Valedorn looks perfect from the outside—an Age of Enlightenment in full swing. Arcane mages have sailed their first airship across the sky, new breakthroughs—arcane and scientific—power industry and everyday life, and King Alaric’s rule seems secure… at least until you ask what “progress” costs.
Because enlightenment doesn’t arrive clean. It brings cults in the alleys, sermons traded for distractions, and gods that suddenly feel distant. Cardinal Lucien Mallow watches his congregation shrink as people swap worship for leisure, novelty, and “better answers.” Some of his flock have joined the Church of the Human Spark, which claims humanity created the Gods by believing in them—heresy, pushed underground by the government, but still growing even among the nobility.
And what keeps Cardinal Lucien awake isn’t just the heresy—it’s the rumor of something worse: a cult of the God of Enlightenment, promising secret knowledge that could reshape society overnight. Meanwhile, the old-line religions report “glitches” in their communion, like the gods are losing the ability to empower their miracles. If the divine is failing, someone will try to replace it—by law, by ideology, or by force.
Valedorn’s future is being fought over in every corner. The highborne, orderborne, and loreborne snap at each other for control while smaller communities keep their heads down. Guilds and opportunists profit by selling secrets and lies. Wanderers move information like contraband across borders. And clanks—engineered, purpose-built slave beings—are the nightmare at the center of the old faiths’ fear: that the gods will fade… and some other power will rush in to replace them.
In a realm where every faction is trying to steer the future—and every rumor can become a weapon—you will have to choose who you trust, what you believe, and what you’re willing to risk when the truth finally breaks through and the old order can’t hold.
