Kelister
The sun is going out over a golden kingdom, and the dead wake at the last Lamp they rested by. You just woke up.
- Soulslike
- Dark fantasy
- Undead
- Boss fights
dark fantasy 1 memberBuilt by Worldtable
The sun over Kelister has sunk to a red coal on the rim of the sky, and the dead no longer stay dead: anyone the curse has marked wakes again at the last Lamp they rested by. The golden capital is a ruin full of the risen, the church wants your soul for its furnace, and the five great ones who hold the pieces of the sun are waiting in their halls for someone to come up the stairs.
Where it all began
the Binding of the Sun
A thousand years ago King Frohn of Kelister broke the empire of Traneron and made a bargain with Ninasur, the sun: the kingdom would burn its dead on Ninasur's altars, every soul of them, and in return the sun would never set on Kelister. For seven hundred years it was noon. Then the sun dimmed, the first of the dead got up, and King Tien walked into the great furnace of Albore and burned to light it again. That was three hundred years ago. Now the sun is going out for good, the Mark of the curse is on one person in ten, and the five pieces of the sun that Frohn's lords carried away, the Sparks, sit in the hearts of things that are no longer quite people.
The lands
Gatland
the Pilgrim March
red-lit farm country on the pilgrim road, where the marked are walled up in the Asylum
Gatland is where the curse is first noticed. The farms still work under the red sky, but every town has a bell for the marked, and the Haydon Watch carts anyone who wakes from death up to the Asylum on the hill. Pilgrims who get out walk the old road east toward the cathedral, past the Lamp at Feldon where the first fire anyone sees is kept.
Elzburg
the Golden City
the ruined capital, gold leaf on every gate and the risen in every street
Elzburg was the most beautiful city in the world and it still is, from a distance: gold roofs, white bridges, statues of the king's lords sixty feet tall. Up close it is full of the dead, who still go about their business, sweeping streets that no one walks, guarding gates no one attacks. Queen Brinen keeps court in the Sun Palace, and her courtiers have been dead for two hundred years.
Marl
the Rotting Fen
a poisoned swamp of stilt-villages, burning water and a kiln that never goes out
The Marl is a fen poisoned from below: something deep in the mud is burning, and the water steams, stinks and in places catches fire. The fenfolk live on stilts above it, pull their ladders up at night, and send their daughters down to tend the old witch Lanemi in her kiln, because if she stops burning they believe the whole fen will freeze and die.
Kaldre
the Frozen Height
snowbound giant country kept alive by one dying giant's heat
Kaldre froze when the sun sank, and it would be dead if not for Borgrim, the last giant king, who swallowed his lord's Spark to keep his people warm. He lies under the mountain at Jarnstad, too huge and too weak to rise, and the heat of his body runs the forges and warms the halls of the Vald. When his heartbeat slows the whole town goes quiet and listens.
Wendalter
the Cathedral Country
the Kindling Church's holy land, its great furnace and the Hunt that guards it
Wendalter is the Kindling Church's country, and every road in it leads to Albore, where the great furnace has burned day and night for a thousand years on the bodies of the dead. Pilgrims arrive by the hundred, are welcomed, blessed and told they are chosen; the Hunt patrols the streets at night for the ones who are fading into beasts, and the cathedral's bell rings for each soul fed to the fire.
Lesontium
the Drowned City
the old empire's last city, half under the sea, and the flooded Academy beneath it
Lesontium is the old empire of Traneron's last city, built in terraces down a sea cliff and half of it underwater. The survivors live on the dry upper steps at Gemona and ferry between rooftops; below the waterline the streets are still lit, the Drowned Academy still holds lessons for students who drowned in their seats, and its Rector is still in the library, holding the books up out of the water.
Who you can be
Human
The people of Kelister: farmers of the Gatland, burghers of the dead capital, pilgrims, priests, sellswords and scavengers. They are pale from a lifetime of red evening light, wear their hair long against the cold, and keep a burned candle-end in their pocket for luck. Humans bear the Mark more often than any other people, and every family has someone who went up to the Asylum and never came down. They bury nothing; the dead are burned or they get up again. Lifespan about 70 years, if the curse lets them stop. Best at: anything they put their back into, faith, and refusing to give up.
Vald
Giant-blooded folk of Kaldre, the children of the old giants who served King Frohn. A grown Vald stands eight feet tall, with grey skin that cracks in the cold like river ice and hands the size of shovels. They are slow to speak, slow to anger and very hard to stop once they've started. Vald smiths make the heavy iron of Kelister, and Vald warriors once carried the king's doors on their backs to war. Every Vald wears a ring of iron through one ear, forged by their own hand on the day they first lifted a hammer. Lifespan about 200 years. Best at: brute strength, heavy weapons, enduring cold and wounds; poor with sorcery.
Fenfolk
Small, broad, long-armed people of the Marl, with yellow-green eyes, webbed toes and skin that smells faintly of peat. Generations of living beside the rot have made them able to eat what would kill an outsider and breathe the fen-gas for an hour without harm. They are blunt, superstitious and fiercely loyal to their mothers, and every fenfolk village is ruled by its eldest woman. They carve little reed charms for the dead and drop them into the water so the drowned know someone still thinks of them. Lifespan about 90 years. Best at: resisting poison and rot, pyromancy, moving through marsh and mud, and knowing which water will kill you.
Traneron-born
The last descendants of the empire Kelister broke, tall and narrow, with grey-blue lips, eyes the colour of seawater and fingers a joint too long. They live mostly in the half-drowned terraces of Lesontium, where their ancestors' city went under the sea, and they still write in the old empire's square letters. Many trained at the Drowned Academy before it flooded; the rest scavenge its pages. They are courteous, proud, and quietly certain that the Binding of the Sun was a theft. They feel cold before anyone else and hold their breath for an astonishingly long time. Lifespan about 300 years. Best at: sorcery, scholarship and old tongues; physically frail.
Lurthirare
A small people from the dark below Kelister, about four feet tall and slim, with a hard pale shell over the shoulders and back and a smooth face they hide behind a mask carved from their own first moulted shell. Their eyes are black, they see in total darkness, and sunlight makes them squint and tire. They came up through the deep wells of Lesontium and the sewers of Elzburg a century ago, when something in the deep began to drive them out, and they have been traders, guides and thieves on the surface ever since. They are quick, curious, terribly polite and never take off their masks in company. Lifespan about 120 years. Best at: darkness, climbing, quick blades and getting into places they shouldn't.
Magic
Beyond the gates
- Tisza's Painting. a snowbound painted country inside a huge canvas in the Sun Palace, where Kelister sent the people it wanted forgotten; its painter is still somewhere inside