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Q — Questions for the Princep

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  The mysteries surrounding Ludovic and Maximillian’s true plans. In Padua, power rarely introduces itself. Ludovic, known in certain circles as the Princep , carried an authority he didn’t announce. Along with Maximillian, his Master of the Horse, he arrived with purpose, spoke carefully, and left behind more questions than answers. Officially, their interest in the frontier town seemed simple enough: trade routes, regional stability, perhaps the occasional investigation into strange events along the Avon. But their actions rarely matched the simplicity of their explanations. They asked unusual questions. About ruins upriver…about talismans tied to Karitamen’s forgotten legacy…about the self titled prince next door. Their inquiries felt less like curiosity and more like confirmation, as though they already knew pieces of a much larger story and were quietly testing who else might understand it. That uncertainty bred suspicion. Were they protectors trying to contain something dange...
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P — Padua Upon Avon

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  The fragile frontier town that became the party’s home. Padua sits where the Avon bends just enough to slow the current and tempt people to settle. It isn’t a grand city, far from it. A handful of muddy streets, timber buildings leaning against the weather, and a riverfront crowded with barges and fishing boats. The forests press close on all sides, and the road that leads away from town never quite feels safe after sunset. Padua exists because it must: a trading stop, a river crossing, a thin thread of civilization stretched across an uncertain frontier. What keeps the town alive isn’t walls or soldiers, but people who refuse to leave. Hunters who know the woods too well to fear them. Traders who gamble that the next barge will bring profit instead of trouble. Odd figures who drift in from the wider world: envoys, hedge witches, wandering scholars, each adding another layer to Padua’s strange little society. It’s messy, ramshackle, and constantly one bad season away from collaps...
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O — The Ogre at the Door

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  Tegort, Udrin’s unnerving bodyguard…who may not have been entirely alive. Most bodyguards loomed. Tegort lingered . Wherever Udrin went in Padua, Tegort was rarely far behind. He was an immense figure, planted near a doorway, a wall, or whatever narrow space best let him watch the room. At first glance he was simply a large man, the sort whose shoulders filled a frame and whose silence discouraged questions. But the longer people looked, the more unsettled they became. His movements were slow but precise, his gaze distant in a way that suggested he was listening to something no one else could hear. And then there was the stillness. Tegort could stand for hours without shifting his weight, without clearing his throat, without the small fidgets that betrayed ordinary life. Some swore they had seen him remain in place through an entire evening at Katerina’s Rest, untouched mug before him, never once taking a sip. Others whispered that when the lanternlight hit his face just right, h...
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N — Night at Katerina’s Rest

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  Where rumors, ale, and panic shaped the town’s decisions. If Padua had a council chamber, it was Katerina’s Rest. The tavern sat close enough to the Avon that the damp air carried the smell of river mud through the open shutters. By dusk the place was usually filled with the people who actually keep the town running, hunters, merchants, river folk, the occasional mercenary, and anyone else who would trade coin for a mug. News traveled fast there, though rarely in a straight line. A rumor whispered at one table became fact by the time it reached the next. On the night people now refer to simply as that night , the mood shifted from lively to brittle in a matter of hours. Word of strange happenings along the riverbanks mixed with Ludo’s grim report and Cosetta’s increasingly sharp warnings. Every retelling added another detail: shapes in the fog, missing travelers, sounds in the woods that no one could quite explain. The ale flowed freely, but the laughter thinned as the stories st...
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M — Morrslieb Rising

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  The sickly pink moon that always heralded trouble. When Morrslieb rises full over Padua, people stop pretending everything is normal. The sickly green-pink glow of the Chaos moon stains the night sky in a way no natural light should. It hangs there like a cruel taunt, swollen and watchful, casting strange shadows across rooftops and riverbanks. Even those who claim not to believe the old superstitions find themselves glancing upward, uneasy without quite knowing why. Experience had taught the town to take the omen seriously. Animals grew restless. Dogs barked at empty alleys. Sleep came poorly, filled with dreams that felt too vivid to be harmless. Those who spend their lives close to danger, hunters, soldiers, and the occasional hedge witch, recognized the pattern. When Morrslieb burned bright, something in the world seemed to thin, as though the barrier between the ordinary and the monstrous had worn dangerously thin. Vaervenshyael noticed it too, though she would never call it...
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L — Ludo the Hunter

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  The woodsman whose reports first revealed Ubain’s terrible fate. Ludo knew the woods the way sailors knew the sea: by instinct as much as experience. A trapper and hunter by trade, he spent more nights under the trees than under a roof, moving through the forests around Padua with the quiet confidence of someone who understands its rhythms. He knew where the deer crossed the streams, where wolves made their winter dens, and which paths turned treacherous when the rains came. It was the kind of knowledge that kept a man alive in lonely places. That’s why people listened when Ludo came back shaken. He wasn’t a man given to exaggeration, and he certainly wasn’t the type to scare easily. But when he reported what he’d found near Ubain, broken ground, signs of struggle, and traces that suggested something far worse than bandits, his words carried weight. Hunters read the land the way scholars read books, and Ludo’s conclusion was simple: whatever happened there was unnaturally violent...
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K — Karitamen’s Legacy

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  The ancient history behind the talismans and the ruins. Long before Padua was a frontier town of muddy streets and uneasy alliances, something older stood here. The name Karitamen surfaces rarely, and never in the same context twice. In half-burned manuscripts and fragmented carvings found among the ruins upriver, the name appears beside strange symbols: spirals, eyes, and sigils that predate the Empire by centuries. Scholars argue over whether Karitamen was a sorcerer, a priest-king, or something less human entirely. What they agree on is that whatever power once gathered here did not vanish altogether. The talismans are the most tangible proof. Small things, rings of carved stone, pendants etched with worn glyphs, fragments of metal that seem older than the ruins they’re found in. Some do nothing at all. Others hum faintly with power when the air grows thick with magic. A few have demonstrated effects no one fully understands, which makes them both valuable and deeply unsettlin...
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