Traveler's Guide

What follows is common knowledge among the educated peoples of Pillars—scholars, merchants, well-traveled adventurers, and those who frequent temple libraries. Much of it is legend. Some of it is theology. All of it is believed by someone.

The God King Emperor

At the center of the world lies the Navel—the largest, most exotic, most varied metropolis ever built. A hundred cultures mingle in its streets. A thousand languages echo through its markets. Its harbors never sleep, its temples never empty, its intrigues never cease. It is the beating heart of civilization, the hub around which all trade and politics ultimately revolve.

And at the center of the Navel, on an island in a sacred lake, stands a tower.

Within the tower dwells the God King Emperor.

No one agrees on what he is. The temples teach that he is a god made flesh, descended to guide the peoples of the world through the ages. Scholars argue that he is simply the longest-lived of all beings, a man who discovered secrets of immortality in the deep past. Some whisper that he is not one being but many, a title passed down through millennia. Others insist he is something else entirely—something that was never human at all.

This last theory is not popular, but those who have met him tend to believe it.

What is known: he has ruled, in his fashion, for longer than recorded history. He commands armies. He oversees ministries and courts and bureaucracies that span continents. Governors serve at his pleasure; laws flow from his edicts; the machinery of civilization turns according to his designs. And yet he rarely exercises this power directly. His generals fight wars he does not attend. His ministers administer policies he does not explain. His judges render verdicts according to principles he established so long ago that no one remembers their origin.

He answers questions, when questions are brought to him. He judges disputes that cannot be settled by any other authority. He has ended wars with a word, toppled dynasties with a gesture, and reshaped the fates of nations according to designs that span centuries. He is patient in the way that mountains are patient. He is ancient in the way that stars are ancient. And he is watching, always watching, with eyes that have seen everything that has ever happened and much that has not happened yet.

Petitioners cross the lake to his island seeking wisdom, seeking judgment, seeking miracles. The journey is not long, but it is arduous in other ways—permissions must be obtained, protocols observed, trials of worthiness endured. Some say these are not obstacles but filters, designed to ensure that only certain people arrive. Those who reach the tower's heights describe an old man sitting in a chamber filled with light, surrounded by books and instruments and devices beyond understanding.

He is sometimes kind. He listens to the petitions of farmers and princes alike, and his answers—though often cryptic—are always, in hindsight, true. There are stories of mercy, of wisdom gently given, of lives transformed by a few quiet words.

There are other stories too.

Stories of petitioners who asked the wrong question and left the tower changed—not injured, not cursed, but different, as though they had seen something that human minds were not meant to hold. Stories of rulers who defied his judgments and found their kingdoms crumbling around them in ways that seemed like coincidence until you looked at the pattern. Stories of those who tried to deceive him, to manipulate him, to use him for their own ends.

No one tells stories about what happened to those people. The stories simply... stop.

The God King Emperor does not raise his voice. He does not threaten. He does not need to. He has been playing games across timescales that make human lifespans look like mayfly breaths, and he has never lost. Not once. Not ever.

He does not command armies because he does not need armies. He does not demand worship because worship is irrelevant to him. He does not explain his purposes because his purposes are beyond explanation—or perhaps because explaining them would require more time than any petitioner has to live.

When he is kind, it is genuine. When he is cruel, it is precise. When he is silent, it is terrifying.

Those who study the long sweep of history sometimes notice patterns—wars that ended just before they would have become catastrophic, plagues that burned out just before they would have become extinction events, tyrants who fell just before their ambitions would have poisoned centuries. Coincidences, surely. The world is full of coincidences.

But the patterns all seem to originate from the same place: an island at the center of the world's greatest city, where something ancient sits and watches and waits and—occasionally—intervenes.

Some say the world belongs to him.

Those who have met him suspect it might be the other way around: that he belongs to the world, bound to it by chains of responsibility so heavy that even a god would buckle beneath them. That his long patience is not serenity but endurance. That he commands armies and ministries and the machinery of nations not because he desires power, but because someone must, and he has been doing it for so long that he no longer remembers how to stop.

This is not a comforting thought.

But then, the God King Emperor is not in the business of comfort.

The Dragons

The dragons remember.

This is what everyone knows about them, though few understand what it means. The dragons are vast, ancient, powerful beyond mortal comprehension—but these are not the qualities that make them truly terrifying. What makes them terrifying is that they remember.

They remember the founding of kingdoms whose ruins are now buried under other ruins. They remember the names of heroes whose legends have been forgotten. They remember events that happened before the oldest elves were born, before the dwarves first delved their deepest halls, before humans built their first stone walls.

