This is a demo, so we’re going to move quickly through the first act of the adventure. Like any RPG, we’d normally play through a lot of this stuff, giving the players a chance to take action, explore, ask questions, and discover much of this information through play instead of exposition. But today we’re going to zip through it to get to the heart of the adventure.

You live in the Ninth World. Legend has it that there have been eight previous worlds, each of which built great civilizations that flourished for millennia, spoke to the stars, reengineered the earth, creatures, and themselves, and mastered form and essence. Some people call that magic, but the wise know that these were technologies of the ancients.

The Ninth World struggles through a dark age, even as you are surrounded by the ruined splendor of the prior worlds. These remains often contain wondrous discoveries for those brave enough to face their many dangers. The purposes of the ancients’ leftovers are inscrutable and their effects often downright weird, but they can be a boon to people and societies toiling through this age of ignorance.

You and your friends learned of an ancient treasure called the Kingdom Chalice, rumored to cure the ill, grant knowledge and wisdom, and bestow heroic powers on its holder. Perhaps you seek it to bring enlightenment to your home cities, to pursue greater knowledge, or to access the riches or power such an item would surely bring. The Kingdom Chalice rests in an ancient city reached via a landmark called the Mouth of the Sky. But in days of searching you found no mouth, no city, and no chalice.

You stopped in an isolated village to rest and resupply. While supping with the village elders, an aging farmer appeared with a message of despair. “The earth bleeds,” she explained. “Where this dark blood seeps from the ground, my crops wilt and my animals lie ill.”

You followed as the elders investigated, and after some hours of tramping the partially wooded landscape, discovered that this dark fluid isn’t seeping from the earth—it’s raining, in a rarefied mist, from the area of a strange portal. There, a literal hole appears in the air, about 40 feet or so up, with several strange objects hovering below it. Through the hole, looking in from below, the sky seems different, and vague structures loom overhead!