Introduction to Lor

Our World was lonesome, pallid, and bleak. Though it was small, we knew of nothing more than our World in those days of the last age, and so our name for it then was Lor- "everything."

— Kav the Traveller, Questant

Welcome, wanderer, to the mysterious world of Lor. No matter how you found your way to these desolate lands, be warned that the journey out of Lor is perilous. The few exits from this wayward realm are so well hidden that, for generations, few even knew of their existence. But if you choose to stay a while, you will find that our World may not be as bleak as it seems.

Lands

Folk

Fauna

Flora

Secrets

Meta

Lands

There is no denying our World is a stark place. The vast majority of Lor’s surface is bare and hard; crossed by a network of narrow faults and shallow channels which host tragically sparse flora. Indeed, the ground of the Barrens is so unyielding that nothing save the occasional moss or mold dares probe their roots into it. Parts of our World, however, are forested by strange, twisting trees of lichen, towering fungi, and a handful of hardy plants able to tolerate the dry climate and ashen gloam.

Folk

Lor is inhabited by a small number of people, though it may seem astonishing that beings of elevated mental caliber should inhabit our World at all. We, the Folk, and our kin, live in settlements scattered in the mountains and ground across Lor. However, there is another intelligent species within our World. The World Eaters, who live within Lor alongside us and even in the Sky above, resemble us in form and society, but unlike us they eat away at the very bones of Lor.

Fauna

Our World supports a patchwork, yet tenacious, assortment of hardy fauna. Such harsh environments as the ones present in Lor necessitate resilience and adaptability -and on occasion, brute savagery. Considering this demanding existence, it may come as a surprise to discover that our World has a modestly appreciable biodiversity. Creatures large and small manage to eke out lives in every available niche, from scavenging shieldbeasts to fearsome wyverns to colossal behemoths.

Flora

The lands of Lor are not well-suited to plants, nor are they kind. The sedentary existence of flora and fungi is just as harsh as that of our World's more mobile inhabitants. Despite this rather gruelling existence, there is a certain beauty to the mold-flecked wastes and whispering forests, as the plants of Lor are not easily deterred.

Secrets

There are things you do not understand about this world, wanderer. Revelations lurk below the surface, hiding like playful children; truths waiting to be known. Wherever you spy the faint symbol of a key, there awaits a truth to help free you from the Great Lie of Lor. But be warned: some truths are difficult to face.

Metanarrative

The Great Lie of Lor is this simple truth of the setting: the Bleakworld project is, in its entirety, focused around sapient insects who have been trapped inside a long-abandoned human house for hundreds of generations. However, the project is an exercise in imagination on the part of the audience and an endeavour of meticulous ambiguity on the part of the author: everything in Bleakworld canon is worded extremely carefully to avoid giving that fact away, unless the reader chooses to reveal the secrets hidden in each article. Bleakworld is essentially a challenge for myself to describe a world in as much detail as possible without disrupting the illusion the audience builds for themselves.