The Realm: what is known, and what is only said
A world bible for RareFriends Realm. It is deliberately incomplete. The Realm existed before any player arrived and will go on after they leave, and not everything in it is explained, in the game or here. Where two accounts disagree, both are kept. Where nobody knows, it says so.
A rough history
The Age Before
Nobody knows what was here before the oldest Friends. There are ruins everywhere that nobody built: the standing stones on the Quillhaven headland, in The Wilds and deep in the Deadwood, all carved with one symbol nobody reads; the seized mechanism under the Ironreach slopes, gears the size of cartwheels that were never a mill; the toppled watch-stones along the Westmarch road, every one fallen westward; the stonework under the Thistle road where the mud wears through; the city, if it was a city, whose pillars stand in Ashfall among the drakes.
The oldest surviving carvings show the same bearded figure now called the Old Friend. Every altar in the Realm has a statue of him. In the Deadwood there is one with the face chiselled off, carefully, and a candle somebody keeps lit.
Who the Old Friend was is not agreed:
| Where | What they say |
|---|---|
| Friendhollow | A founder. The first to settle the crossroads; the castle's oldest stone has his name, in a hand nobody can read. |
| Dawnhold | A saint, or the sun's own Friend. The Order prays to him, and keeps his altars, and does not discuss the one with no face. |
| Highcairn | A king of the mountain, before the mountain had a town. The shrine is older than Dawnhold. |
| Quillhaven | A symbol. Perrin Quill will show you three texts: one calls him a man, one a god, and one, the oldest, a Friend. |
| Gravesend | The first of the dead to come back. They light lanterns for him. |
| The Hollow | Says nothing. It has its own idea, and you would not like it. |
The First Friends
Something happened that made Friends part of the world. This is the Realm's largest mystery, and it stays one.
Two fragments in the Quillhaven library contradict each other. One says: "The Friends did not come to this world." The other, older, says: "They were made here." Perrin Quill keeps them on opposite shelves. The Wizards' Tower holds a third page the Archmage will not read again. The Order of the Dawn teaches that the Friends were given. The Hollow, if the Hollow King is to be believed, remembers it differently, and he is not to be believed.
What is observable: Friends come in nine families, each with a nature of its own (Skeletons are dry and unafraid of graves, Hoverers cannot stop looking at the next hill, Hollow Friends are at home in places nothing else is). Old people in Dawnhold, Cragmaw and Quillhaven react to certain families as if they had seen them in old paintings. Some of them have.
The Age of Kingdoms
Friendhollow is the oldest major settlement, a trading crossroads before it was anything else. The castle was not built as a palace. It was built as a fortification against something that came from the west. Nobody remembers what. The watch-stones on the Westmarch road, all fallen the same way, are the only thing that still points at it. King Hollis has never been seen to leave the castle.
Dawnhold was not always an Order. The first Dawn knights were simply the people who kept the ancient altars swept. Then something happened at one of those altars, and they armed themselves, and they have been watching the Hollow ever since. The Dawn Vigil (offering bones in their chapel) is older than the Order's armour.
Highcairn grew round the mountain shrine, which is older than the town; the Greyhorn mine came later, and the golems in it were there first.
Fernwick has been cutting the Whisperwood for four generations. Its children learn their trees before their letters. Hazel's great-grandmother made the first war bow in the village from a yew the wood gave up in a storm; the castle has one of hers in its armoury that has never been drawn.
The Oasis never runs dry, and the stalls sell things from the dunes that nobody dug up.
The Wizards' Tower was not built by wizards. The wizards moved in after.
Hollowmere is the kingdom Friendhollow belongs to. It always was; it only needed a name once there was another kingdom to tell it apart from. Its soldiers wear the crown's crimson and stand along the West Road as far as Westwatch, the last post, and they come back quieter every week.
The Hollow
Not simply an evil place with the undead in it. The questions the Realm asks about it, and does not answer:
- What is the Hollow? Why do the ancient altars seem connected to it?
- Why do some creatures become Hollow, and why do Hollow Friends exist, and walk among the rest?
- Why does the Hollow King exist, and why does he wear a crown that weighs nothing?
