Sindom

 

An Odd Letter

If the circumstances are as I predict, you must be very confused when reading this. Provided everything went as I planned, you should now be in a small wooden house, lying in a freshly made bed, with this letter by your side. If your surroundings are not such, I figure something has gone wrong, and would recommend you to exercise great caution from now on. However, if things are as I described, then we are in luck. I suppose the first paragraph of this letter has not been particularly revealing with regards to your situation. I will clarify. The person writing this letter is yourself. Or, rather, the person you used to be. I will not state my name, my profession, or what I have done over my four decades of life, for it is exactly those things that I wish to forget in this “experiment”. I have contracted an Assiti alchemist to concoct me a memory-erasing potion. As a result of it, I expect to become a fully new man: you. Although you might lack my life experience, you will not enter the world empty-handed. You are currently on a small island in the Zestallian Sea, inhabited only by yourself. Here you will find a little farm, a house with all necessary utilities, and, most importantly, a small library with every piece of knowledge you will need in starting out this new experience. If you wish, you could likely spend the entire remainder of your life here. I don’t suspect anyone will visit this abode, since it is not on any maps or itineraries I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen plenty). However, if you are anything like myself (and I suspect you are, since we are the same person after all), you will probably be interested in venturing beyond this safe harbor and into the dangers of our mortal world. I do not know how much memory of this land you will have retained after the potion, but I expect very little. For that reason, I have prepared for you a considerable collection of books and excerpts to introduce you to the Vyre, the world and continent that you and I inhabit, its many nations and cultures, its gods, if you can call them that, its despots, its magic, and everything that you will face on your journeys. I ask that you do not pry into my own history, for it is because of it that I decided to create you and abandon my own life. If anyone recognizes you by a name other than your own, deny them any connections, and blame it all on a simple coincidence. I suppose you might be tired of reading my explanations, so I will not stall anymore, and introduce you to this land you found yourself on.   Welcome to the Vyre. We use this name to refer both to the world we inhabit and the continent we live on, for, although the existence of other landmasses is a fact, there is very little knowledge about any beyond our own. That said, you may also hear this world be referred to as the Great Rondure (for our world is, in fact, spherical). The Vyre is by all standards a brutal world. Every day there is a violent clash at least somewhere on the continent, and the looming threat of war, disease, crime, and the occult looms over even the most prosperous of its residents. However, do not fret; this land possesses many wonders and, after a while, you will learn to see beauty despite all the disasters that you may behold. Although many argue that the dolorous state of the Vyre is due to the mistakes of humans, our violent and self-obsessed nature. However, while there is some truth to that, I would say that most of our issues lie on the overlords that lord cruelly over the Vyre, forcing us to see them as benevolent deities. Those beings are known as the Elders. There is no knowledge of the true origin of the Elders, nor of their full intentions. We know, however, that they are vastly more powerful than we could even comprehend, and that our Rondure is only a small part of the universe that they use as their eternal battleground. We, to them, are merely pawns. To remove the influence of other Elders, they empower some humans with supernatural abilities, but even those come at a steep price. The nature and existence of the Elders is a somewhat controversial topic. Some 2 centuries ago, one would have been laughed at for even suggesting such a theory. However, Carcellan’s definitive work on the subject, “Abyss”, is, in my opinion, the most accurate and true description of them that you can find. I have included it in my compilation of works. I will not go too much into detail on the subject, as I consider sir Carcellan to be far more knowledgeable of an authority on it than I could even wish to be. The Vyre is an extremely vast and diverse land, spanning from the deserts of Parimkur to the snowy tundras of the Fluminose Valley. It is frequently divided into three parts: the hot southern continent of Parimkur, the warm and rich southern Vyre, where most of advanced civilization lies, and the vast and cold northern Vyre. You will find that, although there is a plurality of odd creatures in this land, many of them sentient, most civilizations are headed by those not too different from yourself.

Introduction to the Vyre