The Nine Shards

"A cracked piece of a king's shell. It remembers being a boy with ink on his fingers."

Voruun Hale, the Unburied King, was a scribe of a drowned kingdom who built a vessel to hold the dead and became its prisoner. His Mortal Shell is never whole: it broke, and nine shards fell across the land.

The shards are waking. Each one bonds with a creature, the boss of an act, and spreads the Rot, a violet-green taint that twists beasts and men into the monsters you meet. The Rot is the Dreadmarch's recruiting: whatever it takes is counted into his host. He is not hunting you. He is gathering his pieces through the creatures that carry them.

You are the Exile of the Wrackline, and you carry the Shardbreaker Mark, the one bond that can unmake a shard. Every shard you break becomes a quest item that you never lose, even in death, and gives you one line of Voruun Hale's memory:

A boy with ink on his fingers.
A teacher who said no.
Counting the dead in a plague ward, and losing count.
A promise made under a mountain.
The first spell that worked, and what it cost.
Cold, and being glad of it.
A city that listened, and ignored him.
Building something that could not be broken, and was wrong.
No name at all. Then one.

Taken together, the lines reveal a scribe who counted the dead, lost count, and tried to stop death rather than rule. The tragedy is optional. The threat is the point.

Why you keep moving. Each act's end names the next hub, through a letter, a dying word or a map fragment.

After the ninth shard he rises out of the Zao rift and speaks to you (Acts VII to IX). The four ancient orders then each hold a Seal that kept his Citadel shut, and the Rot is corrupting their guardians. Their stories are told in the atlas (The four factions, Seals and the Sigil of the Unburied King).

Shard sources. The shards are carried by Warlord Ruzad, the Elvenbane Guardian, the Mooh'Tah Master, Chizzoron, the Mother of Scarabs, Hrodmar, Azerus, the Rot-Engine and Zulazza (Campaign bosses).