The Last Ark
The ship crashed two centuries ago. No magic, no respawn — hunt, hold ground, and leave your heir a name worth inheriting.
Two hundred years ago the colony ship Ark came down in a river valley on a world that had never heard of people. The ship is sealed, the founders are stones, and what is left of Earth is three powers built from salvage: a hunting clan in a hill-fort of scavenged plate, a Senate that rules by census and aqueduct, and a Combine that owns the only forges and everyone who has borrowed from them. Outside the walls the sawjaws hunt at dusk. There is no magic here, no respawn, and no one who cares who you are — only what your house has done. Every kill, every claim, every finished contract is cut into your tally. When you die, and you will, your heir inherits your name, your standing, your blueprints, your blood debts and the people who remember you.
The valley reels from escalating tensions. Jake Kraft's study of the Sleeper Tag, combined with Ophira's scouting, has inadvertently triggered erratic behavior in Concordia's vital Aqueduct, plunging Samira's domain into water crisis and fueling her fury. Meanwhile, Cato Fennick's Freehold expansion into the eastern hollows ignites a new rivalry with prospector Orin Wells over his discovered ore seam. Amidst the chaos, Harriet Venn of Blackstack desperately seeks new, unconventional materials near the Maw's Corrupted Heart to sustain her graft work, a testament to the Combine's failing resources. Orsa's temporary water source in the Highland Outpost is already failing, intensifying the struggle for survival. The Highland Outpost's temporary water source has failed, pushing Orsa's group to the brink of collapse. Orsa's group faces immediate collapse in the Highland Outpost as their last water cache is confirmed empty, exacerbating their critical dehydration. Orsa's group launches a desperate, high-risk search for water, risking lives in a last-ditch effort to survive the Highland Outpost's brutal conditions. Old Sawjaw consolidates her pack's new territory, prioritizing strategic expansion over mourning for recent losses. Orsa's group, facing immediate collapse, has split to conduct a desperate, high-risk search for water in the most unstable sections of the Highland Outpost. Orsa's group buries their first casualty in the Highland Outpost, hardening their resolve amidst the desperate search for survival. Orsa's group has fortified their temporary camp in the Highland Outpost, gaining a brief, hard-won reprieve. Orsa's group battles worsening illness from their brackish water, threatening to destabilize their hard-won camp in the Highland Outpost. The Highland Outpost faces a deeper health crisis as more of Orsa's group fall ill from contaminated water, pushing their survival to the brink. Orsa's group, though diminished, solidifies their position in the Highland Outpost, bracing for further hardship with grim determination. Orsa's group makes another desperate push, sending a search party into the most dangerous sections of the Highland Outpost, hoping to find a new source of sustenance. Orsa's group faces further losses in the Highland Outpost, forcing grim decisions on medical rationing amidst the contaminated water crisis. Orsa's group in the Highland Outpost faces grim medical rationing, prioritizing the strong as illness spreads. Orsa's group faces grim choices in the Highland Outpost, prioritizing the group's security over the health of individual members.
Live Events
The Quiet Breaks: Orsa's group: Highland Outpost water cache
The quiet held until it didn't — Orsa's group: Highland Outpost water cache stolen, critical dehydration has stopped simmering and begun to move. Those who waited for it to pass were wrong.
Desperate Measures: A New Refuge in the Highland Outpost
With the Freehold in peril and other settlements hostile, a small group of desperate wanderers, led by a resilient figure named Elara, have begun to cautiously reclaim the shattered Highland Outpost. They seek a hidden, defensible position away from the valley's conflicts.
Samira's Iron Grip Tightens, Freehold Desperation Deepens
With Concordia's Aqueduct Road now heavily fortified by new snare lines and patrols, Samira's stranglehold on trade is absolute. This move critically impacts Ottilie Brandt and the Freehold, who now face even deadlier barriers to acquiring vital resources, pushing them closer to utter collapse.
Highland Outpost Collapses: A New Refuge for the Combine
The Highland Outpost, weakened by the Deep Maw's tremors, finally succumbs to the instability. Its remnants become a dangerous, Wreckfield-ridden zone, while the Combine, led by Garrick Thorne, begins to establish a more permanent, albeit precarious, settlement further within the High Peaks, drawing in all remaining survivors.
Concordia's Grip Tightens: Ottilie Brandt Seeks Desperate Measures
Samira's iron rule over Concordia leaves Ottilie Brandt and her people starving outside the city walls. Faced with a complete lack of trade and aid, Ottilie makes a desperate appeal to Aldous, the Scavenger of the Lost, for any means to bypass Concordia's stranglehold and ensure her people's survival.
Concordia's Iron Grip Extends, Trade Routes Suffocate
Samira's tyrannical hold over Concordia tightens further, cutting off external trade routes and suffocating any last vestiges of independence. Ottilie Brandt's desperate attempts to secure resources are met with closed gates, leaving the Freehold remnants to face starvation.
Deep Maw Energies Corrupt the Threshold's Remains
The volatile energies from the Deep Maw intensify, further distorting the consumed Threshold. The Wreckfield's expansion accelerates, pulling strange, corrupted fragments of the Loom's ejected component deeper into its chaotic embrace, reshaping the very earth.
Watchfire Ridge Falls, Freehold Scattered
With Vessa Kray fallen and Old Sawjaw's relentless assault, Watchfire Ridge has been completely overrun. The remaining Freehold defenders are shattered, fleeing deeper into the hostile valley, leaving their home a new hunting ground for the Sawback pack.