When a dragon speaks—which is rarely, for dragons keep their own counsel across centuries of silence—it speaks of things no one else can verify. Cities that left no trace. Wars that history does not record. Ages of the world that passed before the current age began.

Most scholars dismiss these accounts as invention or madness. Dragons are intelligent, certainly, but they are not infallible. Their memories must be corrupted by time, embellished by imagination, distorted by alien cognition.

And yet.

There are ruins in the deep places of the world—underground, underwater, in remote mountain valleys—that match no known civilization. Structures built with techniques no living smith or mason can replicate. Artifacts whose purpose cannot be determined. Scripts that no scholar can read.

The dragons, when asked about such things, simply smile. Or what passes for a smile, on a face built for other expressions.

They remember. They are not telling.

The Demons

In the dark places of the world—the deep forests, the mountain caves, the ruins that wise travelers avoid—there are things that were once something else.

The common folk call them demons, monsters, nightmares given flesh. The temples teach that they are corruption incarnate, evil spirits that have taken physical form. Scholars who study such things from a safe distance have noted that they seem to want something, though what they want is unclear.

What everyone agrees on: they hate. They hate the light, they hate the living, they hate the tower at the center of the world with a passion that seems to go beyond instinct. Some of them are mindless, little more than beasts. Others are cunning, capable of speech, capable of planning, capable of nursing grudges across generations.

The oldest stories—the ones that grandmothers tell to frighten children, the ones that scholars dismiss as folklore—say that the demons were once human. That they were people who reached too far, wanted too much, and were twisted by their wanting into something unrecognizable. That somewhere in their corrupted hearts, they remember what they used to be, and their hatred is really grief.

These are just stories, of course.

But the demons do seem to hate themselves most of all.

The Wayfarer Guild

In every major city, there is a temple that is not quite a temple.

The buildings are austere, built of dark stone, sparsely decorated. The figures who staff them wear robes—grey for the acolytes, darker blue for those of higher rank, black for the masters who are rarely seen. They speak softly, move with unsettling certainty, and watch everything with eyes that seem to hold secrets.

These are the Wayfarers.

The Guild has existed for as long as anyone can remember. It predates most of the kingdoms it operates within. Its hierarchy is opaque, its rituals mysterious, its true purposes unknown. Some call it a religion; the Wayfarers neither confirm nor deny. Some call it a merchant guild; the Wayfarers do not trade in ordinary goods.

What they offer is transportation.

The Wayfarers control access to the Pillars—the ancient stone columns found throughout the world. With a Wayfarer's assistance, a traveler can step into a Pillar in one city and emerge from another a thousand miles away. The journey is instantaneous. The traveler remembers nothing of the passage.

This service is not cheap. But the Wayfarers do not accept money.

They barter. For what? Whatever interests them. A rare book. A family secret. An hour of conversation. A song. A memory. The price varies not by distance but by the Wayfarer's whim, and scholars who have tried to identify patterns in their demands have universally failed.

Those who deal with the Guild learn to bring something interesting—and to accept that "interesting" is defined by standards no outsider fully understands.

The Wayfarers know things. This is obvious to anyone who speaks with them for more than a few minutes. They know things about history, about magic, about the world, that they should not know. They do not explain how they know. They do not explain anything, really.

They simply watch, and wait, and occasionally—for the right price—they help you get where you're going.

The Pillars

They are found throughout the world: stone columns, ancient beyond reckoning, carved with patterns that no scholar has ever deciphered. Some stand in temple plazas, surrounded by faithful who believe them sacred. Others hide in forgotten places—forest clearings, mountain caves, underwater grottos, desert ruins half-buried by sand.

The Pillars give the world its name, though no one remembers who first called it that.

Different cultures have different beliefs about them. In the northern reaches, they are called the Bones of the Earth, remnants of a giant who died before time began. Along the southern coasts, they are the Fingers of the Sea God, reaching up from the depths. The dwarves call them the First Works, claiming (without evidence) that their ancestors built them in an age before memory. The elves simply call them Old, which for a people who measure their lives in millennia is saying something.

What is known: the Wayfarers can use them for transportation. How this works, no one outside the Guild understands. The Pillars themselves show no obvious mechanism, no moving parts, no source of power. They are simply stone—dense, dark, carved with spiraling patterns that seem almost to move when viewed from the corner of the eye.

A few Pillar locations are public knowledge, major transit hubs around which trade and politics have organized for thousands of years. But travelers who venture into wild places sometimes report finding others—hidden, forgotten, overgrown. The Wayfarers do not confirm or deny the existence of these hidden Pillars.

They do not confirm or deny much of anything.

