Midrath, the Northern Isle

Midrath is the northern isle of Alca, and for now it is the whole of the tale. Here the sea set the Envoy down — washed ashore, the official telling runs, a new adventure begun — and here every Fable yet playable has kept to. In the build that stands today, Preludes 15: Gods & Ghosts, you will walk no other land: the Wevetwood and its roots, the fortress Mirifuir, the wrecks of the Silvern Seas, the fog off Pigwen Skerry. The community record adds that the makers themselves call Midrath their tutorial isle, with farther shores only begun at the drawing-board. The archive notes it plainly: this isle is the world's porch, not the world.

The Ode hold it. Their Skytowers ride the pale above, and their great machine, the Organ, sits smoking upon the Dendrit tower, breathing Ichor into wind and water since Preludes 13. The community record keeps a harder claim besides: that the invader's terraforming has run so deep the isle's sky can no longer make snow. The official telling has not said so. The wound, either way, is not in doubt.

The Wevetwood is the isle's deep forest, and the Waste Bear's fable is its story: dying Voicing Trees, a seed that would not grow, and Bromius the Arbearer — three-headed in his sickness, kind again when cleansed. Beneath the wood run the Neath'uns, in the makers' own words vast root-caves choked with ichor, opened to Envoys with Preludes 11. Those who cleanse the Arbearer take his Pact and its charge with it: ward of the Wevetwood, regent of the Neath'uns' roots.

Stone answers wood. Mirifuir stands in the isle's north, a fortress garrisoned now by Ode'n Conductors; since Preludes 14 its Siege has been the Envoys' to break. The community record tells that the Fey Empress herself once blessed Mirifuir's walls at a meeting with Queen Finngualla of Midrath — a fine tale the official telling has not confirmed, so the archive holds it as the wiki's own. Fort Curlail keeps a like watch: its Siege came with Preludes 14.5, the update named Ode'n Tempers. How Fort Curlail sits against the older Curlail of the histories, the sources do not say, and the record keeps the gap.

Around Midrath run the Silvern Seas, and the official telling makes of them a question before a place: who will find them, and awaken our Ancestors? Upon those waters, the community record sets the Nightfold — the Envoy's hidden refuge, where the awakened dead keep their stations. Along the coasts lie the wrecks. In Preludes 14 the blue ribbons of Mestra Carmo led duelists from shipwreck to shipwreck, down to the Siren of Coral Graves herself.

With Preludes 15 the fog gave up something new. Pigwen Skerry rose off the northern water — a beaconing lighthouse, the devstream telling promised, and ghostly pirates to keep it lit. The update was named Gods & Ghosts. The skerry supplied the ghosts.

The isle resists, and its resistance keeps three hearths. Envoys are folded into one by the fable called An Invitation..., each starting Pact finding its own door. The Silent Rose gathers those the enemy's charm-song could not take — the deaf, and the cheerfully drunk — behind an inn near Salzbrim, with Lady Deora at their head and a cipher of their own; theirs is the way of Grace. The Kith of Kings hold to Courage: Clan Jotar's warriors, sworn beneath the Dermak crypt of the undead Fire King, Fenn Jotar. And Alca's Children keep Spirit in the hidden grotto of Hilly-Den, healers and tenders under the Sproutfolk Avakot. So the community record draws the three hearths — leaders, hideaways, and Virtues alike; the official telling attests the Enclaves as living places — Envoys now trade within them, and Enclave Favours are exchanged for Standing.

The Sproutfolk deserve their own line in the ledger. A stout and stalky breed of living plant, native to the isle, they hear the world differently — and so, the community record says, the enemy's spellsong cannot hollow them, and the Ode round them up for it; the Ichor, which is another cruelty, can rot some into brutes. Official copy knows them best at festival time — Sproutfolk spooked at Bita's Eve — while their fuller natural history, from the Empress's first animating magicks to the scribe Orlick's treatise on their headless years, remains the wiki's keeping.