- Why do blessed weapons hurt it, and why does the Hollow draught let a spell keep its sigils?
- Why does the chaplain of Dawnhold light a candle when a Hollow Friend sits down?
- Is the Hollow evil?
The Orders and their gods
The Order of the Dawn prays to the Old Friend. The other Orders do not. Each keeps a hall with an altar, a statue of its god and a commander who swears in those who prove their faith, and each god is a Rare Friend of legend. Nobody agrees whether the legends are older than the Orders or the other way round.
| Order | Its god, as the Order tells it |
|---|---|
| The Dawn | The Old Friend, the sun's own Friend. Dawnhold keeps the altars swept and watches the Hollow. |
| The Diamond | The Good Friend: shaped like a diamond standing on its point, blue as deep water, who kept every promise it ever made. The Order keeps them still. |
| The Ink | The Squid Friend: a squid's crown of arms, purple as a storm at sea, who wrote the first words anyone in the Realm could read. The Order guards what is written. |
| The Sol | The Weird Friend: nobody could describe it the same way twice, a sun of every colour at once, and it laughed at the Hollow and lived. The Order takes its strangeness for a blessing. |
| The Hood | The Hood Friend: a deep hood the colour of new leaves in the sun, who took from the Hollow King's hoard and gave it to the villages. The Order still keeps its ledgers in favours. |
| The Ember | No god but the fire. The brazier in their fortress at Ashfall has not gone out since the dragons came, and the knights hold the lava moat against them. |
| The Dusk | The Wise Friend, as Raria reads it: carved seated and blindfolded, a book open on its knees, who gave the Law and closed its eyes so as never to see it broken. |
Five wayward chapels stand in the far places, raised by the Dawn for pilgrims; the Pilgrim's Road runs to all of them now. In the Deadwood, the Deadwood Maidens keep a camp of tents round a hearth and pray at a standing stone. They are hostile until there is a truce, and after it their market sells what is hard to find anywhere else. Their Matriarch has buried more of the dead than Gravesend has.
Raria
Behind the Drakespine, where every shepherd and drake-hunter will tell you there was nothing but drakes and fog, stands Raria: a walled city round a palace, a kingdom round the city, and a whole second continent round the kingdom. Its soldiers were dug in before anyone in Hollowmere knew its name. Nobody saw it arrive.
What is said about where it came from does not agree:
| Who says it | What they say |
|---|---|
| Westmarch farmers | It was not there before. My father farmed this side of the Spine, and there was nothing west of him. |
| Hollowmere's soldiers | It crossed the mountains in the night, a whole kingdom of them. Or that is what they say when they are not saying the other thing. |
| The market | It was hidden: under a glamour, under the fog, or under the ground. Or it was summoned, not built, which is not said aloud. |
| The Federation's library | Every map of the west is wrong. The oldest have a blank where Raria is, ringed with a script nobody reads; the newest have the city. Nothing in between. No years of building. |
| Raria's chaplain | Raria returned. He never says from where. |
| Raria's citizens | Raria has always been here. Her Radiance says so. The stones say so. "I was born here. I think." |
| The Watcher of the Stones | Hollowmere should ask what its own castle faces, and why. The answer is the same. |
Her Radiance, Queen Rara, Keeper of the Wise Friend's Law, is tall, still and certain; in her presence you have the sense of being read. Her husband, King Pell, is small, kind and nervous, has ink on his fingers, sees everything in the room and says very little about it. The Raria Royal Rangers stand behind every pillar, and it is best to leave them be. The Rare Realm Regiment is the kingdom's army; the Order of Dusk its faith's knights, who keep the last hour of the day in silence.
Everything in Raria is beautiful, orderly and polite, and everything is written down. The Office of Conduct registers names. The Ledger of Names keeps every citizen's comings, goings, prayers and purchases; the Law is kind, and only asks for seven prayers a week. Bread is one kind, at one price. Rarians wear violet, because the Sumptuary Officer decides what Rarians wear. Those who are received may keep the Wise Friend's Law in place of the old faith: edicts, judgements and vigils for magic, commandments and rites for prayer. The old book is closed, not burnt.
