Lore

Brakna Halvsson

Steinfolk [Structural Keeper] stationed at the river junction stronghold Flodvakt. Has rebuilt the eastern approach wall four times and is beginning to understand why.

Loke

Tier-0 protagonist. 10-year-old boy scout from elsewhere, arrived in Mistheim with a slingshot and binoculars and something he is following.

The Skald

Arrived at Strandviken from the north — which nobody does anymore. Carries old knowledge and abilities that he does not explain. Understands the corruption in a way that suggests he has seen it before.

Hronn Kettil

Bergfolk [Runesmith] and quality assessor for Deepstone Hold's mana-granite export division. She has been recalibrating her instruments monthly for eighteen months. The instrument is fine.

Odrun Twice-Burnt

[Innkeeper] of the crossroads inn at Vägmötet. She lost her first inn to fire after fourteen years and rebuilt on the same site. She has been keeping the HEARTH-SEAL for thirty-one years. Something is getting harder to find.

The Wanderer

NPC survivor in an Earth dungeon. Knows things about what lives in the deep chambers. Carries a failed map and a repeatable result about the dark ones and light.

Maret Osvald

Geological survey specialist who remained in Spinolandet’s tunnels after her contract was cancelled. Originator of the field-designation naming conventions now in common use among tunnel researchers. Documents the distributed colony organisms and their fragmentation under corrupted conditions.

Maja Lind

KRONOS

Storm Sovereign

The Torrent

Master Fen

Bao

The Living Sea

Rethna of the Shallow Roads

A [Cartographer] of the Wandering People. Thirty-seven years on the road. Her maps are identifiable by a blue tint in the linen and are the most accurate record of passable coastline routes in the current crisis.

Tinkerer

His real name, whatever it was, stopped being used before the second winter. Now he is the Tinkerer and that is enough. He lives in the old fish processing shed north of Svartvik harbour, in the part where the roof still holds. His floor is engine parts and wire stripped from boats that will not run again. He does not ask where you have been. If you come back with the vehicle running he nods and looks at the damage and starts working. He keeps a small notebook in his jacket with measurements in it — not words, just numbers. He says he has one in his head too, and the one in his head is more accurate. When asked about the corruption he does not answer directly. He will hold up a piece of machinery — a fuel injector, a distributor cap — and say something about tolerances. About how things work right up until they do not. He has been saying this longer than most people have known to be afraid.

Dr. Ingrid Svanström

Kess of the Long Memory

Deepwalker oral historian. Carries eight thousand years of memory-record in active recall.

Marta Lindqvist

Settlement Warden of Svartvik. Sixteen years in municipal administration. She writes the notices in the same tone as she always has. She understands what they mean now.

Grenanke

A Lövfolk canopy city-state suspended in the eastern forest. Governing council unchanged in 340 years. Home to three archive-trees whose Myst impression is beginning to go quiet.

Saltbryggan

A Deepwalker stilt-town built on a reef-shelf over a partially submerged second-age ruin. The Merfolk had been using the submerged floors for a century before the Deepwalkers built above them. The arrangement has never been formally resolved.

Saltholmen Fuel Point

The last functioning fuel point before the northern road runs out of settlements. Two pumps under a rusted canopy, and a converted shipping container that has served as office, stockroom, and emergency shelter in roughly that order. Adela has been running it since her uncle left for the city and did not return. She keeps a handwritten log of how much fuel came in versus how much went out. The numbers have been worse every month since spring. She still sells to anyone who can pay, or in some cases to anyone who looks like they need it. She is aware that Meridian supply trucks have been going past without stopping for the last six weeks. The container has a corkboard inside with printouts and handwritten notes pinned to it. Most of it is logistics: fuel prices, contact numbers, route schedules. Some of it is not. There is a hand-drawn map with circles and dates marked in red pen. The most recent circle is very close. _Generated by lore agent_

Hellefjord Station

Marine monitoring station east of Svartvik, run for nine years by Dr. Ingrid Svanström before funding was cut. The equipment is still there and still serviced.

