The myth of Boz
The Sundering
The story of Boz is told as a myth, by someone who has told it many times before.
Kayra, the One
Before the first morning there was the One, called Kayra: light and silence held together as a single breath. Then the One broke.
Var, the light, ran one way. Yok, the dark, ran the other. Where they parted, worlds were born, like sparks from a fire no one lit. One of those sparks was Boz.
Var and Yok are still in everything. Every door in this world asks one question of them, and the pieces you build to carry a signal, or to stop one, are made of them (see Var and Yok in the guide). The old keepers say it plainly: Var builds, Yok waits, and neither is evil.
The thirteen Nazars
Thirteen eyes opened around Boz: the Nazars. They watch the seams, the places where the worlds touch. For an age, not one of them blinked.
Now one is shut. And through the seam it watched, something is listening.
The seam, and where you wake
You wake where the world is thinnest: on a seam-shard, a small island of your own people's land in the sea, with nothing in your hands. A young archivist of the Nazars, a keeper still in training, finds you there and walks with you. Things come through the seam that should not. Your element wakes at a cracked Nazar lens. By nightfall you need walls.
That first hour is how the story begins in play. The first hour, in the guide.
The Chronicler
The story is told by the Chronicler, an old keeper of the Nazars: tired, warm and certain, like a grandparent telling the old tale by a fire. Their voice opens the game and names each chapter of your first hour.
Everything starts somewhere. Yours starts here.
You came with nothing. Most of us did.
Walls first. The dark is patient.
The kindest thing you do today will carry you.
Universe Zero and the seeded worlds
Boz was the first world, and it is not the only one. Something broke the main line of time, and every spark from the breaking became a world of its own: an echo of the first, with the same Var and the same Yok, the same rules, and different lands, peoples and dangers.
The original is Universe Zero. Every other world grows from a seed, a word or a number. The same seed always makes the same world, so you and your friends can stand in the same one. Each seeded world is where two peoples' lands meet. Your character crosses from world to world through the seam, carrying who they are: their skills, their people and their element.
Ten peoples, four elements
In every world the four elements are the same: fire, water, earth and air. They are the physics all the worlds share. What differs is how a people understands them. Ten peoples, each from an old mythology, live across the worlds: Norse, Turkic, Japanese, Greek, Celtic, Chinese, Roman, Indian, Egyptian and Inca. Each has two paths, rooted in its own gods.