The World of Whirlpool

"The battlefield of the gods, which many believed to be as old as creation itself."

A tiny cluster of islands at the heart of the world. According to ancient tales, anchors were carved into the stone and used to drag the shores closer together, so that the arena — the great proving ground — could be reached by any who dared.

For centuries, the Games raised paupers into lords and struck kings to dust. It was here the Dundian boy Abeo ended a queen's life, and here the savior family slaughtered a court to end a dynasty.

The arena still stands. The Ticks still watch.

"The peoples there showed a high level of development in warfare, but because their society was divided, they did not enter battle as one great army."

A war-hardened continent split into two main regions and countless warring houses. When Whirlpool's conquest fleet landed, Bucca fought with unmatched ferocity — but fractured as it was, it fell after bitter fighting and oceans of blood.

Its armies were then marched through occupied lands to break Donor. Remnants of its great houses still hide in the hills, whispering of rebellion.

"In Donor, warriors were raised and even the leaders were chosen that way."

A society that forges champions from childhood. Its people fight not as an army but as individual legends — enough force to halt any frontal invasion.

The conquerors knew this. They did not come from the front. Marching through Bucca, striking from the southwest, they captured families and innocents as hostages. Donor surrendered.

Its greatest warriors were caged; its traditions outlawed. Prugno, the one-eyed one-armed champion, was Donori blood.

"Strange spiral-patterned creatures are terrorizing villages. Find their source and turn off the tap."

Once a quiet, under-populated continent taken without resistance during the conquest. Today, twenty years after the fall of the savior family, Thumbstone is ground zero for the spiral creatures.

They crawl from the earth, marked with the sigil of their maker — a hidden boy, last of a forgotten line, painting his grief into monsters.

Vorox the dragon and Agutor the slaughterer were the first. They devour. They grow smart. They spread.

"A place where every individual's echo is so strong that, if they wish, it can travel through the whole city."

A green plateau high above the desert, reachable only by the Stairway of Giants — four thousand steps, each taller than a man.

Once home to peaceful magic-using natives whose faith reshaped the world. A child — the creator — carved a new home into the cliffs behind a waterfall with a single touch.

Here the Mother plotted her family's rise. Here the blood-cauldrons were lit. Here magic was born, and here it nearly died.

The city is now populated by humans. The natives are almost gone.

"Their nation was infamous for its quarrelsome manner, even though they numbered only a handful of inhabitants."

A small, aggressive people long excluded from the Games. For decades no Dundian set foot in the arena — until the boy Abeo.

Given a place in the royal guard, whispered about, underestimated. The Mother chose him as her blade, convinced the queen was a tyrant, and forged him into a killing machine over twenty years.

He slaughtered Prugno's team. He slaughtered the queen. Then he vanished. No one has seen him since.

"Bleeding soles, dried lips, and trembling bodies marked the soldiers of the forced marches."

An endless sea of sand that devours armies. It holds False Heaven at its northern tip, the coastal settlements at its rim, and countless buried secrets beneath its dunes.

Conquest forces bled themselves dry crossing it. Supply lines collapsed. Entire battalions vanished.

It is said the desert remembers every footprint — and every death. The Stairway of Giants stands at its northern edge, four thousand steps tall.

"The locals did everything they could to convince the army to avoid building them, or a terrible fate would await them."

A chasm separates the desert from the swampland. Only one passage once existed — the bridge between the twin cities.

When the Whirlpool army came, they ignored warnings and laid new planks across the abyss. What followed, the old writings refuse to describe in full.

The swamp folk know things others do not. They remember what the cleansing forgot. If Abeo hid anywhere from curious eyes, it would be here.