The world

About three hundred years ago a star came down on the old capital. The few letters that survive from that summer say the sky went white at noon and stayed white for a week. When it cleared, the capital was a hole four miles wide. It is still warm at the bottom.

Everything from before that summer is called the old world. Its roads and cellars are still out there under the weeds, and scavengers dig in them for anything that still works.

The star never quite stopped falling. A few pieces come down most weeks, usually at night and usually near the crater. People call them cores. A core is about the size of a fist, heavier than it looks, and warm for years. One will run a furnace for a winter. Carry one against your skin for long enough and you start to change, which is why anyone who handles them wears gloves.

About twelve years after the fall, a voice started answering people who shouted into the crater. It calls itself the Archon. Nobody has seen more of it than lights moving under the rim, but it talks, it keeps a count of everything, and in three hundred years it has not once taken a side.

About a hundred years in, the three peoples around the crater came close to wiping each other out. The Archon stopped it by giving them four rules:

Fight over the cores, but never to finish off a people. Nobody's home can be taken.
Nobody fights in the crater until the Archon opens it.
Every Saturday night, when the fighting stops, the Archon counts who holds what. The count stands.
Nobody dies for good unless they choose to, and whoever falls names an heir.

The Archon never leaves the crater, so its work out on the land is done by the Wardens of the Rim, people from all three sides who gave up their own side to serve the count. They keep the roll of everyone who fights, witness oaths and duels, read the count out on Saturday nights, and deal with anyone who breaks the rules. Wardens do not fight in the war themselves.

Two smaller orders serve beside them: the Chroniclers keep the record of the war, and the Heralds bring its news.

The rules hold mostly because of the one army that ignored them. A Legion general marched eight hundred soldiers into the crater before it was open, and none of them came back out.

Once a season the Archon opens the crater and lets the three sides fight over it.

What the Archon counts is glory. It has an old word for it, kleos: what people still say about you after you are gone. Land changes hands every week, but kleos stays in the count, and whoever has the most when the season ends decides what changes next.

(( Out of character, the Wardens are the game masters: the staff who run the war. If something in a fight or a scene looks wrong, tell a Warden. ))

The three peoples

All three need cores to get through the year, so all three have a reason to fight, and the map gives each pair a border to do it on. None of them is stronger than the others. They fight in different ways, and what wins a fight is the plan, the ground and who turns up.

Iron Legion

"We held." Painted over the Bastion gate

The Legion are the grandchildren of the soldiers who held the last city standing after the fall. They rebuilt it as Bastion, a fortress of walls and factories, and everything in it runs on cores: the lights, the furnaces, the power armour, the guns on the walls. Bastion burns about forty cores a winter. When the supply runs short the streetlights go off first, then the heating, and the walls last.

In a fight they dig in, bring the guns up behind them and wait for orders. They are slow to start and very hard to move once they have.

Home: Bastion
Faction power: The artillery barrage. Once a Siege, on one place: every enemy there is hit. Each side's power hits as hard.
Colours: Steel blue and brass
Join them if: You like a plan, and you would like it in power armour.

Wildborn

"First to the core eats." What they say before a hunt

The Wildborn are people and animals who were near the fall and were changed by it. Some have claws. Most have the eyes, which glow in the dark, and the beasts they ride can be the size of a house. They live in the Tangle, a jungle that grew over the eastern farmland in a single year and has kept growing since.

The star is in their blood. Without cores it burns them out from the inside; with them they get stronger. So they hunt for cores the way other people farm.

They raid more than they march. A pack hits a camp at night, takes what it came for and is back in the trees before the alarm is over.

Home: The Tangle
Faction power: The stampede. Once a Siege, on one place: every enemy there is hit. Each side's power hits as hard.
Colours: Ember orange and moss green
Join them if: You want to ride something enormous and hit first.

Starweavers

"It is not dead." Carved over the Observatory door

The Starweavers started as the scholars who went to look at the crater while everyone else was running away from it. Over three centuries they learned to pull the star's light into other things: shields, portals, illusions, healing. They live in the Observatory, a tower of glass on the crater's rim.

They believe the star is still alive, and that with enough cores it will rise again. The Legion and the Wildborn think that is the most dangerous idea anyone has had since the fall.

They would rather know your plan than out-muscle you, and their scouts are the best on the map. Their healers are the reason a Starweaver squad is still standing in round six.

