the Ember Highlands
Gurhal
The ember highlands. Here, mountains are ancestors and lava is their blood.
Ruvok, Vorgal
the Ears of the Sky
the Zahreth Spires
A cliff people. They see lightning as writing. They touch a storm only with permission.
Azrieth, Kestrel
the Forest of Fast Seasons
the Olumre Weald
A forest. Here, seasons pass in weeks. Bloom and rot live side by side.
Elowen, Ravel
the Exchange of Time
the Free City of Tavellin
A city full of golden gears. Here, time is sold at interest.
Thessaly, Torvan
the Held Dusk
Hesperra
A coastal land. The sun has hung frozen mid-sunset for 405 years. Lantern and night split the land in two.
Orenna, Vesper
the Plateau of Banners
the Askaran Hegemony
A soldier empire. It stitches every name onto a banner and writes its history in canals.
Dorrik, Kaedra
Season 1: The Red Count
Counting is never innocent. Devran has counted everything for eight hundred years. Now it begins to count the one thing it must not. The year's question: is writing something into the ledger the same as letting it in?
- Act IThe Missing Swing
- Act IIDue
- Act IIIThe Blank Oath
- Act IVThe Night the Pendulum Stopped
The central mystery
Who built the Arena? Why must the fighting never stop? What is the number kept by the House of Count really counting?
The Dial
A map of Devran
Every great river rises in Kadrun and flows uphill. These six rivers are called the Six Arms. The Six Arms feed the six lands.
Dem is time in solid form. Everything that changes spends Dem. A river spends it to flow, a flower to bloom, a wound to close. Water carries Dem. That is why the waters of Devran glow turquoise. Frozen Dem is crystal.
All the great rivers of Devran rise in Kadrun. They flow outward and uphill. These six rivers are called the Six Arms. The Six Arms feed the six lands. On the Velun Dial map, the world looks like a clock face. The Arena is at the center, and the lands sit where the hours are.
When Dem stops flowing, everything stops. This is called the Stillness. The Stillness is not death. It is a total lack of motion. People caught by it stay frozen mid-step or mid-sentence. They are called the Stilled. Once, the whole world stood still. The calendar starts from that day.
The Arena is a machine. It makes Dem when two opposing wills collide. Every match is a Swing. The champions of the winning team pour their shares of Dem into their oaths. The Six Arms lean toward those shares. The Arena decides which land will see spring.
The hub
the Arena: The court where the sand turns
The Arena lies in Kadrun, at the very heart of Devran. The forest has swallowed this old Velun ruin. The Velun were an old civilization that lived before the Stillness. The name Arena comes from the Velun word arrena. It means "the court where the hourglass turns." People call the world the Arena's world. Everything changes, but the Arena alone stays the same.
Two Weights stand at the two ends of the Arena. The Weights are the base crystals of the two teams: the blue Dawn Weight and the red Dusk Weight. Three lanes run between them. Stone towers called Menhirs guard the lanes. The Caught roam the forests. The River of Dem flows through the middle. When a Weight falls, the pendulum tips. Dem flows into the rivers called the Six Arms. If the Arena sees no match for forty days, the Arms run dry. Then the Stillness walks in from the shores.
There are no flags in the Arena, only oaths. An oath is a champion's pledge of loyalty to a patron. The five champions of one team may hold oaths to five different lands. Their alliance lasts only one Swing, one match. A champion who dies in the Arena is rewound and returns at the fountain. But each time, they lose one moment of memory.
Dawn Weight
The blue base crystal. It is one end of the pendulum. It is neither the good side nor the evil side.
Dusk Weight
The red base crystal. It is the other end of the pendulum.
Rewind Pool
The base fountain. A fallen champion is rewound here.
Menhirs
The towers that guard the lanes. Their bodies are carved stone. A crystal in the team's color glows on top. Their trim is dark steel, with no gold.
Prisms
Low stone altars at the mouths of the lanes. The Velun used them for counting.
the Sleeping Face
A giant stone face and hands buried under the lanes. During the Skip, when the Arena stopped for a moment, it opened its eyes.
River of Dem
A shallow turquoise river that cuts across Kadrun. The Six Arms rise here. In 1248 AS, the year of the Red Count, the Dem grows heavy. It darkens like embers and forms a crust. This is the Red Current.
Kordrak Pit
A pit full of scorched stone. An ember drake caught in the Arena's loop lives inside.
Ossara Pit
A pit full of piles of bone. The mother of the wolf packs lives here.
House of Count
The neutral clerks on the edge of Kadrun. They count the Swings, the matches, and record the oaths.
Rules of the world
Magic redirects, it never creates
Every spell speeds Dem up, slows it down or turns it aside. A storm is sped-up air. Healing is sped-up mending. Rot is sped-up decay. Rust is the time of iron. A shield is a slowed-down blow.
