Lore

Concept art showing the citizens of Verra escaping a besieged city through a divine gateway.

Long ago, the world of Verra was besieged by a great calamity. A corruption befell the land, twisting and perverting every facet of nature, spawning hideous beings of every description; from troll-like creatures to towering behemoths. Nothing escaped its touch.

Granted by divine intervention, eight of the nine races fled Verra through towering gateways, seeking refuge in a place void of magic. Only one race remained behind: The Tul'nar fled to the Underrealm to escape the corruption.

Soon after the exodus, the gateways dimmed and became dormant. Centuries turned to millennia, burying them beneath myriad calamities. Over eons, history became legend, then even the great legends were at last forgotten.

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 the beautiful and perilous magical realm of your ancestors.

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.

Player driven narrative

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.

Discovery of legendary items will unlock further chapters of the Lore.

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

• Races
• Religions