The Land: Founding synopsis

Thinking himself in a game, Silk sneaks his way past the safeguards of the new and mysterious Castle of Transition, piercing its defenses only with the aid of his party and friends. A mysterious voice invites James into a life of adventure and seals the offer with the Law of Three.

Little did he know that he would be transported into The Land, the world that the game he was just in was based upon, and only the twisted skein of Fate could know whether he will ever see Crush, Loki, Daliah, or Jewel ever again.  

Taking on the name of Richter he sets off after answers.  His Gift of Tongues ability allows him to communicate with a settlement of wary Sprites.  Set upon a quest to prove his good will, he is given a reluctant companion, Sion.

Fighting, bleeding, and even dying and being reborn, Richter earns the trust and respect of the Sprites of the Hearth Tree.  During his journey, he wrests control of a Place of Power from the corrupt hands of a group of bloodthirsty goblins: The Mist Village.

Wrapping his village in a powerful spell, Confusing Mist, Richter buys himself time to grow in power.  He knows he can’t do it alone.  He must find others and draw them to his cause.

With the assistance of Sion and the mysterious spirit of his village, Futen, they unlock the Air Mastery of his Place of Power.  Soon, Richter and Sion set their sights on the human capital of the Kingdom of Law.  They set off to discover what opportunities and allies may be found there.

Upon their arrival in Law, they meet a potential new ally, Terrod, an intimidating human known only as “Mama,” and a cultured advisor named Randolphus. In order to gain the support of his new allies, Richter must once again spill blood.  He agrees to help Terrod free a group of enslaved non-humans from the villainous Thieves Guild.

Seeking to flee the city with the non-humans, Richter is ambushed on the docks of Law by the Thieves’ leader, Ronin, a Professed Rogue. Richter’s party is able to drive off the ambushers, but at a steep cost: the life of Terrod’s closest friend, Jeremiah.

Wounded and bleeding, they steal away in the night, headed by river on a handful of ships, each filled with freed non-human slaves.  Stopping only briefly at Leaf’s Crossing to meet up with the human settlers who had fled the City of Law, Richter and his new villagers make their way back to the Mist Village. They seek to build a new life for themselves among the trees of the Forest of Nadria.

Richter has gained new allies, but new enemies as well.  Only a few days pass before Hisako, the leader of the wood sprites tells him that the forest has been invaded.  Looking at his now steadfast friend, Richter asks Sion if he’s up for another fight.

Sion responded with that bloodthirsty grin of his, “Oh yes, brother! This is what we do!”

The Land: Forging Synopsis

Bands of goblins and bugbears have invaded the Forest of Nadria. Hisako, Hearth Mother and leader of the wood sprites, tasks Richter with the protection of the forest. But the challenge may prove greater and more difficult than any of them could have imagined.

He is not without resources, however.  With the aid of the Hearth Mother, Richter plants a powerful Seed Core in his village.  The resulting Life Magic frees Elora, the Pixie Queen from her chrysalis.  The diminutive royal had been trapped in a weapon corrupted by evil for millennia, and unbeknownst to Ricther, Elora and her people are the soul mates of the wood sprites, Hisako’s people.  With Elora’s rebirth, the sprite civilization can now enter a renaissance.

Richter also uses a rare and powerful spell book to summon a piece of his own soul.  It takes the form of a psychic dragonling named Alma.  In his haste to cast the spell, Richter makes a deadly mistake.  He draws too deeply on the magic of his village and the mists that protect the village dissipate. While its defenses are lowered, a squad of bugbears attack. 

Under the cover of the early morning and their own very capable stealth abilities, a band of bugbears led by the Dark Elf Modara ambush the budding new Mist Village.  They bring pain, fire and death.  The enemies are driven off, but at a heavy price.  In the wake of the attack the Mist Village’s vulnerability and desperate need for growth are made all too clear.

Richter sets off with Sion and two other sprites to unlock the second Power of his Place of Power.  In her wisdom and foresight, the Hearth Mother commands her powerful companion, the Sword Adept Yoshi, to accompany Richter on his quest.

Overcoming demons, both within and without, the party is lost within a deadly warren of traps, and only escapes the dungeon weeks later.  During their quest, they have learned of a new and deadly threat, the terrifying insect destroyers known only as “The Eaters.”

Returning to the village Hisako hears the news of the Eater threat.  She immediately begins to martial her forces to defend against the oncoming tide. Richter prepares to dispatch emissaries to the dwarves of the Serrated Mountains and any other ally that may be convinced to come to his call. He knows he does not have the luxury of time.

