The World of Penumbra

This game does not include a full accounting of the world of Penumbra, nor does it matter. What follows are basic truths and foundations upon which to build your game.

The rest is either hinted at through the game text, rolling tables, rules, etc. or deliberately left unwritten. Gaps exist by design so you may fill them as you see fit.

Each story within Penumbra is going to be different and that is the goal. Take these truths starting points and make this your world.

Penumbra

Penumbra is a living continent of rootmasses, fungal sprawl, crystal spines, hive husks, and drifting leaf isles.

The Six Regions

The Wildgrove, with its deep Undergrowth labyrinth, makes up most of the land. The Arid Wastes sear the far east. The Amber Peaks split the continent. Beyond them stretches the pale Moonlight Desert, and farther yet the Thousand Isles fill the Forever Sea.

Oros

Penumbra is home to the Oros, sentient bug-folk of every shape and scale. Some talk or understand more than others. Some feed on others, a natural order that is both wondrous and cruel.

The Dream of Dreams

A vast symphony of ever-expanding collective consciousness spun by Arach, first of the Beast-Gods. It ties every Oros, plant, fungus, and beast in one shared existence and thread.

Thoughts begin as faint whispers in the dream, growing stronger as they are shared and repeated, until they become lasting patterns woven into the collective memory of everyone and everything.

For most Oros, the dream of dreams is just noise, with only the most universally accepted and compelling ideas emerging clearly enough to be understood by all.

As such, very few are those who have the ability to truly listen and draw from it guidance, knowledge and power. While all Oros are born of the dream, each retains their own will, identity, and distinct voice.

The dream does not exert control over their being; it is a force that can be drawn upon, not a master that commands them.

The Nightsong

The first chord strung in the dream of dreams. A living ledger of every true name and every life, holding each beginning and end that has ever happened over time.

Beast-Gods

The Oros revere or fear the Beast-Gods, gargantuan beings who carved the world, and breathed life into the lands. They are countless, but most know of: Arach, who wove the dream; Zephyr and Sylvary, who shaped the land; Nibel and Terrauk, who raised the Beacons; Mortueus, who gave form to life; and Aurel and Umbra, who granted them purpose.

These gods walk the world, vast and powerful, but have just recently stopped singing their protective verses in the dream of dreams.

The Veil

A luminous boundary between life and what lies beyond. When an Oros dies, their soul glows and seeks a Beacon to pass through the other side. Those who get lost become Hollowed, trapped in the world but severed from purpose.

The Beacons

Six soul-towers were raised by the Beast-Gods to pierce the Veil and guide the dead home, but two now stand dark. Each tower depends on a Firelight guardian to tend its flame, but every Firelight cocoon has withered and no new guardian can be born. As the towers fail, fewer souls find their way, and more become Hollowed.

The Hollowed

Souls who never reached the Veil. Their bodies remain, either inert, wandering, or corrupted.

Communication

Each kind of Oros has their own way of communicating. When they need to speak across kinds, they sing chords: clusters of musical notes sung, using the full spectrum of sound to express thoughts, emotions, and ideas.

It is assumed that when players speak on behalf of their characters, those words are sung within the fictional world. There is no need to sing them aloud in real life.

Home

While many prefer the relative safety of the hive-cities, the tunnels of the Undergrowth, or even the ramshackle Voidways outposts, there are still a lot of Oros who find a strong enough leaf or sturdy enough pebble and call it home.

Look close and you will find that life is everywhere and nothing stays still for very long.

Amber Chips

The amber chip, or just “chip”, is the main currency of Penumbra; it is a bright gold token of trade used to acquire food, supplies, and the comfort of a night’s rest away from the heavy drips of rain or the cold bite of the winds.

Spell Shards

Magic in Penumbra draws from the power and verses etched into spell shards; rare artifacts carved with Wormscript, the old and cryptic tongue of the Undergrowth. Once depleted, only those with a presence strong enough can give a shard the power to resonate once more.

Voidways

Penumbra is of unimaginable scale; traveling from one city to another can take years, even with steadfast ground mounts.

Because of this, many ride atop colossal Oros flyers, soaring through the Voidways to sail the ocean of shimmering dreamlines stretching across the sky. But without the Beast-Gods’ chants, shadows and Curses now hunt the flying lanes, making traveling vast distances ever more dangerous.

Curses

There are vast beings in the world, entities of unimaginable scale, powerful and terrifying. Most scarcely notice the Oros at all, viewing them as insignificant ripples in their far greater existence. Not Curses, though.

Curses are terrifying shadowy entities that have begun to spread across the land, corrupting everything they touch. They have extinguished two of the six Beacons, severing the passage of the dead through the Veil, and are also among the hunters that stalk the Voidways travel lanes.

No means known to the Oros seems to have a lasting effect on them, and because of this, many believe that Penumbra is facing its end: a slow descent into the forever night.

Rough Timeline

Penumbra knows two seasons: a warm, harvest-filled summer, then a swift drop into the total dark and cold of the long night. According to the archiver Quercus Eagar Ad’haow, the world is approaching its 893rd long night.

For most of that time, the great bee hives of the Alveari Empire were the bedrock of civilization, humming with life, literature, art, knowledge, industry, and near-total military dominance over the land.

Mere days before the characters emerged from their cocoons, the last Queen of the Alveari Empire died without an heir to follow her path.

New factions arose, borders were redrawn, and what the beefolk spent generations building is now in the process of being undone.

The World Forces

Three great forces now struggle for the future of Penumbra.

Each pursues its own goals by its own meansng. The freeblades move between the tension of these and many other world forces.

The Hivehold Remnant

Goal: Restore order and maintain the empire’s institutions, even without a Queen to lead them.

All of Penumbra knew the Queen was failing. For weeks, her sickness drew traders, pilgrims, and ambitious freeblades into the teeming streets of Alveari, each certain the end of her reign would crack open a door for them. Then one morning the Queen’s Guard climbed the palace spires and raised the red-black banner. Queen Magnalia had passed through the Veil with no brood-heir to succeed her.

The Hivehold Remnant is what remains of the Alveari Empire. They hold Alveari but by inertia.

Leading Questions

• Who truly controls Alveari in these trying times?
• Where and when will the Queen’s funeral be held?
• Which internal faction is willing to make a move while the city is paralyzed?
• Why is Iris, the Queen’s frail mother, always kept hidden from public view?

The Crystal Dynasty

Goal: Exploit the power vacuum left by the empire’s collapse to bring prosperity and dominance

Far off in the Moonlight Desert, countless Oros spent generations surviving in a land that wanted them dead. News of the Queen’s death reached them like lighthing. And so, and they began the grand migration, moving across Penumbra and leaving their old life behind.

Leading Questions

• What resource does the Dynasty control that the other forces desperately need?
• How far into the heartland have their agents already traveled?
• Which city or outpost have they quietly bought and not announced yet?
• What is the Dynasty willing to sacrifice to secure its foothold?

The Swarm

Goal: Tear down every throne, hive, and hierarchy, and replace them with nothing but freedom.

Unlike those who scrambled for power in the empire’s absence, the Swarm saw recent events as an awakening, a fateful return to the natural order. No queens. No councils. No lords.

The Swarm is led by faction chiefs who are loud and unpredictable. They are numerous, growing, and hold very strong beliefs in their hopes and dreams.

Leading Questions

• Which Swarm faction is making decisions the others do not know about yet?
• What act of destruction did the Swarm commit that they still justify to themselves?
• What does the Swarm want from the freeblades that they cannot get anywhere else?
• Where is the line between liberation and chaos, and has the Swarm already crossed it?