A god broke here, and the land still rings.

The silt-grey basin where you begin — Valenfeld town in the long shadow of the barrow that holds Sunder's Echo, ringed by the wind-scoured eastern hills.

The grass-shouldered crag west of the Vale where House Redran has clung since the Imperium fell — a half-ruined dynastic seat above catacombs where not all the dead rest.

A country of mesas and dead-end gorges threaded by the old barrow road, where the dusk-wind hums an almost-word and the Urshilaku read the land to navigate it.

A black-basalt killing country of ash drifts and fumarole fields, ruled from above by the Emberthrone — a living fire-mountain with a lava lake burning in its crown.

The green inland sea of the south shore — home of the scaled Hessk, the free-port of Sresh-Dar, and shrines you swim down into when the tide bares the sunken stair.

The cold stone country of the Stoneborn, who quarry the bones of the dead Imperium. Beneath it lies Caer Vallen — the shattered seat where the Sundering broke.

The Gaunt Ledger's relic-thieves and information-brokers — the guild that knows where everything is, and the way in for a thief.

Sorcerer-scholars who would learn the Sundering's song and, in the end, play it. The arcane player's door.

The neutral sword every power in the Vale hires and none of them trusts — the martial player's door into the relic war.

Druids and rangers who'd let the echoes fade back into the cycle rather than bind, sell, or wield them.

A militant reform faith that holds the echoes are a sickness — the past refusing to die — to be bound and silenced by sacred craft.

Ascetic monks whose answer to terrible found power is to want nothing — and so the only faction beholden to no power.

Relic-runners and echo-brokers who'll weigh anything the Sundering left behind — Sunder's Echo included — and pay without a flicker.

Coastal smugglers who'd sell the relic to whoever pays, and the law to whoever pays more. They run the free-port of Sresh-Dar.

The failing minor Great House clinging to Valenfeld's silver rights — all banners and no coin.

Soft orthodoxy that wants the relic studied, sanctified, and locked away — for everyone's good, they insist.

Grief-keepers who tend the Vale's restless dead and want the echoes — Sunder's Echo included — sung back to silence.

Nomads who hold the barrow sacred and the settlers profane — keepers of the relic's oldest name.

Scholar-sorcerers who mean to wield the echoes, Sunder's Echo most of all, whatever it costs.

Frontier officers enforcing the law of a capital that may not exist anymore — betting everything on proof the old mandate still rings true.

The shattered seat of the Vallen Imperium under the northern Rampart, where the Sundering broke and Sunder's Echo was raised and shattered in the same hour — and where the Vallen Sentinel has now woken.

A dozen ash-brick buildings at the end of the old Imperium road, permanently hazed by the Emberthrone — the only real foothold in the Emberwaste.

A silt-grey frontier town in a flat basin, clinging to silver rights and the barrow's long shadow. Where you begin.

The Vale's great crossing-town, terraced above the Vellen gorge where the imperial span carries every road east. The hub where the Lances, the College and the Finders all keep a hall.

The Silt Hands' walled free-port on the south shore of the Mirrenmere — the Vale's only real city, answering to no banner but its own ledger.

A reed-and-plank fishing village on stilts where the Vellen spends itself into the lake, quietly in the Silt Hands' pocket.

Wind-scoured ridges east of town, hiding the Echo of Vallen and older, hungrier things.

A hidden black-market under the Vellenmouth wharves where the Gaunt Ledger fences echoes, relics, and worse — bright, busy, and quietly armed.

A shard of the weapon that broke a god and then broke its keeper, humming in the dark of the barrow. Every power in the Vale wants it.

The longsword the last Imperator of Vallen drew as his city came down — a blow begun at the instant of the Sundering and, in the echo set into the blade, never quite finished falling.

A begging bowl whose entire power is that it wants nothing — and teaches its carrier, for a while, to want nothing either. Echoes find no purchase in a hand that isn't reaching.

Amber sap distilled by the Sap-Drinkers — the one known brake on the Long Ring. It quiets the ringing in a crystal-carrier's bones, and roots the drinker a little deeper every dose.

The long-dead gravesinger who sang himself past death rather than into it — the first to bear the Ash-Tongue name, and the lich enthroned at the top of his own stair.

A shard holding half of a binding that was never finished — a Mourner's last note, cut off mid-breath. It steadies a mind the dead are trying to crowd out.