His list of enemies is growing.  The Goblins, the bugbears, the eaters, and the slaver nobility of the neighboring Kingdom of Law all seek his death. 

The Land: Alliances Synopsis

Returning to his village, Richter hopes he is safe. But this is a mistake that will cost him dearly.  While he and his companions were off unlocking his second Power, two outsiders were “saved” by his militia.  Little did he know that they were assassins sent by his enemies.  Richter wakes to find himself at the mercy of the assassin Sonirae, who reveals herself to be in the employ of Count Stonuk of Law.

Richter is gruesomely maimed and killed.  Then, in the course of her escape, Sonirae kidnaps Richter’s Companion Terrod.

Reviving from the Sea of Chaos, Richter learns the full extent of her deceit and treachery. Once more, with the powerful aid of his ally the Hearth Mother, Richter sets off after the assassins, tracking them with the aid of the swift and intelligent wolf named Fen.

Prepared to die fighting, Richter wrenches victory from his more powerful foes, but only by maiming himself in the process.  Terrod is able to escape, but Richter is left alone in the Forest of Nadria, wounded, his only hope to go to the sprite’s settlement to be healed.

While on his way back to the Mist Village, he is attacked by a 20-foot-tall rock giant.  He narrowly escapes with his life, but is trapped in the depths of an underground kingdom, a sprawling warren of tunnels which are home to the hateful kobolds.

Richter soon realizes these warrens stretch to beneath the catacombs of his settlement.  With no other options, Richter sets off through the dark, trying to make his way home

Hunted by the kobolds, Richter is able to reach the surface, but is cut off from his settlement by his pursuers. Through day and night, hours and miles, he leads the vengeful kobold army to the one place he may find help: the sprite settlement.  

Hounded and finally cornered by his pursuers, his gamble pays off as he confronts the kobold Battle Mage Yi’Asan.  Just as the wizard is about to attack, hundreds of magically-imbued sprite arrows devastate the kobold army.  His allies have found him.

Healed by his allies, Richter quickly makes his way back to his settlement in the company of a sprite war party.  On the border of his lands, he fights a pitched battle with Professionals from the bugbear army, but he is too late to save one of his village’s scouts.

Richter sets new plans in motion for his village and retires to examine a treasure he stole from the kobolds.

After all, anything called a Stasis Box must surely contain a powerful treasure.

The Land: Catacombs Synopsis

            Inside the stasis box, Richter finds a kobold egg.  However, it does not contain just any kobold.  Instead, it holds the last scion of a the kobold royal line. Closing the box, he is informed that the egg has begun to hatch and must be born in the next several months or die.   

            Richter discovered a second treasure while fleeing the kobolds: the seed of a crystal garden.  Guided by Sion, he chooses to plant the seed in a hidden cave on his lands, but in the process finds a horrible monster lurking there, waiting.  The dark aberration was created millennia before by former rulers of the Mist Village.  The sadistic monster is overcome, but Richter will be traumatized for life. 

            The monster now slain, Richter plants his crystal garden.  Surviving the experience, he now has the resource needed to make magic weapons.  He also knows that he needs to train his people.  He leads them past the safety of the village walls and begins to hunt the monsters of his territory.  Some villagers die, but the survivors grow stronger.  He meets the Auditor, Nexus, and gains a Profession of his own: Enchanter.

During one monster hunt, Richter clears a nest of terrifying spiders, gaining an unlikely ally and unlocking the power of Blood Magic.  The deeper magic infects him with rage, and on leaving the nest, and returning to his home, Richter catches a glimpse of familiar sight through the trees: the crowned head of the Rock Giant.

Seeing his mortal enemy, Richter’s rage-filled heart allows only one choice of action.

He attacks.

The Land: Swarm Synopsis

Richter’s war party is almost killed, but they manage to destroy the Rock Giant.  In the process, Richter suffers a terrible head injury.  If not for the healing magic of his sprite allies, he would have died.  He promises himself to never use Deeper Magic lightly again.  

Working shoulder-to-shoulder with his villagers, Richter unlocks the smithing skill and uses his new profession as Enchanter to create powerful items to grow the power of his village. Mentally traversing his skill tree, Richter meets his potential future selves, selecting Essence Enchanting as his Specialization.

