Tabula Aetheris
Introduction
"Before the stars found their fire, the Aether Paths had already carved their course. To follow them is to trace the answers to questions the cosmos asked before its creation."
Aether. The fifth element.
Once, it was the spine of ancient understanding; the breath between miracles. Philosophers spoke of it in whispers, as the pulse beneath the world’s fragile skin, the quiet thread behind every spark and shadow. To them, Aether was the invisible bond that stitched spirit to matter, life to thought, chaos to form.
But as science rose and truth bent to the rule of measurement, Aether faded. A forgotten idea, cast out from the rational world. And yet, reality still trembles to its rhythm. Beneath the skin of the material world, Aether remains real: the subtle, persistent essence of magic. It flows in unseen currents, the Aether Paths, threading through the Veil that separates spirit from matter. For magic is not madness. It is the world’s quantum breath; the flickering shape of common consensus that holds ruin and order in uneasy balance.
Long ago, this invisible pattern was traced into a living map known as the Tabula Aetheris. A relic that does not just depict the world as it is, but captures its breath. Those who seek it pursue the silk threads of reality, the paths where fate is forged and chance weaves its shadow.
A Legendary Map
The Tabula Aetheris, if it exists at all, is no ordinary map. Scholars argue, but the stories endure. Some say it was carved into bark that cannot die. Others claim bone, or worse still, living skin etched with lines that never stop moving.
Those who claim to have seen it speak of veins glowing faintly with silver and brass light, like something alive and remembering. Its surface pulses softly, reshaping itself with each shift in the world’s Aether flow. Most agree on one thing: it shows a vast, tangled web of paths converging on brilliant nodes known as Nexuses - the places where the paths meet and the Veil is thinnest.
The Compass of Creation
What are the Aether Paths?
Occultists of the old mortal world once called them leylines - hidden streams of energy said to bind sacred sites together. They believed ancient civilizations had tapped into their force, raising monoliths and temples where the lines met. Folklore, pseudo-science, and half-mad whispers circled the idea for centuries. But no mortal theory ever pierced the truth. They saw the footprints of something vast, without ever grasping what had left them.
The Immortals called them Flows of Aether. Their legacy gave them glimpses of truth, but understanding still slipped through their fingers. They knew these currents had shaped their curse, had birthed the twisted force known as Sanguinis, but few sought to understand more. The Flows were something they felt, not studied.
That changed after the Cataclysm.
Now, every vampire understands. Their deepening hunger and their dying Sanguinis magic are not separate afflictions, but twin wounds, both born of the same rupture. The Aether Paths were severed. And with them, the Immortals' gifts began to fray.
Only the mages truly touched the reality of the Paths.
They were the first to name them Aether Paths, not as superstition or memory, but as living, shifting highways of raw magic. They learned to attune themselves to the many expressions of Aether and sense the tension in the Veil where the currents knot and coil through the bones of the world.
Charting the Unknown
Call them what you will: the Aether Paths, the Flows, the veins of the world. One of the few things both mages and Immortals agree upon is this: someone, long ago, charted the unchartable. They mapped the currents of raw magic.
Whether it was miracle, madness, or something in between, the result was a relic whispered about in equal parts reverence and fear: the Tabula Aetheris. If it ever truly existed, it would be the most profound document ever crafted - a living blueprint of reality’s breath.
Its origins fracture across time and faction. To each who speaks of it, the story shifts, twisted by memory and belief. But in this age of collapse and desperation, one thing remains constant across all who know of it:
Everyone wants to find it first.
A Shattered Oath
The Immortals claim the legendary map was shaped by the hands of the Primordials - first of the mages, and the cursed ancestors of all vampiric kind.
Long before their blood learned to spell hunger, the four were seekers. Scholars of magic, when it still roamed the world free of reason's restictions. They walked where Aether flowed and the world whispered back. Tabula Aetheris was their legacy: a record of how the world breathes beneath its skin. To protect it, they swore an oath: it would be used only to deepen their understanding of the cosmos and nothing else.
Yet, after a while, understanding was not enough.
Pride forced them to reach for eternity. They performed a ritual meant to sever death from consequence. It worked. And on the same time, it failed. The four became the Primordials; undying, yes, but exiled from Aether's ebbs and flows. They knew what was coming next. The mages would turn on them. So they tore the map in four, each taking a piece before vanishing into the eternal dark.
Now, after the Cataclysm, the Primordials are gone, and so are the fragments of their creation. Some claim one was destroyed when Keiji, one of the four, was murdered. Others whisper that another sank with its bearer in the trenches of the world. As for the other two?
