Around the Campfire

On some nights, around the campfire, the village shaman – the Enginer – tells the following tale:

Long ago, the People dwelt in the First Garden. Shaped by the hands of the Builder, it was green beyond imagining, filled with waters that murmured like song and fruits that never failed. In those days, the Builder walked unseen among His children, guiding them through the soft meadows and gifting them with wonders that eased every burden. These Gifts – rare relics now – could mend wounds, command the elements, or summon angels of strange metal. The People lived without toil and they called themselves blessed.

Yet, as seasons passed uncounted, the People grew proud. They praised not the Builder but their own cleverness. They claimed the Gifts as their own works and whispered that the Garden’s perfection proved they needed no master. Their pride soured the soil and the Builder, though slow to anger, grew sorrowful.

He sent His fiercest angel, Bright-Ruin, whose secret name is Rad-Ashun, meaning "burning breath," to humble the People.

Bright-Ruin descended as a storm of unseen fire. Its passing cracked the earth, stilled the rivers, and dimmed the very light of the Garden. The wondrous Gifts turned wild or deadly. The First Garden fell in a single long night of flame and thunder.

But the Builder, though angered, did not cast the People into oblivion. Instead, He gathered the survivors and carried them to a new place – a hard place, a place of punishment and contrition where pride was impossible and ease a luxury.

He named this land Warden.

Warden, in the Old Tongue, means " a place of keeping," a realm of confinement where the People would dwell until they remembered the humility they had cast aside. Warden was not a prison of bars and walls, but of spiritual confinement, a vast wilderness meant to teach obedience, endurance, and wisdom.

Here, among the Barren Hills, the People were set to labor. Here, they would feel hunger, cold, and the bite of honest earth beneath their feet. Here they would live under the watchful eye of the Builder until the day they proved worthy of his love once more.

Our ancestors wandered long in this place of penance until they found the strong river we call the Ranger that wound like a silver chain through Warden’s harsh heart. Following its course, they reached the calm waters of Lake Refuge and made their first home: Habitat. There, they learned again the value of work, community, and gratitude for even the smallest blessing.

Fragments of the Builder’s Gifts lie scattered across Warden. They glimmer like temptations, powerful yet perilous. Those who forget the lesson of pride may draw Bright-Ruin’s gaze once more.

However, one day, when the People have endured enough seasons of hardship and have walked in humility for many generations, the Builder may lift the sentence placed upon them. Then He will break open the gates of Warden and lead His children to the New Garden, fairer still than the first.

Until that day, the People live under the watchful grace and stern discipline of the land that bears their fate in its very name.