The world of Vesper

Vesper is a small, ancient planet, circled by a faint ring of stardust. It has one continent, Lumen, long and lying east to west, and around it a dark ocean: the Dew Sea. In the east rise the highlands, with the city of Auren on the Zenith Crown; in the west, the lands of the Night, moors and saltmarshes down to the island city of Nocturna; and between them, the Twilight Line, a strip of grey hills where the day touches the night.

The Ancients built the Celestial Astrolabe, a colossal mechanism of rings of bronze and light, and the Clockmakers kept it. It held the Sun and the Moon locked in a perpetual eclipse. For a thousand years there was neither day nor night, only twilight: the Perpetual Equinox, a peace in which nothing died violently and nothing grew. A whole, beautiful, dead world.

In the year 1000 the Astrolabe broke, in the middle of an oath in the city of Auren. Its rings fell across Lumen as Star Shards, and the energy leaking from them now flows through the sky as the Celestial Tide. The Sun uncovered, and the first dawn in a thousand years was followed by the first night. The sky runs backward now, with Sun and Moon rising in the west. And the dead no longer rest: they leave Echoes.

Sun and Moon woke up as divine consciousnesses, and neither of them is evil. Both are famished after a thousand years in chains, and hunger makes them dangerous. Around them, three peoples have taken sides: the highlands for the Sun, the lands of the Night for the Moon, and the Twilight Line for the balance between them. Choose a heavenly body.

Choose a heavenly body to begin