Hearthmere
Your home: a poor, stubborn quarry town whose Reeve keeps a tally of everything the town has left.
The Grey Song
The Saga
Under the bread, the stone. Under the stone, the song. The north has always told it that way. This is the long history of the realm, told the way the old folk tell it, with the twists left for you to find.
Before memory
The first stone
Under the fields, under the fjords, under the roots of the mountains lies the Kavor: the bedrock, the first stone, the one that holds the world up. It sleeps, and in its sleep it dreams of being still.
Stone does not sing. But stone can be made to remember being alive, and the old folk of the north always knew it.
Nine hundred years ago
The Unbanked Coal
Fire is the one song stone cannot echo. So the story goes that Hallveig, the First Kindler, walked north out of the burning Muspel Ashlands carrying a coal in her bare hands that would not go out.
From that coal she lit the Old Hearth in the vale, the lanterns of the Myrkwood, and every fire that keeps the stone asleep. The Kindlers have tended it ever since.
Seventeen winters ago
The Hungerwinter
Two winters came with no spring between them. The vale starved, Saltvik lost its fleet, Jarnholm’s granaries burned and the peaks filled with the frozen. The north prayed, and the gods did not answer.
Everyone old enough to remember lost someone. The realm still carries that wound, and some people carry it worse than others.
Twelve winters ago
The black seam
Hearthmere was a quarry town, and the stonewrights cut deep. One day their picks struck the black seam, grey rock that answered when it was hit, and the whole quarry cracked open.
Something came up out of the dark. And down there, under the noise, was a tune in no tongue: the Grey Song.
Now
The stones are waking
Stone that hears the Grey Song sickens, grows grey veins and pushes up out of the ground. Beasts and the restless dead near it forget what they were. Wolves come to the gates with grey eyes.
Somebody is singing on purpose. A slate token with a scratched mouth turns up in the heart of a broken stone, and a long road opens: to an iron city in the north, the drowned coast, the black forest and the frost peaks, into the ashlands, across the river of the dead, and up to the gods themselves.
“Nobody here is evil for its own sake. The monsters are animals and dead folk a song has made forget what they were. And the one singing it is grieving.”
The people of the north
Who you will meet
Poor, practical and dry. People in the north joke because the alternative is crying, and every one of them wants something small and human while the world ends.
The Kindlers
Keepers of the first fire. They know what the Grey Song is, and how little stands against it.
The Iron Jarldom
Proud, bitter and owed a great deal. Their oaths are sworn in iron and meant to be kept.
Saltvik
Fisherfolk who lost their fleet in the Hungerwinter, and now watch it walk back up the shore.
The Lantern-keepers
They keep the forest paths lit with fire from the oldest coal. Off the paths, the Myrk eats people.
The Grey Choir
Widows, orphans and outlaws in grey wool who carry slate tokens with a mouth scratched on them.
Eleven chapters
The road north
The main story runs from your first morning at the gates of Hearthmere to the cracked sky above the gods. Each chapter is a region, a people and a piece of the song.
- 1Dogs at the GateHearthmere
- 2The Black SeamOld Hearth and the Quarry
- 3Iron and OathJarnholm
- 4The Long HuntPedreira Vale
- 5Salt and the DrownedAshfjord Coast
- 6Lanterns in the MyrkMyrkwood
- 7The Frost-CountHrimfell Peaks
- 8Ash RemembersMuspel Ashlands
- 9The Ferry of the DeadGates of Helheim
- 10The Bifrost HeightsBifrost Heights
- 11The Shattered FirmamentThe endgame realm
Chapter one
Come up the south road with nothing
The Reeve of Hearthmere needs hands at the gate. The rest of the song is waiting to be found.
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