Verdania is where a new save begins. Its ground came through the Break in the best shape of the three, so daily life carried on almost normally: crops went in, the mill kept turning, the notice board by the well filled up with the same small errands it always had. What did not carry on was anyone's clear account of the years before. In Elmdale there is a scholar who lets slip that he remembers more of them than he should.
Where you start
Elmdale: a walled town on the river, four bridges, a farm plot and a mill just outside the wall. Your own house sits inside the walls; the road out passes a broken crossing you can rebuild.
What you'll dig up
A scholar's notes with forty years politely left blank, and townsfolk who each date "the quiet year" a little differently. Verdania is the shard where you first realise the history is missing on purpose.
How it plays here
The gentlest introduction: open routes, farming and herb patches, the smithy and the shop economy, and turn-based Kin battles against wildlife that mostly leaves you alone first.
Kin native to Verdania
Root-shard Kin lean on growth and patience. They root, they mend, they outlast. Your fixed starter here is a Leaflit.
Leaflit
The starter. A sprout that decided to walk. Grows into Verdantide and, much later, the Verdant Crown.
Thornwarden
A mid-line bramble form, all guard and no hurry. Turns a defensive team into a wall.
Mosskip
Pond-edge Kin from a separate line. Common around Verdania's water and the first trade many players make.
"They will keep. They have kept this long." (Six seeds out of Leafmere, the year the wood was cut, and nobody who put them back.)
Where Verdania forgot quietly, Cindralis wrote everything down and then stopped explaining it. Slagport runs on ledgers: cargo in, cargo out, tide by tide. Its ledgers are complete except for the stretch everyone skips over. The Furnace Keeper has read that stretch. He will not tell you what is in it, only that you should not ask at the forge.
Where you land
Slagport: a harbour town of stone piers and furnace-heat, its warehouses stacked with tide-by-tide records going back further than the shard has been a shard.
What you'll dig up
A harbour ledger missing the same forty years as everywhere else, and one line that survived the gap. It reads, in full: "the stone was moved."
How it plays here
Hotter and tighter. Tougher wild Kin, tiered bows and arrows worth crafting properly, and a smithy that finally has ore worth feeding it.
Kin native to Cindralis
Lava-shard Kin run hot and fast. They open aggressively and punish a slow turn. Your fixed starter here is an Emberkit.
Emberkit
The starter. A cinder that hasn't gone out. Fast, fragile, and eager. Grows into Emberlynx.
Kindlefang
The mid-line turn: the speed stays, the glass jaw doesn't. Where an Emberkit team stops trading and starts winning.
Blazeborn
The line's end. Slower than it was, and no longer needs to be quick. A Blazeborn ends turns.
"The stone was moved." (The only entry in the Slagport harbour ledger that outlived the gap.)
Nimbara is where the trail goes cold in every sense. Fewer people, further apart, less of the old world underfoot to go on. Skyhaven is the one town that holds a crowd, and its salvage dealer trades in more than scrap. Ask the right question in the right order and a crate of junk turns out to have a page in it. Somewhere in the other two shards' records there is a gap; here, there is a single word written where the gap should be, and no one who will read it aloud.
Where you arrive
Skyhaven: a salvage town on thin ice and thinner air, built out of whatever the Break left worth carrying. The last place on the shard with a proper market.
What you'll dig up
Not a missing record this time. A present one, cut down to a single word. The salvage dealer knows which crate it came in. Getting it out of her is the quest.
How it plays here
Sparse and deliberate: longer routes, weather that works against you, and encounters that are rarer but rarely easy. Bring bags, supplies, and a Kin that lasts.
Kin native to Nimbara
Ice-shard Kin are slow to commit and hard to shift: mist, mirror and veil. Your fixed starter here is a Mistling.
Mistling
The starter. A knot of fog that learned to hold a shape. Hard to pin down from turn one. Grows into Dreamling.
Whisperveil
Mid-line. Trades a little substance for a lot of evasion, the form that makes the line frustrating to fight.
Mirrormist
A late form that gives back what it's shown. Against a heavy hitter, it's the reason Nimbara teams stall the game out.
One word, written in a third town, where the other two shards left a blank.
Overview
When the sky tore, it split the land into three shards, and split anyone caught in resonance with an echo stone at that moment along with it. Not copied, not killed: one life became three, each carrying on in a different shard. Everyone else went wherever their ground went, which is why the same family names turn up in all three places, unaware they're related.
You play as someone piecing that history back together: a scholar's notes in one town, a harbour ledger missing the same forty years in another, and a single word written in a third. Along the way you'll raise and battle Kins, farm, craft weapons and armour, run a shop economy, and take on quests from ninety-one named people who all remember the Break differently.
What you'll actually do
Turn-based Kin battles
Bond with a fixed starter Kin per save and grow your team through turn-based combat, combos and Bond Level progression.
Three shards to explore
Verdania, Cindralis and Nimbara each have their own towns, terrain, creatures and unresolved history to dig through.
Crafting & smithing
Upgrade weapons and armour at the smithy, brew potions with the herbalist, and work through tiered bows and arrows.
Farming & gathering
Plant, replant and harvest across herb patches and tree arsenals, and build up storage with craftable bags.
A living economy
Trade through a shop system with its own currency, and manage relationships with a full cast of shopkeepers and traders.
Quests with real weight
Ninety-one named characters across three shards, each with their own place in a story that stays consistent everywhere you go.