Their fate remains a mystery.
The Fifth Pillar
To the mages, the Tabula Aetheris is more than a relic. It is the holy grail of magical mastery: a map not of geography, but of truth.
According to legend, the map was last housed at the heart of the Eternal Axis: the Ancient Library of Alexandria. It is said that within its ever-changing layers, the Tabula held the key to something long whispered but never proven: the Fifth Pillar. Mastery over Aether itself. The source. The bridge between the beginning and the end.
To attune to the Fifth Pillar, it is said, would be to transcend the limits of all the others; Matter. Spirit. Continuum. Chaos. One who mastered Aether could weave all strands of magic without fear of Wyld Surges, without sacrifice.
Such power would have rewritten the laws of the world, so the Eternal Axis guarded it with their lives. Until the flames came.
The library was reduced to ruin. The Axis was shattered and the Tabula Aetheris was never seen again. Some say it was stolen by Ozymandias, the mage blamed for the burning, but few believe that tale. If he had it, the world would have felt it.
Still, no mage is naïve enough to believe the map was simply lost to fire. Power like that does not burn. And relics like that cannot be destroyed.
Only hidden.
Hide & Seek
“Power like this never stays buried. It claws its way back through the cracks, calling the desperate and the damned alike.”
The Tabula Aetheris is no longer just a whisper of long forgotten tongues. It is a blade of hope sharp enough to slay fate. Covens stalk the ruins, driven by the bitter need to mend the shattered Aether Paths before madness consumes them. Vampires prowl the endless night, their claws digging through shadows, chasing the unlikely promise of lost power rediscovered and endless hunger quenched. And the mortal survivors - fragile ghosts amid ash and ruin - scrape through the wreckage, clutching at any sliver of hope the map might hide.
All eyes now turn to the Nexuses, the fragile crossroads where the Aether Paths converge, and the Veil is thinnest. To grasp the Tabula Aetheris is to trace these bleeding scars and hold the key to the world's destiny. But every hand that reaches for it risks awakening powers long torpid. Every step deeper into the chase tightens the noose around a world already strangled by its own ruin. This is a game of hide and seek with the unknown, played in hungry shadows where truth is an illusion and hope remains a lie.
Why they Hunt
The Mages
The Tabula Aetheris is their last prayer. Not a quest for dominion, but the final chance of survival.
The only way to anchor reality before the Veil tears beyond repair, and all structure falls into screaming chaos.
The Immortals
The map, in theory, promises a way to quiet the endless thirst and reclaim their lost power of Sanguinis.
But each shadow they claw through brings them closer to something older, and far less merciful than death.
The Survivors
Their hunt is not for glory. It is for silence. For breath.
For one untouched place to outlast the end.
The Last Thread
No one knows who will find the Tabula Aetheris first.
Perhaps it has already been found.
Perhaps it is already been destroyed.
Maybe it remains lost, still remembering the hands that crafted it - the oaths broken, the covenants that were burned. Maybe it waits for someone brave enough, or foolish enough, to follow the veins of the world to their final breath.
And if they do?
If someone stitches the map back together, follows its pulse to every Nexus, traces every scar left by the Cataclysm...
Who can say if the world will break beyond repair when this happens?
Or perhaps, just perhaps, it will start anew.
Read Next
You've done it again, you keep doing this oh my goodness. I felt them, the fears, the hopes, the greeds, the desires. I felt and understood each group fundamentally. However its more than that. I felt it. I felt the world breathing as I read this. I felt and believed it. Bought in fully. You describe it so beautifully, paint the imagery with sincerity and depth that one can't help but believe. Fantastic work, truly wonderous. And this also tickles the Gamemaster in me. What an epic glorious spanning quest, what a hook for a long, lengthy TTRPG campaign of some kind. The overarching hook, the thing, the headsman's axe over a party's adventures, the constant goal in the back of their mind beyond each of their subsequent explorations as they move through a weeping, raging, bleeding and dying world. The potential, it is limitless. What an experience that could be crafted, simply from this one piece of lore, this one idea and the setting writ large. It would be truly marvelous! Well done again Imagica, I simply must add the stories of this to my collection, perhaps in hope that one day the chance my exist for some group or storied individuals, to make an attempt at finding it.
You are an awesome person <3 Thank you and I am still thrilled you like my work here so much! You give me a great amount of extra motivation! And as I told you, I really hope I can turn this world into a game soon. You'll be of the first to know!