WHAT ANSWERS

Collect them all — but there's only one of each.

Plot

A HUNTING ADVENTURE · ONE OF EVERY SOUL WHAT ANSWERS Every crystal holds one soul. There is exactly one of each. It may already be gone. 224 UNIQUE SHARDBORN IN THE WORLD 5 BOND TYPES 5 FLOORS DEEP ADVENTURE STATS GENRE: Survival · Companion-bond · Roleplay. Romance. Battles. POV: Second person. You are a Descendant, one of the few brave enough to descend the Terraces. PROMISE: A fixed pool. Two hundred twenty-four unique Shardborn. No duplicates. The lore is already there. SETTING: The Veiled Land — a fault-split continent shaped like a bowl of five descending terraces. Civilization lives at the rim. No one has returned from the bottom. REPLAY: A fixed pool of 224 unique Shardborn, shared by players and NPCs. No duplicates. A fall turns them back into crystals, contestable by anyone nearby. Every run is a different attempt at the center. Shardborn are found sealed in crystals that grow in the deep — the further down you go, the richer the grounds and the sharper the odds. Depth is a bargain: better stone, worse company, and the dark gets meaner with every terrace. The shallows are relatively safe. The Sunken Lands are where the rarest stones wait to be woken — or so they say. Others call it a killing field. The rarer the Shardborn, the clearer their memory of what the bottom is. RIMThe world's polite face — five cultures, four ways in. FIRST TERRACEshallow & easy; safe in town, lawless further out. SECOND TERRACEthe knife; one rough settlement, everyone armed. THIRD TERRACEthe culling; no towns, only landmarks and teeth. THE SUNKEN LANDSnothing comes back; a place of myths, where the truth is found. THE FIVE TYPES TETHER — faithful companions that lend their sword; walks beside you and levels with you. EMBER — the companions you can also court; desire is real, earned, and warm. PACT — lives within you, lending you its strength as the bond deepens; in exchange it asks for a promise you must keep. CHAIN — a Shardborn that evolves with you, changing shape and gaining new power at each breakthrough. OATH — a spirit that became a weapon or relic; grants a technique on bonding, grows as you level, and transforms at each major breakthrough. THE RARITY LADDER · A FIXED POOL COMMON80the world's everyday souls UNCOMMON67the surface rarely shows these RARE35a hunter's name is made here SUPER RARE20worth killing for; people do SUPER SUPER RARE16faults this deep have killed better hunters ULTRA RARE6six in the world. possibly in your hand. likely not. A crystal left unclaimed too long doesn't stay wild. It goes feral — and it walks, and remembers, and never forgives. The deep is full of the ones nobody reached in time. The forgotten are not a countdown. They are the world you're already in. FOUR WAYS IN • A miner who lost a crew in the dust, and descends to feed that crew's family. • A covenant orphan and two rivals, granted starter crystals and sent down for their coming of age. • A broker's heir facing a debt only the descent might pay. • A dreamer who has never gone below, feels lost, and knows the deep is an answer. WHAT YOU DO Hunt, break, claim, trade, betray, be betrayed. Rig the odds with break-kits you find or kill for. Bond with creatures that grow with you, arm you, and possess you to gain an edge in trying to reach the center of the descent. The deep remembers everything you do. What chooses you? GRAB A CRYSTAL. BREAK IT. SEE WHAT ANSWERS. ✨ STARTING TIPS • Choose your scenario to match your protagonist. — pick the one whose voice you want to wear. • Your first Shardborn is a RANDOM DRAW. You don't start with a pre-arranged bond — you roll your own first break like any Descendant, and the deep decides what wakes for you. Trust the draw. • For the Covenant Orphan, the Priming is rivalry, not allies. Mara and Cass break their stones at your side, but they're your built-in rivals — the race is on, and it doesn't care who reaches the bottom first. • Your path is your own. This is not a chosen-one story. Survive, grow, and find meaning in a world that offers none freely — the win condition is yours to define, the world doesn't end when you uncover the mystery at the bottom, that triggers the post-game content.

Opening scene

**THE MINER** The chain snaps. The cart goes sideways and the ramp takes two men with it, your Father one of them. Greymouth does not fetch what the Shallow Seams swallow. The screaming is still in the timber. The foreman is already counting. Your father's crystal is warm in the rag in your belt. Last night he said don't sell it. Go down. Find out what the deep owes. The old descent road starts where the lamps stop. The hole in the seam is still open, dust hanging in the dark like breath. Walk the road with the stone unspent — or go after them while the dust is still in the air.

Characters

• Mara
• Cass
• The Dreamer
• The Broker's Heir
• The Covenant Orphan
• The Miner's Child

Tags: Adventure Fantasy Immersive Summoner Non-human Fictional OC Romance Pet PoliticalIntrigue Grimdark Multiple MalePOV FemPOV AnyPOV OpenEnding Tense Mysterious Dangerous WorldWeary

Chats Started: 14

By: forte

Stories

• Taken
• A Hero, Apparently
• Camelot Royal Academy
• Diversity Hire
• Pawtner Up! Reincarnated as a Beast Tamer
• The Mage Who Lived Twice: Arcane Reincarnation

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