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Cosmology

"Before being individuals, the gods incarnate primary forces."
— Chronicler maxim, recorded by Professor Amtyaslan at the Free University of Cadwallon

A working model of how the world works, why Cadwallon's gods are weird, and what's actually buried under the city.

The Architecture

Aarklash's metaphysics is built in layers. The deeper you go, the fewer Cadwës can name what's there.

  • The Whole — the primal source from which the first entities emerged. Beyond comprehension.
  • The Creation — the woven structure of everything that exists. When the gods nearly destroyed it in their early wars, the Creation fought back and exiled them.
  • The Realms — elemental and mystical pocket-worlds where the gods were imprisoned. Time appeared with the exile, the curse that keeps them confined: if they walk Aarklash openly, they suffer the punishment and are forgotten.
  • Aarklash — the continent at the heart of the Creation, where magic thresholds (groves, vestiges, portals) link back to every Realm. Whoever controls Aarklash controls the future of the Creation. That's why everyone wants Cadwallon.

The Generations of Gods

The Chroniclers (who archive Aarklash's history) speak of three generations of gods — categories that gave their names to Cadwë cult-language without anyone realizing it:

  1. Felicity — the first, oldest powers
  2. Pain
  3. Destiny

The modern three Alliances (Light, Darkness, Destiny) and the Cadwë cults of the same names are dim echoes of these. Most Cadwës worship without knowing the names beneath the names.

Conscience and Desire — The Local Conflict

Cadwallon sits at the literal epicenter of a two-god war. (see Conscience and Desire)

  • Conscience is the father, the binder, the will toward Creation's preservation. Worshipped in Cadwallon as Felicity, Pain, or Destiny depending on cult. His avatars are the gods of Tir-Nâ-Bor (Boar), Akkylannie (Griffin), and other Light-aligned and Destiny-aligned faiths.
  • Desire is the son, deformed and destructive at birth, slumbering since Conscience wounded him 22 times and locked him in an abyss. The abyss is directly beneath Cadwallon.

The hidden truth of every Cadwë cult

Only those worshipping an avatar of Conscience or Desire can call miracles in Cadwallon. Faith from anywhere else simply doesn't work here. The Cadwës have invented "Felicity, Pain, and Destiny" cults to rationalize this without realizing they're worshipping two gods only.

The Duke is unincarnable

The gods have tried multiple times to take the Duke as an Incarnate. None can. The Duke is the vessel of Cadwë spiritual energy — a kind of accumulated will of the city that refuses possession. (see Incarnates for the rules of incarnation elsewhere.)

The Six Original Dragons

When Desire walked the world, his second nature gave birth to six titanic wyrms — the original dragons of Aarklash:

  • Four Elemental Dragons — air, earth, fire, water
  • Vortiris — the Dragon of Darkness, who sided with his father Desire
  • Maloth — the Dragon of Light, who sided with Conscience

When Vortiris led the Ophidians in their assault on Desire's prison, Maloth drove him back. Maloth then sealed the prison's threshold into a place beyond time, where the fury of the dragons' combat still resonates. The most sensitive Cadwës still feel it as a presence under the city without knowing its source.

The dragons that ride out of Lanever's Dyrsin Tower today are descendants of these wyrms. Their alliance with the Cynwäll is itself an inheritance from the era of Maloth and the Sphinx.

The Ancient Peoples

Two vanished civilizations left their marks on Cadwallon — and one occupied this exact site:

  • The Utopia of the Sphinx — Maloth's allies. Master technomancers who built devices animated by Light. Vanished into The Labyrinth in pursuit of the fleeing Ophidians. Their legacy includes the Automaton statue, the faces on Fort Griffin, and countless underground vestiges. The Cynwäll inherited a sliver of their craft and call themselves the Sphinx's heirs.
  • The Ophidians — Vortiris's serpent people. Occupied the Cadwallon site for centuries after the Sphinx fled, built a vast temple to call back their dragon father, and unknowingly siphoned mana from Desire — torturing him. Departed en masse in 255 through a portal into the Labyrinth, following Vortiris. A handful remained as hidden sanctuaries beneath the city. Their living descendants, struck by the Vice, are now stirring with the Rag'narok.

The Labyrinth and the Garden

Conscience built The Labyrinth — an inextricable divine maze — around Desire's prison cave. Over eras, Desire's dreams transformed the cave into the Garden of Desire, an Unfinished Realm of luxurious vegetation and addictive fauna. The Garden bleeds into Cadwallon through every magical grove, which is literally a shoot from Desire's prison.

This bidirectional link is the engine of much of Cadwallon's strangeness:
- The Garden's vegetation reaches up; the Cadwës' impressions and longings flow down. Desire feeds on the city's dreams.
- Each grove is a portal. Walking the wrong one without warding can pull a soul into the Garden.
- Time runs strangely in the Labyrinth. The dwarf Yelmor (Steel Hearts company, vanished 857) was found in the catacrypts in 1003 believing only days had passed.

(see Magical Groves, The Labyrinth, Garden of Desire)

Inspiration and the Stateless

A third primal being, Inspiration, was born from the Whole alongside the first gods. She altered the shape and spirit of everything she touched. She is now gone, but left scattered descendants — the Stateless — born across all peoples of Aarklash. Stateless beings instinctively mimic their surroundings, blending into any culture but never truly belonging. The most evolved among them, the dramatis, can become anyone — body and mind. They lose themselves a little each time.

Den Azhir

Cadwallon's current Duke is a dramatis. (see Duke Den Azhir for the full secret.)

Magic in Cadwallon

(see Mana & Magic for the rules; this is the cosmological layer.)

  • Mana is the raw substance of the Creation. Magic shapes it.
  • Six Elements (the four classical plus Light and Darkness) form the structured magical schools. Cynwäll and Akkyshan elves and Akkylannian templars practice these.
  • Instinctive Magic — used by orcs and shakas — draws on raw mana through totemic affinity, without parsing the elements. Effective but primitive.
  • Tarot Magic — see The 22 Arcana. A re-enactment of the Conscience/Desire struggle, drawing on Desire's elixirs through enchanted cards.
  • Faith Miracles — work only if the worshipped god is an avatar of Conscience or Desire (see above).
  • Spiritual Geography — certain districts of Cadwallon are aligned to Light or Darkness based on where the Labyrinth brushes the physical city. Maloth's domains brighten the spiritual map; Vortiris's darken it. The Duke and the militia know which districts pull which way; most Cadwës just notice that some places "feel off."

Key Concepts to Visit

Why the Rag'narok matters

If Conscience dies in the Rag'narok elsewhere on Aarklash, Desire's prison opens. That's the secret stake. Cadwallon's neutrality isn't political — it's metaphysical. The free leaguers aren't just guarding a city. They're guarding the world's lock.