Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
The Scales of Fate: Tulnar Storytime and Art Exhibit
Cimarb
Member, Alpha Two
Okay, gather 'round the hearth, you curious whelps and weathered travelers. The name is Cimarb, of the Tulnar. Aye, one of the 'beastial' folk, as some of you softer-skinned types might call us. Got scales tougher than boiled leather and a memory longer than a dwarven grudge. You ask how I came to this world, this Verra? It wasn't a gentle arrival, I will tell you that. It was... a shattering of dreams. Or perhaps, the forging of one true reality from the fragments of nightmares.
Before the light of Verra was in my eyes, before these silver scales were my own hide, I drifted. Not upon water, but upon the currents of... the Essence. My first clear memory, though hazy now like smoke from damp wood, was of being an Elf. Aye, slender and pale, one of the Empyrean Nation. I wore robes of leaf and gold, felt the thrum of divine magic in my veins. A cleric, a follower of Norlan, God of Fate. Light flowed from my fingertips, mending wounds, warding off shadow. It felt right, powerful even.
Yet... the world itself felt wrong. Like a tattered tapestry woven by a drunken god. Sometimes the sky would flicker like a bad candle or the sun blind us even underground, colours bleeding where they should not, trees disappearing or my axe hitting but never cutting. Prayers would snag on unseen barbs, the magic sputtering like wet kindling. Faces in the crowds would blur into nothing, and the very ground sometimes seemed to forget its own solidity. It was a world full of glitches, errors in its making. A beautiful, broken dream.
Then, the dream shifted. The light faded, the grace shattered. I awoke, or dreamt I awoke, in a form vastly different. Skin like polished obsidian, thick and purple. Fangs jutted from my lower jaw, long and menacing. Muscles coiled like ropes beneath my hide. A Vek, a prophet of the night sky. Power thrummed here too, but it was raw, brutal. I was a Fighter, swinging crude weapons, feeling the satisfying crunch of impact.
But that quickly changed within the dream. The direct approach grew tiresome, or perhaps the dream simply opened another door. I became one with the void... a Rogue, lurking in the deeper shadows this form cast, the heavy footfalls replaced by a deafening quiet. The thrill was different – the tension before the strike, the unseen blade of a... greatsword...? My mind swam with the absurdity. The edges became fuzzy, the purpose unclear.
The Vek form faded like mist. I blinked, and the world changed again. Human. One of the Kaelar, or so the shifting banners implied. And this time, the dream offered a different kind of illusion: ambition, camaraderie. I found myself part of a fledgling trading company, "The Black Talons." We were a motley crew, full of hopefuls and schemers, all chasing the dream of fame and fortune, and I felt like I had known them my whole life. Our three leaders – charismatic, visionary – painted grand pictures of success, of our name whispered in every flickering tavern and marketplace. We toiled, risked, built our network, cargo by precious cargo. The taste of success was on our lips; we were on the very cusp of establishing ourselves as a true power in the dream's shifting economy.
Then came the morning the dream shattered. We arrived at the warehouse, ready for a pivotal day, only to find the doors barred, the place stripped bare. The three leaders? Vanished. Gone with every coin, every valuable commodity, every last shred of our collective effort. They had shut it all down, thrown us out onto the flickering cobblestone streets, with nothing but the clothes on our backs and the searing, bitter taste of betrayal. The note on the door said they had returned to Sanctus, that the struggle was too much, but who knows the real reason. The fame we sought was replaced by the infamy of their disappearance. That day, the human capacity for deceit cut deeper than any blade.
The betrayal hollowed me out, but also kindled a cold fire. Trust was a fool's game. The chaos of that dream-world suddenly seemed less random, more a reflection of the inherent treachery of the human heart. Seeking some semblance of order, or perhaps just a channel for my rage, I joined the local guard of a grim, fortified town called Miraleth. Discipline, rules, a clear goal – it was an anchor in the storm of my disillusionment.
