The year is 4305 and Valdara is a unified kingdom. Tsarigrad’s soaring marble basilicas and textile mills in the east, Karlingrad’s workshops and ceremonial knights in the west, Ikosium’s shrines and spice markets on the southern coast. Steam-driven looms are replacing hand work, and the first continental railway is under construction. The aristocracy holds the land. The middle class runs the workshops and the working poor grind through days that blur together. The Faith marks birth, marriage, and death but increasingly feels like ritual without substance.
This is the world every dreamer comes from, but not every dreamer comes from the same place within it, and the difference matters for how they will experience Grimmloch.
Some dreamers grow up in allodial regions, where the folk tradition still runs in unbroken lines from ancestor to child, where the names of the local spirits are common knowledge and protocols are still observed. A dreamer from Wendland, Skania, or Numidia crosses into Grimmloch and discovers that the stories their families told are real.
Other dreamers come from the kingdom’s cities - Tsarigrad, Karlingrad, and Ikosium - where industrialization and centralized culture have severed people from the traditions their families once believed but no longer do. A dreamer from the Valdaran cities crosses into Grimmloch carrying longing for something that is missing.
Both paths lead to the Gates of Horn and Ivory. The difference is whether they arrive recognizing what they find or learning what they lost and can reclaim.
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