In an excursion with his War Party, Richter had discovered an unusual treasure: a clutch of Skath eggs.  He pens them into the soft mud of a lake that runs along the west of the clearing above the Mist Village proper.  He sets the alluring twins Deera and Derin to watch over them; the twins, it turns out, are ideally suited, skilled in tending to Exotic Beasts and Animal Husbandry, skills which they in turn teach to Richter and Sion.

Returning to the Crystal Garden, Richter finds a rare and dangerous component known as Blood Crystal, grown from his own shed blood. It could prove a powerful boon, or a potent weapon against the Lord of the Mist. While exploring the caverns, Richter discovers the bones of long dead and tortured souls and is determined to set them to their rest. He seeks the aid of Sumiko, the Sprite Life Master and village Healer. They bury the dead, Beyan taking some of the animal bones among the dead for experimentation with his Death Magic.

Richter is woken up with a quest from Futen to explore the land surrounding his village. Setting off, he unlocks the ability for Alma to capture memories of Brain Drained victims and discovers a ruined village with a dungeon beneath it. Scouting ahead, Futen goes missing only for Richter to discover a powerful undead Decaemer Knight, Jorgan, devouring Futen’s spiritual energy. Defeating the undead creature, Richter discovers that Jorgan was merely a servant to a far greater threat, the undead Lich, Singe the Defiler.

Inside of the cave, Richter’s bestowed knowledge of Portal Construction reveals a black archway and a possible entrance to the Lich’s domain. Taking the Portal Key, Richter returns to the village to inform his allies and to muster his forces against this new threat. But first, he has more bones to lay to rest.

            Beyan requests to use Jorgan’s body as a powerful new pet, however Richter will only agree if he first speaks with Jorgan’s betrayed daughter Krista. Twisted by her tortures and parasitic Eldritch Magic, Krista instead attacks her father, raising the tortured spirits of the mass grave around her and attacking the villagers as well. Only Sumiko’s power and skill as a Master of Life magic saves the lives of the villagers and restores the tortured souls to rest.

            After meeting with the scribes Bartle and Bea, and learning the Scribing skill, Richter sets them to the task of researching new technologies for the village. Soon after, Richter is called away with important news: Queen Elora’s Pixie cocoon is opening.

            Elora emerges with her children, the power of the Celestial Quickening transforming their race into Celestial Pixies and imbuing them with greater powers and abilities. Richter quickly learns of one of the most important of these abilities as Sprites begin to meld with their Pixy counterparts in a ceremony known as the Meidon.

Sprites begin to flock to the Mist Village, called by the Meidon, but run afoul of the village’s natural defenses and the enemies within and without his borders. Richter saves one Wood Sprite from a band of Goblins, only to learn of a dangerous threat in Hennecot’s Valley to the east.

The Land: Raiders Synopsis

            The Mist Village readies for War.

Within the Forge of Heavens, hammer and anvil ring ceaselessly through long days and nights as potions and alchemical concoctions are crafted in the Dragon’s Cauldron.

All too soon, Richter and his warriors are on the march, accompanied by their allies, the Sprites of the Hearth Tree.  They are headed toward Henecot’s Valley to the east, and the growing Goblin Army of the numerous and powerful Ash Stalker Clan. The goblins, however, are not the only threat. Rumors come of the Druid goblin Radg-or possessing a deadly artifact known as a Bloodstone. More concerning still are the indications that the goblins are using its deadly powers to uncover an even more powerful relic from the caves beneath their camp.

The lie of safety in numbers is proven false as Richter’s army is ambushed by flying creatures known as Koolari, the living dead. A deep and unsettling worry about the growing undead threat sits heavy upon the leaders of the Mist Village and Hearth Tree alike.

Using the special tactics of the Uddo Rengai, a secret form of Sprite Training, the army is able to silently kill the goblin sentries, and sneak their way into the valley. Leaving the army in a position to ambush the enemy, high on the edge of the tree line, Richter and a small band climb the sheer cliff face to the goblin encampment and the trapped prisoners.

All is going well until a well-intentioned father breaks their cover to save his family.  He awakens the goblin army, and Richter and his men must lead the goblins away from the fleeing prisoners while escaping with their own lives.

As Richter leads the Goblin army into an ambush, they quickly realize that there are many more Goblins in the encampment than they had anticipated. When a group of 300 veteran Troll warriors enter the battle against the allies with a monstrous Rock Troll the allies despair. When the Barbarian leader Heqht-Jo and a Bloodstone-wielding druid enter the fray, the villagers and sprites know they have lost.

