Verath

Verath is a world of amber skies, warring kingdoms, and the slow decay of an empire that once spanned three continents. Its people have wielded runic magic for millennia — but black powder weapons are spreading from the eastern frontier, and no one yet knows whether the old ways will survive the collision. Two sapient species share the world: the dominant Verathen, and the near-extinct Lethrin, whose ancient empire preceded the current age by ten thousand years.

Beneath Verath's soil runs a network of leylines — channels of ambient energy that no instrument has ever fully mapped. The Lethrin discovered them first, carved their runes into the stone above each nexus, and built a civilization of breathtaking sophistication. When they collapsed — for reasons the Verathen still debate — the leylines remained. The Verathen found them, learned a cruder form of the old art, and called it their own. Now the empire built on that art is fracturing, and the black powder coming from the east cares nothing for the geometry of runes.