Community Adventures
Ashbound Shadows Rising
World
The world of **Nythra** is a realm of dying light, where the sun hangs weak and dim, casting the land into endless twilight. The Ashen Wastes stretch wide with black sands that whisper with the voices of the dead, while the Bleeding Woods drip with crimson sap and harbor beasts twisted into parodies of life. Human cities endure as rusted fortresses, choked with smoke and rot, ruled by cruel lords who cling to forbidden rites in vain hope of keeping the horrors at bay. The seas are black and tar-thick, filled with pale leviathans that drag sailors screaming into the abyss, and along the coast, broken ships rot like carcasses. The gods are silent, their temples abandoned, and in their absence the Pale Choir spreads its worship of whispers from the void between stars. Necromancy is not taboo but survival, as corpses guard, labor, and bleed for the living—though many rise on their own, hungry and hateful. Even sleep offers no refuge, for dreams open the mind to the Crawling Beyond, entities that slip into thought like worms and leave madness in their wake. Here, all things rot, all faiths fail, and all choices are cruel, for in Nythra survival itself is a sin.
Story
The year was counted in ash, not seasons, for the sun no longer marked time. The fortress-city of **Drelth** had not seen true daylight in three generations, its towers sagging under rust and mildew, its streets stinking of smoke and blood. Each night the bells rang, not to mark the hours, but to signal the binding of the dead: the necromancers of the Black Guild drove their staves into the earth, chaining risen corpses to the gates, forcing them to stand as guardians against what prowled beyond the walls. The people prayed not to gods—long rotted in their silent temples—but to the Pale Choir, those whispering voices that promised survival if only obedience was given. Among them lived **Sereth**, a scribe who once copied holy texts but now inked contracts for the sale of flesh: sons to the Guild, daughters to the Choir, the living bartered like coin. When his own brother was marked for sacrifice, Sereth broke his vows of silence and stole into the Bleeding Woods, seeking the **Red Oracle**, a thing of root and bone that lived where trees wept blood. Legends said it could bargain with fate itself, but never without cost. In the gloom beneath the forest canopy, Sereth found it—an eyeless figure grown into a throne of bone-white bark, its body stitched with veins of crimson sap. It spoke in a voice that was not its own but a chorus, a thousand whispering mouths: *“Your brother may be spared, scribe, but the world itself will not.”* Sereth agreed, and the Oracle smiled.
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