Spent Dem does not return
Only the Arena makes Dem. Every spell takes a piece of the world's shared time. That is why some lands call mages time thieves.
Magic leaves marks
A body that uses much Dem ages strangely. Hair turns white at a young age. Someone young by the calendar lives in an old body.
Technology rests on matter
Powder, gears, lenses and canals need no mage. They leave no one in anyone's debt. That makes technology a political power. But inside a Stillmark, a local patch of Stillness, not even a spark will catch.
Death is final outside the Arena
The Rewind works only inside the Arena. No content may bring resurrection or immortality. The only exception may come from the Stillness. That is because the Stillness is not death.
No one turns back time at scale
Rewinding time in a small place, for a short while, is possible. The one who rewinds pays the price.
The Forty Days Rule
If the Arena sees no match for forty days, the Six Arms run dry. Then the Stillness begins to spread. That is why the Arena never falls silent.
Now
The conflict so far
The Oath Peace is cracking. Askaran marched on Gurhal, claiming to bring order. But its real target is the ember-stone inside the lava. Askaran pays for the campaign with Dem borrowed from Tavellin. Tavellin lends to everyone and buys up oaths. It wants to keep the count itself, instead of the House of Count.
Hesperra has been split in two for 405 years. A dusk that never ends hangs over it. The Stillness plague is growing in Olumre. Zahreth's storms are writing strange words. And in 1247 AS, the Arena skipped for the first time.
Season: The Skip
In 1247 AS, during the 4,471,330th Swing, the Sleeping Face opens its eyes and all of Devran stops for one heartbeat.
- Hesperra's 405-year-old sun sinks by one finger.
- The Stilled young woman Vesper is sworn to blinks.
- The storm in Azrieth's staff speaks a single word.
- Tavellin's Great Pendulum falls one Swing behind; Queen Oriane finishes her half sentence: "The count is false."
- Vorgal hears a heartbeat from the direction of Tavellin; every Heartmountain groans at once.
- The House of Count announces a Swing in its ledger that no one fought. The Missing Swing.
Reading
Stories
Short stories that tell the season's events from the inside.
A Blink in the Dusk
For four hundred and five years she had been taking the same step. For one heartbeat, she closed her eyes. Vesper was there. So was Orenna.
The Queen's Last Syllable
For eleven years Queen Oriane has sat on her throne, frozen mid-sentence. At the moment of the Skip, the day the world stopped for an instant, she finished her syllable.
The Uncounted Swing
For eight hundred years the House of Count has counted every Swing. On the 4,471,330th, a bead would not slide.
History
Timeline
Age of the Winders
9999 BS – 1501 BS
It lives only in legend. Those who first wound up the world lived in this age. Their only trace is the winding hand in Velun inscriptions.
Velun Age
1500 BS – 1 BS
The Velun build maze-like cities. They draw the Dial map. They mine Dem crystal and raise giant statues.
1500 BS
The Dial Map
The Velun draw the world's map like a clock face. Kadrun is at the center, and the lands sit where the hours are.
the Stillness
0 AS
The whole world stands still. No one can measure how long it lasted. The calendar starts from this moment.
0 AS
The Stillness
Devran stops. People believe the Velun turned to stone.
Years of Awakening
1 AS – 409 AS
The Arena swings for the first time. The Six Arms begin to flow. Peoples thaw land by land.
1 AS
The First Swing
The Arena swings for the first time. The Six Arms begin to flow uphill.
Age of the Count
410 AS – 839 AS
The House of Count is founded. Askaran and Tavellin are born.
410 AS
The House of Count is founded
Clerks who thawed from the Stillness settle on the edge of Kadrun. They begin counting the Swings, the matches.
411 AS
The House of Count's First Close
A year after its founding, the House of Count closes its first yearly ledger. Since then, oaths fall every year. Champions swear their oaths again each year.
612 AS
The Askaran Hegemony
The plateau fortresses unite under one banner. The First Banner is raised.
690 AS
The Dem Exchange opens
Tavellin begins putting a price on time. It takes people's years in pledge.
839 AS
The First Lantern is lit
In Hesperra, someone whose name no one knows lights a lantern. The lantern burns turquoise. Three days later the sun will freeze.
the Dam Wars
840 AS – 1179 AS
The lands build dams and start stealing the water of the Arms. Hesperra's sun freezes. Plague begins in Olumre.
842 AS
The Held Dusk
The Kurran Dam cuts off the water of the Hesperra Arm. The sun freezes on the horizon as it sets. Those caught in the open become the Dusk Dead.
1101 AS
The Pale Belt
The Stillness plague begins in southern Olumre. The sick first slow down, then stop.