The Ancient Ruins

Beneath the world, there are ruins that belong to no one.

Every civilization leaves traces: the dwarves their deep halls, the elves their forest sanctuaries, the humans their crumbling castles and overgrown roads. These can be dated, attributed, understood. A skilled historian can look at a fallen wall and tell you which kingdom built it, which war destroyed it, which century it stood.

But there are other ruins. Older ruins. Ruins that do not fit.

They are found in the deepest delves, where even dwarven miners rarely venture. In underwater caves that no surface dweller should have built. In mountain valleys accessible only by flight. They are made of materials that no smith can identify, built with techniques that no mason can replicate, decorated with scripts that no scholar can read.

The dwarven archives, which extend back further than any human record, contain no mention of who built these places. The elven loremasters, whose oral traditions stretch back ten thousand years, have no stories about them. The dragons, when asked, simply smile.

Some scholars theorize that these are remnants of earlier ages—civilizations that rose and fell so long ago that no memory of them survives. This would require timescales that most find difficult to contemplate. The world is old, certainly, but surely not that old.

Others argue that the ruins are not of this world at all—that they were built by beings from elsewhere, visitors from beyond the sky, who came and left and took their secrets with them.

This is generally considered fringe speculation.

And yet the ruins remain, silent and inexplicable, waiting for someone to understand them.

Magic

Magic is real. This is not a matter of belief; it is observable fact. Spells can be cast, enchantments can be laid, the fabric of reality can be bent by those with the knowledge and the will to do so.

What magic is, however, remains a subject of considerable debate.

The temples teach that magic is a gift from the gods, power granted to mortals to accomplish divine purposes. Wizards argue that magic is a natural force, like fire or lightning, that can be studied and systematized and controlled. Sorcerers claim that magic flows in the blood, an inheritance passed down through generations. Warlocks whisper of bargains made with entities beyond mortal comprehension.

All of them are right. None of them are right. Magic does not seem to care what its practitioners believe about it.

What everyone agrees on: magic is not safe.

Those who reach for power beyond their capacity find that the power reaches back. Minor overreach might leave a mage exhausted, drained, unable to cast for days. Greater overreach can cause permanent harm—scars that do not heal, senses that never quite return, memories that vanish like smoke. And those who reach too far, too fast, demanding more than any mortal frame can channel...

The stories about what happens to them are not pleasant.

Some mages speak of a feeling, when casting at the edge of their abilities, that they are not alone. That something vast is watching, just beyond the edge of perception. That the power they wield is not truly theirs, but borrowed—and that the lender might someday demand repayment.

These are dismissed as superstition by the academically trained.

But even academy wizards learn, early in their training, that there are limits. That pushing past those limits has consequences. That magic, for all its wonders, has teeth.

The wise approach it with respect.

What the Wise Believe

Among those who have traveled widely, studied deeply, and thought carefully about the nature of the world, certain conclusions are common—if rarely spoken aloud.

The world is older than anyone knows. The ruins in the deep places prove this, even if no one can explain them.

The God King Emperor knows more than he tells. His answers are always true, but they are never complete.

The dragons are not simply ancient lizards with magic. They are something else, something that thinks in ways mortals cannot follow.

The Wayfarers are not a religion, not a guild, not anything that fits neatly into ordinary categories. They serve purposes that they do not explain.

The demons hate the tower. No one knows why, but it is consistent. Whatever they are, whatever drives them, the island at the center of the Navel is at the center of it.

And magic—magic is not a tool. It is not a gift. It is not a natural force that can be fully understood and safely harnessed. Magic is a door, slightly ajar, leading somewhere vast and dark and not entirely friendly.

Those who peer through that door see wonders.

Those who try to force it open wider learn why it was nearly closed.

A Note for Travelers

The world of Pillars is deep. It has layers that most people never see, secrets that most people never learn, histories that most people never suspect.

This is not a flaw. It is a feature.

The merchant who uses the Wayfarers to transport his goods does not need to know what the Wayfarers truly are. The farmer who tells stories about the God King Emperor does not need to meet him. The adventurer who delves into ancient ruins does not need to understand who built them.

The world functions. Crops grow, trade flows, children are born and grow old and die. Life goes on, as it always has, for those who do not ask too many questions.

But for those who do ask questions—who seek out the hidden Pillars, who petition the God King Emperor, who speak to dragons and survive, who delve deeper than anyone has delved before—the world has answers.

They are not always comfortable answers.

They are not always complete answers.

But they are there, waiting, for those brave or foolish enough to look.

The wise traveler learns three things quickly: never cheat a Wayfarer, never challenge a dragon, and never assume you know how deep the mystery goes.

You don't.