Lore

Ashes of Creation logo.

Ashes of Creation is a direct reference to the storyline. Without giving too much away, the phoenix is going to be a persistent symbol throughout the first phase of the storyline, and the world that the players will be inhabiting is a long-lost world that has suffered devastating calamity. – Jeffrey Bard

The Phoenix is the celestial avatar of the Goddess of creation. Her sacrifice protected the people of Verra during the apocalypse. – Steven Sharif

There are different parts to the Lore in Ashes of Creation.

• Origin story.
• The story of the fall.
• The story of deliverance/return.

It is about mythology and discovering what truths mythologies are talking about and finding out what really happened on this world so long ago; and that's part of that discovery process; and we want people to feel that throughout the game, not just in terms of lore but in terms of the world itself. – Jeffrey Bard

Story arcs drive one or more storyline quests within the game. Story arcs branch into different stories with multiple possible endings depending on the quest objectives that players complete during each chapter.

• It is possible for some storylines to relate to a darker/evil path, if a character should choose.

We're keeping lore very close to the chest and the reason for that is because it is very rich. It is diverse. It will have applications outside of just the MMORPG. We intend to take it much further, but I want it to be something that the players get to reveal themselves, that's not just handed to them and then the experience is lost. They should feel when they're experiencing this that it relates to them on a personal level. – Steven Sharif

Synopsis

Ancient evils lie in wait for hapless adventurers.

The world in Ashes lay devoid of civilization for centuries. Until now.

What was once buried had risen again. The gateways had opened, reigniting the link to the ancient world.

Adventurers arrive on Verra through great divine gateways.

Vast expeditions were sent through the gateways to discover this beautiful and perilous magical realm.

The world in Ashes has been void of civilization for centuries.

Players arrive in Verra to explore, rebuild and repopulate their place of origin. Ancient treasures and wondrous adventures await those who dare to disturb the dark remnants of evil that inhabit this land.

From now on, the choices of these adventurers will influence how the story unfolds.

Dünheim

Alpha-0 Dünir Dünheim dungeon design by Michael Bacon.

Dünheim concept art.

Dünheim is an open-world dungeon in the Alpha-0 zone that was once a Dünir dwarven city.

Dünheim history

During the great calamity that befell Verra, the inhabitants of Dünheim elected to remain in their mountain keep. This didn't work out well for them. In the wake of the destruction many artifacts and treasures were left behind.

Dillia's diary

Dünir architecture.

Dillia's diary.

I was a child when they first appeared in the night’s sky. At first there were three distinct lights. Not quite the brightest in the sky, but they were bright enough. My mother told me that they were a sign from the Gods, that the world was about to change. She had a sense for these types of things. A long line of women in my mother’s family were Oracles. Written on one of the many tablets in the Great Halls of King Grimlaey, is the story of my Great-Grandmother, the Royal Court’s Regent Oracle, and how she foretold the rise of the Undying during the Great War.

As the days grew to months, and months into years, the lights in the night’s sky grew in number. The priests in the temples began to refer to the lights as Harbingers. Upon my graduation from the Master Stonecutters University, the lights numbered 16. Each passing month, the lights grew in brightness and size.

It didn’t take long for things to change in Dünheim. Families that I had grown up with, began to move away from the city in the heart of the Mountain. Travelers became less common, and temple services were filled every day with new converts seeking answers about the Harbingers and what they meant. My mother wanted to leave the city as well, but my father wouldn’t hear it. His auction house is what kept food on the table, and my brothers were both in the Council Guard. There was no way my father was going to be seen leaving the mountain. Honor and respect meant more than life itself, and my father had great pride in my brothers. Despite my mother’s persistence to leave the city, we stayed.

Read more...

Player driven narrative

One of the major goals I feel like we have is to allow player decisions to have consequences and to have meaningful results from the decisions that they make, so it seems like people can really create their own stories. – Aimi Watanabe

The world of Verra will be the same on each server, but Nodes will develop differently. Different servers will have different narratives. Things that happen on one server may not happen on another.

• The overarching narrative of Ashes of Creation is that players are the returning children of Verra but they will not be characterized individually as "saviors".

We want as many people as possible to experience the main server Narrative. These will branch at different scales, but largely at the personal level. Where things change is at the Node level – different parts of the story will be unlocked based on where and when Nodes grow. Unlocking a part of the story in a certain way locks out progression of the story in a different way. You’ll see different antagonists, different NPCs, and different calls to action depending on what’s happening with the server at that time.

It redefines what the players will experience in an MMORPG to come into a wilderness that is devoid of really any structure outside of what the community creates themselves; and then what can be created can be changed, if they want to experience a storyline that's been seen on another server, but you're fighting a dragon because you're near a mountain and the other server's fighting a Kraken because they're near the coast and you want to fight that Kraken because of its drop table. If you want to meta it or because you just want that under your belt: to be the server first to take out that Kraken and you have yet to develop the node there, it's incumbent upon you to manifest that in the game. – Steven Sharif

Story arcs

Alpha-2 early preview of the story arc UI.

Story arcs are like a pre-packaged tabletop campaign. They contain all of the NPCs and quests and monsters- all the things you need to make a cool fantasy story. They're not procedurally generated... We write all the dialogue and we construct all the narrative beats and everything like that, but they will enter the world dynamically depending on the state that the world is currently in; how players have built up specific nodes, what races control various nodes. We have plans to include lots of different things on top of that, but we don't have any quest hubs or anything like that in this game, because players build up all the cities. So we had to get a system that looks at what players are doing and can inject content into the world that makes sense for what they're doing. – Skott B

The Blood Still Due story arc unlocking at The Tower of Carphin.

When story arcs come online, they change a lot the environment. They update what monsters are in the world. They create quest NPCs... and then new Pathways can open up through the environment. – Skott B

Story arcs are unlocked by multiple types of player activity within each server.

• Cultural activity.

• Regional activity.

• Node progression.

Every stage a node develops it's unlocking narratives, storylines, it's changing the spawn population of the area around it, changing what bosses exist, it's triggering events where you may have legendary dragons attack the city. It's basically writing the story of the server based on the actions and determination of the players. So, you may experience a dungeon one month earlier and have a completely different story that relates to this location the next month, because something has changed either geopolitically or from the node standpoint. – Steven Sharif

• Personal or class-based activity.
  • It is possible for some storylines to relate to a darker/evil path, if a character should choose.

Even player driven mechanics will still have story components. There will be a reason why the player driven mechanic is available or required of the player; so every system that's created touches a story. – Steven Sharif

• If there are too many other major arcs happening at the same time in the same zone, a story arc may need to wait its turn, even if conditions are right for it to be unlocked.

• Story arcs drive one or more storyline quests within the game.
  • Story arcs can branch into different stories with multiple possible endings depending on the quest objectives that players complete during each chapter.
  • The developers will try to ensure that story arcs in future expansions flow on from existing story arcs, regardless of the different possible outcomes.

• Story arcs can initiate world events.

• There will be a variety of different types of story arc content at different scales, with different cooldowns to suit different types of players in the game.

We must provide enough of this content at varying scales such that it isn't worthwhile or economical to control every single story arc in the world. Some will be smaller in scale and production value, and thus, will move faster and have shorter cooldowns before they're reintroduced. – Skott B

• Corrupted resources are variations of resources that are only available in corrupted areas or during certain story arcs.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Certain story arcs can be unlocked through the bulletin board system. Certain requirements would need to be met in order to access story arc quests.

• Mayors require certain resources.
• Buildings are required within a node.
• Social organization tasks need to be completed.

See also

• Quests
• Races
• Religions
• Corruption