Thornbound Realms
Hope’s Edge
A kingdom under siege. Once a patchwork of thriving towns, deep forests and crystal-lit mountains, most of it now lies under an unnatural mist. Beneath the fog, the Rat King’s armies tunnel and breed. Above it, the animal folk cling to what remains.
The map
Three rings and a city
61 hex tiles, all starting face-down under the fog except the Lumenhall.
The Lumenhall
The last true stronghold of the free peoples, and home base for every hero. Never hidden by fog. It can’t be attacked until Terror 8, and even then it’s damaged, not destroyed.
The Heartland
Green zone · Rings 1–2 · 18 hexesFertile wheat, ancient woods and safe roads: the last stretch the mist hasn’t touched. Heroes start here. “Safe” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
The Frontier
Yellow zone · Ring 3 · 18 hexesDeeper caves, thicker forests, and the ruins of towns that fell in the first waves. Crystal, cave encounters and the noble houses’ harder quests all wait out here.
The Dangerous Wilds
Red zone · Ring 4 · 24 hexesImpassable mountains, rat-infested cave networks, and the Rat Castle, hidden somewhere among the tiles until Terror 7 forces it into the open.
The Gloaming
The mist is not weather
On the table, the mist is the fog side of every tile, and it fights back. At each surge it rolls over hexes you’d already explored. Only a hero standing on a hex, or a town, holds it off. Spread out to hold ground, or gather to build strength?
- It never speaks. It shows you what you are most afraid of, and waits.
- It kills sound. A shout dies a foot from your mouth.
- It keeps what it takes. Towns stand whole inside it, mid-breath, with nobody in them. Only armies destroy.
- It advances about a mile a month, and rats and corrupted wolves move through it freely.
Three years of mist
How the kingdom fell
Before the mist
The tunnels
The crystal that lights the Lumenhall comes up shafts dug by rats, who appear in none of the guidebooks. One of them writes to the Council. Twenty-four times.
Read The King Below →Year 0 · late summer
Willowfield falls first
The mist rises out of the Wilds. Willowfield is evacuated with no deaths, and the mist keeps it, standing and silent. Briarhollow, a settlement on no map, leaves within the month.
Read The Arrow and the Silence →Year 0 · harvest
Millhaven
After three months of reports nobody acted on, the mist takes Millhaven on the northern border. About 112 of its 600 get out.
Read The Fox Who Stayed →Year 1
The frontier falls
Town after town goes quiet. A refugee quarter grows beneath the Lumenhall’s walls. The Council defers; the noble houses begin acting on their own.
Year 2
The mountains cut off
The mist takes the Ashward Pass in a single night. Above the Hollin valley, one badger holds a cave mouth for three days.
Read The Mouth of the Mountain →Year 3
Bramblegate
Bramblegate falls. A probationary scout brings out seven children and the first report of rats marching in formation.
Read The Fastest Thing Alive →Spring, Year 3
The muster
Five heroes are called to the Lumenhall. The game begins here.
Beneath the Lumenhall
Older than the kingdoms
Every lantern in the Lumenhall burns crystal, and the crystal comes up from the deep dark. Records in the oldest libraries hint at something beneath the earth, older than the kingdoms themselves. The mist answers the Rat King. But he did not make it.
What did? That question has no answer. Yet.