Harnessing her powerful magic, the Hearth Mother casts a spell unique to her Place of Power, a magic won by sacrifice and Battle. A Portal to Narina resurrects slain allies and breaks the hold of the Bloodstone on the field of battle. With Heqt-jo defeated and the goblins routed, the Druid Radg-or gives himself over to the entity within the Bloodstone, unleashing a hellish magical barrage.

Limping away from the battle, and with goblin reinforcements ready to pour into the valley, Richter descends into the depths of the caves beneath the field of battle. There he discovers a Chaotic Shard. Reaching out to touch it, he irrevocably changes the course of history in the Land forever, ending the Epoch of Banished Gods and ushering in the Age of Chaos.

Fleeing from the goblin reinforcements, and desperate to save his friends and the weakened prisoners, Richter embraces the power of the Bloodstone. The valley is bathed in crimson light, and when it fades, only the corpses of the slain remain. Where Richter and his party once stood, only a large crater remains.

The Land: Predators Synopsis

Waking upon a new hill south of his village, Richter recalls the uncertain alliance between himself and a new entity within the Bloodstone, both birthed from the Higher Magic of Chaos. Fulfilling his oath to the raw id within the stone, Richter combines the now-Chaotic Bloodstone, his pet Shale Adder and the newly spawned Dungeon Heart to create the Dungeon of Bloody Chaos.  In so doing, he awakens the Adventurer Specialization of his Settlement. Only time will tell how this new thirst for adventure will shape the inhabitants of the Mist Village and the world beyond. The village must now prepare for the greatest threat to their lives they have faced yet: the Lich Singh and his army of undead minions.

In a whirlwind of trials, Richter challenges his Dungeon, learns of a liberated Chaos Seed among the rescued prisoners; rescues corrupted Sakeru pixies left broken in the wake of their meitu sprite’s deaths; and marches to the aid of a potential new ally in the Kinder settlement of Vergut Kunig.

Within the undead-filled dungeon at the outskirts of the settlement Richter comes face to face with a terrible foe—the Soul Eater, Nien the Reaver. To spare his allies, Richter faces the Death Knight in a duel to the death for Mastery of each other’s Place of Power. Through the newly-awakened bond with Alma in the Masseji, Richter is able to wrest victory from the more powerful foe in mental combat, securing the Vassalage of the Kinder settlement and the Heart Crystal of the Shadow Trench.

Arriving home, Richter uses the power of the captured Heart Crystal to grow his village as a new threat hammers at his door. The Dungeon of Bloody Chaos has called for his aid. Terrible and powerful creatures of the Labyrinth have invaded and will destroy the Dungeon if Richter cannot find a way to defeat them. Alongside his faithful allies he battles. Yet despite Hisako nearly casting her life into the wager, the enemy Tovuut Mauler proves too powerful a foe. Sacrificing himself, Richter consumes a double portion of Blood Crystal, drowning his mind in the Deeper Magic of Blood and losing himself to his most base and primal self. Yet in the bargain, Richter is able to tame the reptile Raid boss, and is stopped on the threshold of ruin by a judicious Psi Blast by his faithful Familiar, Alma.

Richter is given no chance to come to grips with the rapid changes and sweeping currents of fate before he is betrayed by the Chaos Seed Heman, who nearly succeeds in killing both Richter and Alma. Rallying himself and his allies they tear open a portal into the realm of the overwhelmingly powerful Lich and his army of undead. Battle and bloodshed and death greet him there. Only with the might of the Tovuut Mauler is Richter able to break the back of the enemy undead and gain the top of the citadel and his showdown with the ancient Lich. In the bargain, Richter creates a terrifying monster and Mortal Enemy in the newly evolved Void Chained Mauler.

The Lich, far from being surprised at their intrusion and attack, has anticipated the entire event, revealing his close ties to the Exile Rakshasa and the mass of energy writhing above the mausoleum, ready to be sacrificed to the Exile for power. One by one, Richter’s plans fail. Krista’s Coin, his powerful new weapons, his allies, even his own mind. Only one thing remains: to bring everything down with him. He has Alma destroy the Exile’s effigy, sending the mass of power into an uncontrollable bomb. In retaliation the Lich curses Richter. Should Richter die in the next week, his soul will wander the Land for eternity. Richter’s only response is to cut the head from the Lich’s body, save his brother Sion with his last escape plan and throw himself upon the bleeding but still alive and terrifyingly mutated Hellspawned Mauler as he rides his enemy into the abyss.