Every telling begins the same way: fire on Kearnhold's walls. The Ode fell upon Dendria in the night, and a mother — yours, Envoy, shaped in the telling by your own remembering — hid her babe from the burning. The child reached for her with an arm of blue, laced with arcane carvings, kin-mark of the ancient Fey. The old verse gives the rest in one breath: "by Mother saved, by Grandfa' raised and, alas, at last, by Ode enslaved." Years on, the sea gives that child back. You wake on Midrath's shore with a sparrow waiting and an old man calling from an empty cottage. You learn the shrines that will not let you die, and you come at last to the Nightfold, where a white wolf sleeps and does not stir. Both tellings are playable now, and may be told again.
The fables, so far
Every tale the game has told, recapped whole and in the order an Envoy meets it. Each chapter names the Preludes builds that told it and the folios that hold its lore; where a chapter leans on an earlier one, the debt is linked. Read from the top, or jump to the tale you lost the thread of.
The Night the Ode Fell
The Hearth Fills, Ghost by Ghost
The Nightfold is not built; it is gathered. A ghost in a tower mourns his stolen quill — carry it back from Sinecure hands and Orlick the Bicameral, last of the Pensives, takes up his scribing again, for the Ode burned the great archive and words lived only in smoke. Bear Kane's Moonsteel Helm to a ruined smithy, defenseless all the way, and Tuvalkane comes: the Steelsinger, who swears she never earned the wearing of it. Follow a caged rat and outlast the vanishing Nimrod, and you find Verminia the sightless witch by her cauldron — and when she runs away with a note forbidding pursuit, one Lullily flower coaxes her home. Last came the Siren of Coral Graves: three duels against the apparition of Mestra Carmo, then a stand beside her against her own phantom crew. Each fable ends the same warm way: one more soul at the fire.
The Beasts Remember Still
The Ode do not only burn; they cage. Alca's great spirits, her omen beasts, are hunted, chained, and turned against the land they kept. The Torment Stag tells of Garren Rood, hunted under a Sinecure bounty, and of Lady Deora, the enemy's spellsung pawn: the Envoy salvages both souls rather than slay them. The Shewolf Snared frees Orengall from her chains, earns her trust paw-print by paw-print, and pulls her three pups from a Collector the quest-text names only as bayor's — mark that name; it will be sung again. The Waste Bear follows the grief of dying elms through the Wevetwood, and chases a thieving Wazzard into the Galvinar Wastes for a stolen Wevetseed — for Bromius, three-headed Arbearer of the Wevetwood, drank dark sap at an evil tree's urging. The Envoy learns the Tree Tongue and heals him with a seed and a song. In every telling the beast is a victim, never the villain.
Three Doors in the Dark
Free the Torment Stag and word travels: Midrath's hidden rebels want the measure of you. An Invitation... opens one of three doors, chosen by the Pact you first swore. Sirin's road runs through a cave to a hidden inn at Salzbrim, a lockbox lifted from under Banneret noses, and Lady Deora waiting in the Drippin' Flagon: the Silent Rose. Oscelda's road asks only a flower — a Sangelia, blood-red, crimson-blue of leaf — laid at the Sproutfolk shrine of Hilly-Den, where those who remember the time before the cages keep faith: Alca's Children. Tethren's road descends into the Fire King's sealed tomb by the College of Pensives: the Kith of Kings. And the sparrow keeps bringing work — patrols to break, plunder to spoil, the Synod's finest to humble — small tales told over and over, as resistance mostly is.
Sagas by Candlelight, and Lesser Tales
Ask Orlick what sagas need scribing and he will teach you the world while telling you his life. Chapter the first walks you through runes and world trees, forge-work and totem gifts, spectral sight — each lesson a page of his own story, the Little Genius at his shoulder. Chapter the second turns graver: reclaim the town-names the Ode have stolen, walk all three Enclaves, brew ink with a witch — until the final saga, when the old ghost climbs the College of Pensives and confesses he is bringing you to the place where they died. Around these, eight small tales wait to be stumbled upon or found strung as votives on the world trees: a many-legged mistress in the Sinkland Depths, the ghosts of a burnt manor, a fungal lord summoned and slain, a Banneret closing on Birdie's Bog. Once told, they are told; none may be heard twice.
Promised, not yet told
Announced at TennoCon 2026, with a season and no pages yet. When a promised tale becomes a playable one, it will be entered above with the same care as the chapters it joins — and not one hour before.