, is the opening region's boss.
The antagonist's wreckage
Not a faction — the scattered, failed results of the antagonist trying to make others like himself. Two-element wrecks, appearing as lesser bosses; see Enemies and Guardians.
The keepers
Those who study the spires. Not a threat. Scholars who understand what the Guardians were and want the truth more than the power — neutral to helpful, and the natural source of quests and of what the player needs to learn. Without them the world would be only hostile.
The keeper on the canyon rim in the heartland is the first person the hero meets, before any crowd or city. They offer the hero a veiled, poetic choice of which element to wake first. See Lore and History.
Two opponents, both right, differently
The restorers believe the hero is a vessel, and they are right. The antagonist believes the hero's path ends in disaster, because it already happened to him, and he is right too. See Lore and History for why.