Strandviken

A fishing settlement of around four hundred people at a river mouth. The shelf is still productive. The smoke from the smokehouse goes straight up, most evenings.

Precursor Ruins (Spinolandet)

Källan

Sömmen

Skriftberget

Lyslunden

Genomgångslägret

Skogsgläntan

The Brackwater Crossing

A tidal meeting-point where Deepwalker peoples and land traders exchange goods and information twice a season.

Sista Fotspåren

Det Sista Försöket

Sömmötet

Torrdalen

Mistklostret

Flodbyn

Porthuset

Lysgläntan

Järnskansen

Klippbyn

An outer hamlet eleven kilometres from Strandviken whose residents left in autumn. The buildings are intact. The gardens are maintained to a date, and then not. There is a collection on the wall at the hamlet's edge.

The Marker Stone

A large inscribed stone at a path junction between the starting settlement and Strandviken. Too heavy to have been moved recently. People have always left small things at its base. Since the disruptions, it appears to do something.

Upper Ridge Snow Fields

The snow above the tree line arrived early this year and has not melted in the warm spells that should have taken it.

The Marsh Flats

Low, undrained ground west of the river. Too wet for farming, too shallow for boats. The birds here are ordinary birds.

Sandy Shore

A south-facing stretch of fine pale sand that holds heat. Warmer than the surrounding coast in ways that have never been explained.

Svartvik

A fishing settlement of three hundred people at a river mouth. The catch has been down two years. Nobody says this is unusual. Everyone knows it is unusual.

The Building Alliance

The trade and infrastructure compact between Bergfolk, Markfolk, and Steinfolk. No founding document. Born from flood response five centuries ago. The most economically consequential alliance in Mistheim, now quietly under pressure from the Dry.

The Goblin Compact

An informal network of twenty goblin settlements sharing ruin intelligence, oral memory, and a shadow arrangement with the Viddfolk [Heralds]. No founding document. No capital. The most functional pan-continental intelligence-sharing operation in Mistheim, operating entirely below the level of official recognition.

The Ironkey Fellowship

A loose network of true innkeepers in Vattenpandalandet who maintain the ancient sanctuary law of inns and share intelligence about The Dry’s spread. Identified by a chain of small iron keys passed between keepers who mean it. Targeted early by corruption because hospitality is the one thing that reliably slows it.

Pandor Scholars

A distributed scholarly tradition of Mistheim, maintaining archives across three sites. They have records of the Skymning predating the current crisis by centuries and are closer to an answer about its origin than anyone else alive.

Scavenger Clans

They do not call themselves anything. The settlements started calling them scavengers sometime in the second year, and the name stuck the way most names do — through usage, not consent. They are people who left the settlements, or were expelled from them, or woke up one morning and drove away and did not come back. Some went looking for family. Some went looking for supplies. Some went because the walls were closing in and the governance was tightening and they needed sky. They found each other the way displaced people find each other: slowly, at roadsides, at fuel points, in the ruins of service stations on the old roads. They move in loose clusters of four to twelve vehicles. Each cluster develops its own logic: what they take, what they leave, what they call in when they find something that could start a fight. Some clusters have a rough hierarchy, usually built around whoever can keep the vehicles running. None of them look like what the settlement broadcasts say they look like. The broadcasts say raiders. What they are is mobile. That is the difference that the settlements cannot forgive. They know the corruption zones better than anyone with a fixed address. They drive through the edges. They map the spread. Some of them have theories about what it wants, or what it is. Those theories vary widely and are argued about at night around fires made from pallet wood.

Meridian Logistics

A corporate entity operating under emergency contracting authority. They move food and fuel. They accept land rights and data-sharing agreements as payment. Their sensor arrays face the corruption zones.

Settlement Wardens

The municipal officials and town leaders keeping pre-collapse governance alive. Their language is still bureaucratic. They know what this costs.

The Watchers

A loose network of people who understood what was happening before anyone else did. No central leadership. No name they gave themselves. They know things they are not saying.

Mistheim

Spinaria

Earth