The Lore of the Hearth¶
This section is the canon reference for Phoenix Sagas: the cosmology, gods, history, peoples, and distant regions on which the game rests. The World section describes where the roads lead; this section explains why those roads exist.
It is written as an authoring foundation. Every page leaves deliberate room — unnamed valleys, sealed gates, half-remembered gods — so new zones, quests, and NPCs can enter the canon without contradiction.
The Hearth in Brief¶
The world is called the Hearth, and it is the ash and ember of something older. Before creation there was the Long Dark — cold without end — and one spark that refused it: the Phoenix, the Undying Flame, fire that gives itself away and returns. Each of its burnings kindles an age of the world. These ages are called Sagas, and the present age is the Fifth: the Saga of Embers.
The gods — the Kindled — are sparks off the First Burning, each carrying one part of fire's nature: the sun's return, the hearth's welcome, the forge's edge, the brief green of summer, the banked warmth of death. One of them, the eldest, carried fire's hunger instead. He hoarded warmth rather than giving it, swallowed whole summers, and is chained for it beneath the mountains at the top of the world. Folk will not say his name. The cold of the far north is his shadow through the stone; the whole cold continent that lies in that shadow — mountain, thaw, and frozen sea — is Umbrath, the shadowland.
The mountain range that holds him down is the Frostspine — the rampart the Forgefather raised, the prison-wall the last dragon still patrols. That is where the game takes place: three small sanctuaries of shared fire, hanging on at the edge of the oldest dark, while the range slowly wakes around them.
Adventurers are what the faiths call embers — loose sparks of the Flame, scattered where the world is thinnest. When you die, the Flame is not done with you; you wake at the chapel fire because you are still needed for the next kindling. This is the theological frame beneath the respawn mechanic, not an explanation added after it.
The pages¶
| Page | Scope |
|---|---|
| The First Fire & the Shape of Things | Creation, the Phoenix, the Sagas, the calendar and festivals |
| The Five Sagas | The history of the world, age by age |
| Timeline of the Hearth | The dated ledger: foundings, wars, and living-memory events (it is 1214 SR) |
| The Great Kindled | The eight major gods, and the two Great Others |
| Lesser Kindled & Folk Spirits | The small gods of roads, reeds, locks, and dreams |
| Faiths, Orders & Cults | Worship in practice — churches, rites, and heresies |
| Ashwing, the Last Dragon | The gray regent of the high air, and how to read her flights |
| Where Magic Comes From | Kindling, the three wells, the Wheels, and Emberspeech |
| Other Realities | The Long Dark, the Pyre, the Veil of Moths, the Veins, the Underchain |
| The Thirteen Peoples | Race lore and cultures of every playable people |
| The Wider World | What lies beyond the Frostspine — sketched thin on purpose |
Canon and Interpretation¶
- In-game truth outranks wiki truth. If the game shows something this section does not yet cover, the game is correct and this section is incomplete.
- Folk belief may be mistaken. Pages report what people of the Hearth believe, and different peoples believe differently. Where scholars and common tradition disagree, both are recorded.
- The blanks are intentional. "No road has ever reached it" is an invitation, not an oversight.