🕯
The Light
The settlers' own church, exiled with them, keeping the homeland's faith alive in the high places.
- Leader
- Mother Ada
- Seat
- Lanternfall Abbey, in the Lanternfall Peaks
- Who finds you
- A wounded courier from Westwatch
✎ The beginning, rewritten
The land you remember drowned.
If you played the old game, you know where the road starts. That town is gone, and so is the harbour. This is who lives there now, and why they came.
Across the ocean there was a homeland. You won't find it on any chart now. A curse took it. It wasn't weather and it wasn't war, and it dragged that country under the waves a little more every year while its people built ships.
The ones who made it across landed at a river mouth and did the only sensible thing: they broke up the ships. Every plank was tallied and carted over the river to raise a city of oak. The great hulls still lie beached at Newport, stripped to their ribs, and the crews with saws and pry bars are still at it.
Across the water, Oakhaven grew up behind its walls: Charter Square, the Wayfarers' Hall, the Drowsy Oar. Below the south wall the low quarter flooded and stayed flooded, and they called it Oakhollow. The river took its name from the wives who waited on the bank for the first boatmen: Widow's Run. The families who came last from the war across the sea built the Hearthward, longhouses named for the villages they lost.
Ten years on, the settlers have adventurers again. Three powers in this new land want them.
Oakhaven, straight off the in-game town map.
⚖ Choose a side
Three powers. One tug-of-war.
Each of them will find you around level ten. Each of them has a job for you, and the jobs don't agree.
⚖
The Balance
Far older than the settlers. A silent arbiter who weighs every new people that washes up on this shore.
- Leader
- The Grey Arbiter
- Seat
- Driftkeep
- Who finds you
- A hooded traveller in the Drowsy Oar
🏰
The Dark
A settler-born noble who sold the crossing's survivors to something older, and now offers them a place as his subjects.
- Leader
- Lord Malgrave
- Seat
- Grimharrow
- Who finds you
- A one-eyed informer in the Rusty Hook
Rumour has itThe curse wasn't weather or war at all. It was the first verse of something, and whoever spoke it made the crossing too.
🗺 Places you'll want to know
Around the oak city
Newport
Where you step off the ferry. Shipbreakers' Yard, Chandlers' Row, the Bosun's Hall for drills, and a fighting pit under Tar Street.
Oakhaven
The city of oak. Charter Bank, the Wayfarers' Hall, Brannoc's Armoury, the Gilded Anchor if you feel lucky, and the Drowsy Oar if you feel thirsty.
The Hearthward
The newest quarter, around the Ever-Hearth. Fenmoor, Saltreach, Kelmarsh and Harrowdale longhouses. Talk to the locals; they notice things.
Oakhollow
The drowned quarter under the south wall, and the tall black house the street won't talk about.
The Ship Graveyard
A spit of shingle heaped with wrecks, and the fog of the Mists at its heart. The Horned Crew hold the beached galleon. Worse lies in the hold.
The Undercity Drains
The settlers' brick tunnels, with oak roots through the vaults. The lower level's oldest stones are older than the city above them.
The Elderwild
The great wood beyond the walls, with the Elder Grove and its Ancient Elder Tree. Somebody keeps seeing lights out there.
Cemetery & Mausoleum
Across the bridge. The founders lie in the mausoleum, and the realm's greatest players are cut into the gravestones.
Widow's Run
The river itself. Keep an eye on the waterfall. People have started talking about a burning bird.
🩸 Orders and oaths
The Bloodsworn
The Order of the Crimson Flame was founded to hunt witches. It rotted from the cells it kept. A prisoner who spoke for the Crimson Master, the Blood God, taught its wardens blood sacrifice, and the order's Knight-Commander, Lord Cambron, took the sacrament and became the Champion of Blood. Half the order followed him to the Cathedral of Blood.
The first night Cambron offered prisoners on his altar, twelve of his own knights cut their palms and swore on their own blood, to no god at all, and cut their way out. They are the Twelve. Blood given to an oath can't be taken by any god or any spell, and the Bloodsworn have carried that oath ever since.
“My blood is my oath, and my oath is my life.”
The Bloodsworn class →★ Overheard at the Drowsy Oar
Rumours
- The old well in the Hearthward was here before the settlers were. Nobody can say who dug it.
- The Horned Crew were corsairs once, until they looted a shrine they should have left alone and woke up with the heads of bulls.
- A crippled adventurer in the Ship Graveyard knows the trick of three doors. He'll tell anyone who asks.
- The river carries a widow's name. Some say it opens doors.
- There's a hooded man in the corner who gives his name if you talk to him. That isn't all he has to say.
Don't fall asleep at the keysRead what the NPCs say. The quests in this realm are written into the conversations, not the help files.
✎ The ledger
If you played the old game
The layout under your feet is the one you remember. The names on the signs are not. A few to get you started:
| Was | Now | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Silvermere | Oakhaven | The starting city |
| Newhaven | Newport | The docks, where the settlers' ships are broken up |
| Town Square / Town Gates | Charter Square / City Gates | Oakhaven |
| Adventurer's Guild | Wayfarers' Hall | Oakhaven |
| Bank of Godfrey | Charter Bank | Oakhaven |
| Homely Hearth / Wailing Hound | The Drowsy Oar / The Rusty Hook | Oakhaven taverns |
| Mayor Godfrey / Sheriff Lionheart | Mayor Penhallow / Sheriff Marrock | Oakhaven |
| Slums | Oakhollow | Below the south wall |
| Graveyard / Crypt | Cemetery / Mausoleum | Across the bridge |
| Sewer Tunnels | Undercity Drains / Rootdrain | Under Oakhaven |
| Island / Labyrinth | Ship Graveyard / The Mists | The river island |
| Darkwood Forest | The Elderwild | Realm-wide |
| Woodard's Orchards | Nathan's Orchard | The Elderwild ring |
| Khazarad / Kele'thin | Ironhallow / Silverbough | Realm-wide |
More areas are renamed with every update. MegaMud and MudPlay data ship with each pass, so your paths keep working.