Home: The Observatory
Faction power: The portal storm. Once a Siege, on one place: every enemy there is hit. Each side's power hits as hard.
Colours: Violet, and a very pale yellow they call starlight
Join them if: You would rather heal, trick or out-think people than out-punch them.

The land

Each side has a home, which can never be attacked, and two regions of its own around it, which can. Between the sides are three border regions, and the crater is in the middle.

Each side's two own regions give it two edges in a Siege, the same two for every side, and only while it holds them. With one, its people get +1 to hit in the first round of every Siege they fight; with the other, their faction power costs 3 command points instead of 4 in every Siege they fight. A side that takes another's region gets its kleos, never its edge.

Region	Whose	What it is
Bastion	Iron Legion home	The Legion's city. Ninety thousand people behind three rings of wall, and a factory district that never goes dark while there are cores to burn.
The Observatory	Starweavers home	The Starweavers' glass tower on the crater's rim. On a clear night you can see its top floor glowing from Ironpass.
The Tangle	Wildborn home	The Wildborn's jungle, which grew over the eastern farmland in a single year. Anyone who is not Wildborn is lost in it within the hour.
Ironpass	Iron Legion Starweavers	The only road through the mountains between Bastion and the Observatory. An old fort sits at the top of it, with both sides' colours painted over each other on the gate. What it gives: 2 kleos at every Saturday count, for whichever side holds it. Coming later: supply, and the old fort to hold it from.
Ashfields	Iron Legion Wildborn	Farmland on ground the fall burned black. It grows more grain than anywhere else, which is why it keeps getting burned. What it gives: 2 kleos at every Saturday count, for whichever side holds it. Coming later: supply from the grain.
Kettle Bay	Wildborn Starweavers	Where the biggest piece of the star came down in the sea. The water boiled for days, which is how the bay got its name, and cores still glow in the shallows at low tide. What it gives: 2 kleos at every Saturday count, for whichever side holds it. Coming later: supply, and the cores in the shallows.
The Quarry Line	Iron Legion land	A row of stone quarries along the foothills, where Bastion cuts the stone for its walls. Signal towers on the ridge can see down the pass road. What it gives: The Legion get +1 to hit in the first round of every Siege they fight, as long as this region is theirs. The signal towers on the ridge see an attack coming down the pass road. Another side that takes it gets 1 kleos at every Saturday count, and no edge in a fight.
Southwall	Iron Legion land	Bastion's outer farms, behind a wall the Legion put up in one summer after the Wildborn burned a harvest. Most of the city's bread comes from here. What it gives: The Legion pay 3 command points for their faction power instead of 4 in every Siege they fight, as long as this region is theirs. The Legion's gun crews are quartered on its farms, a short haul from any wall. Another side that takes it gets 1 kleos at every Saturday count, and no edge in a fight.
The Lens Works	Starweavers land	Sand pits and glass furnaces west of the Observatory, where the Starweavers grind the lenses for the tower and for everything else they build. What it gives: The Starweavers pay 3 command points for their faction power instead of 4 in every Siege they fight, as long as this region is theirs. The lenses ground here focus the light that opens the portal storm. Another side that takes it gets 1 kleos at every Saturday count, and no edge in a fight.
Mirror Lake	Starweavers land	A lake so still that the Starweavers use it to watch the sky. Their healers live and train in the houses along the shore. What it gives: The Starweavers get +1 to hit in the first round of every Siege they fight, as long as this region is theirs. The still water shows the Starweavers who is coming before the first blow. Another side that takes it gets 1 kleos at every Saturday count, and no edge in a fight.
The Thornline	Wildborn land	The edge of the Tangle that faces the farms, where the Wildborn grew the thorns thick on purpose. It is their answer to Southwall. What it gives: The Wildborn get +1 to hit in the first round of every Siege they fight, as long as this region is theirs. The Wildborn know every gap in the thorns and strike from them first. Another side that takes it gets 1 kleos at every Saturday count, and no edge in a fight.
The Drowned Wood	Wildborn land	A flooded forest where the Tangle runs into the bay. The big beasts come here to drink, and the Wildborn catch the young ones here. What it gives: The Wildborn pay 3 command points for their faction power instead of 4 in every Siege they fight, as long as this region is theirs. The big beasts that drink here are close at hand when the stampede is called. Another side that takes it gets 1 kleos at every Saturday count, and no edge in a fight.
The Crater	Nobody	The Archon's. Envoys from all three sides meet on its rim and nobody draws a weapon there. It opens in the last week of each season, and all three fight over it at once.

See it on the map