An Index of the Archive of Ys Talovar

The Compendium of Information

 

There’s a silence where the Calamity should be.   Ask a hundred elders what happened and you’ll get a hundred answers. Fire that swallowed the sky. Oceans that screamed. A clock that ticked backward until time broke in two.   But no one remembers the moment itself. Just the aftermath. The hunger. The ruins. The strange ways people changed.   It wasn’t just ruin. It was forgetting. Whole cities didn’t just fall—they got rewritten. Paper turned to ash. Ash became rumor. Rumor settled into law.   People looked away. The ones who didn’t? Eventually, they did.   But I can’t. Some of us can’t.   So I gather what I can. Half-faded property deeds. Stew recipes that changed with every generation. Names carved into stone and then scratched out again. Lies. Truths. The stuff in between.   Some of it was buried on purpose. Some of it just slipped. Dances no one teaches. Gods we stopped calling because they stopped answering.   This archive isn’t perfect. It never will be. But it’s something. It belongs to me. To you. To Ys Talovar—or what’s left of her.   Let them lie beside each other. Let them be remembered.  

— —Arch Scholar Anneas

 

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What You’ve Stepped Into

  It’s been 20,000 years since the Hazard was sealed in the molten heart of the world—an act that cracked continents, carved glaciers across the equator, and left behind a haunted, howling scar.   From the great ice-chasm, the breath of ancient monsters still rises. It curls through abandoned ruins. It whispers into the minds of those who stray too close. Most think the stories are just that—campfire smoke and snow-wind myths, passed down in north and south cities, where progress is faster than memory and ambition builds over old bones.   But now, the past is clawing back.   Rumors spread of five lost artifacts—fragments of myth, said to have been used in sealing (or perhaps *creating*) the Calamity. Some say they should be locked away. Others say they should be assembled.   And you?   You might not even believe in them. Yet.   This is a Dungeons & Dragons campaign driven by roleplay, choice, and consequence.   The question isn’t whether the Calamity returns. It’s whether you’ll be the ones who bring it back.  

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Start Here

Excerpt from a loose page folded into the back cover. The ink is smudged at the corners.   If you’re holding this, you’re either looking for answers, or desperate enough to pretend they exist.   The archive’s a mess. It always will be. But if you're searching for the shape of what we were—and maybe still could be—this is where to begin:   Civilizations That Rose from the Ashes The survivors. The re-inventors. These are the cultures that clawed their way back after everything cracked. Some rebuilt what they had. Some became something else entirely.    

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What This Archive Contains

  Geography, Ruins, and Realms Preserved maps and memories of the lands of Ver’Domnir—fractured kingdoms, nameless wilds, and ancient places still echoing with power. For surveyors, exiles, settlers, and the brave.   Cultures, Kinlines, and Creatures From beastfolk to calamity beasts. From treaties to lullabies. Every people, monster, and myth we could chase down or steal back from forgetting.   The Divine, the Damned, and the Left-Behind Gods that ink themselves into stories. Oaths that twist through bloodlines. Spirits that outlast reason. If it's older than memory or stranger than truth, it’s filed here. Probably.  

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Contribute to the Archive

  If you’ve got something—anything—worth saving, send it.   A letter. A dream. A name. A warning. A drawing. A chant you half-remember from childhood.   Label what you can. Date what you remember. No story is too small. No curse too strange. Let them lie beside each other. Let them be remembered.   Some things must be preserved. Even now. Especially now.