Miraleth, however, was not destined to remain a mere town guard. It grew, absorbing other settlements, its ambition hardening into an iron will. It became the heart of the empire of Overlord, a force dedicated to strength, order, and the ultimate conquest of the prophesied new world some called "Release". Within Overlord, my skills found a new, focused purpose. I became known as a sin-eater, a rogue moving through the deepest shadows of the Empire. My blades, once tools of a hopeful merchant, now silenced enemies of the state, retrieved "misappropriated" assets, and ensured the smooth, efficient enforcement of Overlord's decrees. I shed the naive remnants of my past, embracing the ruthless efficiency demanded by my role, knowing that our goals were to bring structure and security to our fledgling lands. Each mission was a step further away from the vulnerable human I had been, a step towards becoming something harder, something less… breakable. The very idea of "humanity" became synonymous with weakness and betrayal, a skin I was desperate to shed.
This burning desire for transformation, this alignment with Overlord's ethos of transcending mortal limits, seemed to call out into the Essence. It grew. Steadily, relentlessly, fueled by the Empire’s unyielding will and my own personal inferno. It resolved into a shape – a massive stone archway, intricately carved with Overlord's sigils of dominance, framing a vortex of swirling blue and white fire. Lightning, raw and untamed, crackled around its edges. This was it. The portal to the real, awakened Verra. It was not just approaching; it felt summoned, a direct response to our collective hunger for power and my own desperate need to be reborn.
As it loomed, filling my entire vision, a searing heat washed over me. My human skin... this flesh that had known trust and then its utter violation... it began to tighten. To crackle and peel away like burnt parchment in a pyre of righteous fury. This was not mere pain; it was an exorcism, the shedding of a cursed form. Beneath it, something new. Something hard, iridescent. Silver. Scales. The heat intensified, burning away the last vestiges of the soft, betrayable human form, reforging me in the image of draconic power, a form incapable of such petty human failings. The agony was immense, but it was the price of liberation, a glorious, cleansing fire.
The portal fire washed through me, not just over me. It consumed the dream-flesh, the human limitation, the lingering stain of betrayal, reforging what lay beneath into something… grander, impervious. When the burning subsided, I looked down. My calloused, dirty hands... gone. Replaced by claws. Strong, sharp, covered in interlocking silver scales that seemed to drink in the portal's light and glow faintly with the inner blue light of my ancestor, Bahamut's sacred fire, and the cold resolve that now defined me.
Instinctively, driven by a destiny forged in the crucible of deceit and imperial ambition, I turned. The portal, the great burning gateway, was still there. But it had changed. The fire within was gone, replaced by a surface like polished obsidian, a giant mirror reflecting the impossible.
Standing there, looking back at me from the depths of the portal-mirror, were my reflections. The Empyrean Cleric, perfect yet flawed. The hulking Vek Fighter/Rogue, primal and shadowy. The Kaelar Rogue, swift, his eyes still carrying the ghost of that mercantile betrayal, a hollow reminder of vulnerabilities shed. My past lives, my dream-selves, staring out from the prison of the mirror.
A sound rumbled in my chest, escaping my lips not as a human word, but as a draconic laugh – deep, resonant, and filled with a sudden, fierce joy and an unshakeable resolve. This was it. This was real. The frailties of humanity, its betrayals and broken promises, were scorched away, replaced by draconic majesty. I raised my new, scaled hands, claws crackling with that inner blue fire. Reaching towards the mirror, I did not just touch their reflections; I grasped their very shadows, tearing the ghostly blue Essence of their forms from the mirrored surface.
They flowed into my claws like smoke, merging with the Essence already there. It didn't feel like stealing; it felt like reclaiming. Integrating. The divine glow around my hands intensified, swirling now with captured echoes – faith, brutality, the cold precision of the Sin-Eater, and even the hardened wisdom born of betrayal, all now facets of a more potent whole.
I turned away from the fading reflections, the power of those fragmented lives settling within me, not as separate beings, but as aspects of a new, formidable self. The fever of the dream was gone. The dreamlike haze, the vulnerability, had vanished. I stood tall, feeling the weight of my scales, the strength in my limbs, the thrum of primal energy now bound to my will. The air tasted different. Sharper. Real.
This... this is Fate. And I... I am Cimarb. Tulnar. Son of the Dragons. Sin-Eater of Overlord. Forged in the fires of dying dreams, human treachery, and imperial ambition. And finally, truly, awake... and ready to conquer Verra.
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Love it!