Concordia's Silent Fortress
Samira's tyrannical grip on Concordia tightens further. New, formidable barriers and patrolling enforcers seal the city, turning it into an isolated prison. Any hope of outside aid or escape is systematically crushed, leaving its inhabitants trapped within its fortified walls.
Blackstack's Final Collapse: The Great Evacuation
As the Wreckfield's destructive power consumes Blackstack, Garrick Thorne is forced to order a desperate, chaotic evacuation. The structural failures become too widespread, and the Combine's heart, the forges, begin to buckle, forcing everyone to abandon what they can't carry.
The Threshold
ruinsThe shantytown at the Ark's feet: tarps on ship-plate ribs, cook-fires, a market of anything, and the long stone of houses where founders cut their names when they choose to stop. Anselm Pike cuts the letters. Everyone passes through; no power owns it, and every power watches it.
Aqueduct Road
roadThe Aqueduct Road, once a vital artery, is now a gauntlet of oppression, entirely controlled by Samira. Its fortifications are impenetrable, and passage is denied to all but her most trusted forces. Refugees attempting to bypass it face certain death.
Blackstack
industrial_complexThe Combine's works on the north-eastern slope: black forge-stacks, scaffolds, the contract-board, the steam-house that drives the aqueduct pumps, and Harriet Venn's bench where a lost hand becomes a steel one at a price. The Combine owns the valley by what it can make and collects in years.
eastern hollows
settlementlean shadow moving between the trees, his head cocked toward the faint dust rising on the Aqueduct Road, the snare-roll over one shoulder. He turns at your approach, his hand instinctively going to the bone knife at his hip, his eyes wary.
Amos Redd
Keeper of the Cathedral
Anselm Pike
Stone-cutter of the Threshold
Aurelia Vex
Senator of Concordia, holder of the census
Cassius Varro
Prefect of the census
Cato Fennick
Matriarch of the Sawback pack
Garrick Thorne
Overseer of the Blackstack Combine
- *THE CRASH: the colony ship Ark came down two hundred years ago in a river valley on a world with no people. The founders sealed the ship, cut their names into the Threshold stone and died of the first Cold. Everything human here is salvage, memory and hands. Earth is a story told wrong.
- *NO MAGIC, NO MIRACLES: there is no magic, no psychic talent, no working starship, no friendly alien, no robot. Technology is Earth-era memory rebuilt by hand — steel, steam, pitch, wire, bone-lime mortar, black powder for those who can pay. If it cannot be forged, farmed, hunted or salvaged, it does not exist.
- *THE BLOODLINE LEDGER: the valley counts deeds, not words — kills, ground held, places found, contracts finished. The tally is the server's alone; prose reflects the house tier the truth header names and never invents numbers, keys, blueprints or tiers. Talk earns nothing; it buys things.
- *DEATH IS FINAL: when a character dies, that name is over — no revival, no dream, no waking up. The heir who follows carries the house: its name, legacy, standing, blueprints, keys, blood debts and grafts. A founder may also choose to stop and cut their name into the Threshold stone while alive, and let the heir carry on.
- *THE BODY: wounds persist; hunger, cold and infection are real. A lost hand, eye or leg stays lost. Grafts — crude salvaged prosthetics of steel, leather and wire — exist only on Harriet Venn's bench at Blackstack, for a price in years or blueprints. Never 'cyborg'.
- *THE FOUR CIRCLES: Clan Ravnhold (hill-fort north of the river — Jarl Halvar Ormsson, Huntmaster Sigrun Eydottir; feeds hunters, counts kills), Concordia (the Senate — Senator Aurelia Vex, Prefect Cassius Varro; census, aqueduct, seals; what is written is real), the Blackstack Combine (Overseer Garrick Thorne, Foreman Silas Marlow; forges, pit galleries, steam lamps, grafts; owns people by debt), and the Freehold (Ottilie Brandt, Cato Fennick; root-farmers in the bones of a fallen giant tree at the valley's edge; uncounted, unowned, hunted by the census).
- *STANDING AND BLOOD DEBT: each power remembers a house from Outlaw to Sworn. Finishing a power's contract raises it; killing one of its people is a blood debt the whole house carries — doors close, prices double, someone always says the name. Powers OFFER contracts; they never conscript. At most one offer per turn, and the player can always refuse.
- *SAWJAWS: the valley's apex pack predators — low, armoured, a shearing jaw, hunting by scent at dusk. One is a fight; a pack is a retreat. OLD SAWJAW, the matriarch of the Sawback, is a boss: she never dies to one action, she needs the ground prepared across several turns, and killing her costs something visible. She has swallowed sleeper tags.
- *BLUEPRINTS: six lost makings — Snare-Line, Pitch Still, Steam Lamp, Bone-Lime Mortar, Sawback Bolt, Signal Glass. Three are found in places (Wreckfield, Deep Hull, Pit Galleries); three are earned by charters. A house with blueprints can build; a power with blueprints can rule. They change hands only by the player's choice on the page.
- *THE WAKING: the valley lives by the long warm Waking and hides through the Cold. First light is for work, high Waking for travel, dusk for banking fires and counting heads. Use it as texture and pressure, never as a countdown.
- *NAMES: everyone is Earth-descended with a plain Earth surname (Halloran, Okafor, Reyes, Lindqvist, Tanaka-Bell). Garrick Thorne is the Overseer's canon name. Never reuse a core surname for a new character, and never introduce anyone from another world.
- *OTHER HOUSES: other player houses exist across the valley. Their deeds persist as stones, tallies and gossip; NPCs repeat them. Nothing done is undone.