Age of Oaths
1180 AS – 1247 AS
The Oath Peace is signed. Building dams on the Arms is now forbidden. Dem can be won only in the Arena. The Oath Market opens.
1180 AS
The Oath Peace
Every land signs a pact at the House of Count. No dams on the Arms. Dem only through the Arena. The Oath Market opens.
1187 AS
The Great Pendulum
Tavellin builds a giant pendulum inside a glass tower. What stone is its weight made of? The Council records do not say.
1190 AS
A six-year-old girl stops
The plague reaches the Mother Tree's village. Little Elowen stops where she stands, in the middle of a game.
1195 AS
Forty years in pledge
Harbor worker Torvan pledges forty years of his life to the Dem Exchange for his daughter's medicine.
1220 AS
The Mother Tree blooms
Thirty years later, the Mother Tree blooms out of season. Elowen wakes.
1231 AS
The Ember Campaign
Askaran marches on Gurhal, claiming to bring order.
1233 AS
The escaped bone-wolf
One of the Caught escapes the Arena. The Caught are creatures trapped in the Arena's loop. This creature kills the Falconer Sirel while she carries mail across Zahreth's northern ridges. Her daughter Kestrel finds her.
1236 AS
The Queen's half sentence
Clock Queen Oriane stops in the middle of a sentence on her throne. Seventeen-year-old Thessaly Mirandel is crowned.
1238 AS
The Black Plague of Greenmere
The Stillness plague moves toward the forest. A Black Physician stops it with a cloud of rot. The village of Greenmere dies, but the forest survives.
1239 AS
A Digger in debt
Olvek of the Powder Guild cannot pay his debt to Tavellin. So he goes into the Rust Prisons.
1241 AS
Ughrak bleeds
Askaran gunners blast the slope of Ughrak to find ember-stone. The slope begins to bleed. Something walks out of the mountain.
1244 AS
The stolen storm
Apprentice reader Azrieth sees a storm. The prophecy says it will destroy her eyrie. Azrieth traps the storm in her staff. For this, she is sent into exile.
1244 AS
The Black Pass
A strange storm rages for three days. Then the Crimson Clans destroy the Ninth Banner. Only one person survives: the standard-bearer Kaedra.
1247 AS
The Skip
During the 4,471,330th Swing, the Sleeping Face opens its eyes. All of Devran stops for one heartbeat. The House of Count finds a strange Swing in its ledger. No one fought in that Swing.
1247 AS
The Counter's Flight
On the night of the Skip, Counter Obelus tears a page from the ledger. Then he vanishes from the House of Count.
Concepts
- Dem
- Time in solid form. Water carries it, and crystal freezes it.
- the Six Arms
- Six rivers that rise in Kadrun. They flow uphill and feed the six lands.
- the Stillness
- The lack of motion that comes when Dem stops. It is not death. A Stillmark is a small, local Stillness.
- the Stilled
- Those caught by the Stillness. They freeze mid-step or mid-sentence.
- Swing
- One match in the Arena. One tip of the pendulum.
- the Weights
- The base crystals of the two teams: the Dawn Weight (blue) and the Dusk Weight (red).
- Oath
- A champion's pledge of loyalty to a patron. The champion sends the Dem they win to this patron. Oaths are bought and sold at the Oath Market.
- the Rewind
- A champion who dies in the Arena is wound back to the fountain. The price is one moment erased from memory.
- Skarns
- Small soldiers the Weights stamp out of memory (minions). They wear big helmets.
- the Caught
- Creatures caught in the Arena's loop and trapped inside. The Falconers hunt the ones that escape.
- the Sleeping Face
- The giant stone face buried under the Arena lanes. It opened its eyes during the Skip.
- House of Count
- The neutral clerks who count the Swings and record the oaths. Their members are called Counters.
- Velun
- A civilization that lived before the Stillness. They built maze-like cities. People believe they turned to stone in the Stillness.
- the Winders
- In legend, those who first wound up the world. They left only one trace: the winding hand in Velun inscriptions.
- the Skip
- The moment in 1247 AS when the Arena stopped for one heartbeat. The Season 1 preseason begins with it.
- the Missing Swing
- A Swing written in the ledger of the House of Count that no one ever fought.
- the Unfrozen
- The ancestors of today's peoples. They thawed land by land after the Stillness.
- the Ledger's Close
- At the last Swing of each year, the House of Count closes the year's ledger. It has done so every year since 411 AS. That night every oath falls. Champions swear their oaths again at the new year's first Swing. It is the busiest night of the Oath Market.
- the Waking Seal
- A seal that has glowed like an ember on the stones of Kadrun since the Skip. It also shows in the Velun script on Vorgal's neck. It is a double-ringed circle with forty-eight notches. A half-open eye sits at its center. No one knows whose seal it is. No one knows why it turns red either.