In the north-west the Silent Peaks hold stone watchers carved blindfolded like the Wise Friend, and they move when nobody is looking. The hermit at the Blind Shrine, which is older than Raria, says the eyes under the blindfold are carved open. In a glade in BarkReach with cliffs all round, a statue stands sunk to the chest, and Raria says it never put it there.
The Free Friends Federation
South-west of Westmarch, in the Free Marches, the Free Friends Federation answers to nobody from the FFF Fortress: fortress, academy, workshop, laboratory, library and armoury at once. Wizards, knights, rangers and artisans who build everything themselves, in copper and verdigris, patched, experimental and very good. Fourteen devices run in the Great Hall, a knight sleeps in his chair in full plate, and the admiral is a chicken. Its leader, Fellow Free, First Free of the Federation, is weird, brilliant and dangerous, and never acknowledges any of it. Of the Queen he says: "She believes the Law. Completely. That is what makes her dangerous: not malice, certainty."
Between the two lie Deep Westmarch, the Greyfields and BarkReach, and a war nobody declared. The Federation has a cannon called Second Opinion; it fired once, and something on the Drakespine isn't there any more. The Federation pays for Regiment dispatches, the Regiment pays for Federation devices, both have spies in the other, and both know.
The Wider World
Beyond the mainland's old coast the Deadwood died in a single night (Gravesend says), the Drakespine was a road to a city that is now Ashfall, the Ironreach's mine runs under a machine, Saltmarrow pays the sea a tithe every season and the storms miss it, and the Pale Isles have a drowned pier where there was never a village, and a grave with no name the ferry will not go to.
Over the river west of the Deadwood stands the Rare Friends Ring, a round building shaped like a Hoverer lying down. A great Friend built it long ago so the best fighters in the land could meet, and its magic stands whoever falls there back up in the lobby. Nobody knows how. Statues of the Seven, the revenant and skeletal knights of its hardest match, ring the courtyard, and the fountain under the Ringmaker's statue runs red.
The regions
Each region's card. Blank lines are deliberate: nobody has filled them in yet, in the Realm or out of it.
Friendhollow
- People: townsfolk, guards, the King's court, Old Glimmer, the Namekeeper. Architecture: half-timbered houses, a stone castle built against the west. Clothing: shirts, tunics, capes from Threadneedle and Ribbon & Rye. Food: bread, cake, the Realm Feast. Music: Hollow Square. Main occupation: trade, and everything a crossroads needs.
- Belief: the Old Friend as founder; the altar in the chapel. Fear: whatever the castle was built against. Celebration: the Realm Feast. Important NPCs: King Hollis, Captain Rook, Cook Mabel, Brother Ossic, Old Glimmer, Namekeeper Elian, Mender Hale.
- Old story: the castle's oldest stone carries the Old Friend's name in a hand nobody can read. Rumour: King Hollis has never left the castle. Secret: the Register of Names goes back further than the town.
- Dungeon: the Hollow Depths (under the Mossy Ruins). Unique item: the Crown of the Realm. Quests: A Friend's Feast, Grumblin Trouble, Hollow Whispers, The Lost Glimmer, The Hollow King.
Fernwick
- People: woodcutters, Hazel, Rowan, Birch. Architecture: timber lodges in a clearing. Clothing: forest capes, feathered caps, wide hats. Food: whatever the pond gives. Music: Woodcutters' Reel. Occupation: timber and bows.
- Belief: never answer the wood. Fear: the Whisperwood whispering. Tradition: children learn their trees before their letters. Sayings: "measure twice, fell once".
- Old story: the first war bow, from a storm-fallen yew. Rumour: a stump in the deep wood that grows back overnight. Quest: Hazel's Quiver.
Highcairn and Dawnhold
- People: mountain folk, the Order of the Dawn. Architecture: stone, a plateau town; a chapterhouse with a keep above the sea. Clothing: white and gold; Dawnplate. Music: Greyhorn Heights. Occupation: the mine, the shrine, the vigil.
- Belief: the Old Friend as saint; faith as a weapon against the dead. Fear: the Hollow, and what happened at the altar. Important NPCs: Grandmaster Aldric, Sister Maren, Quartermaster Bram.
- Old story: the altar-keepers who became knights. Rumour: a village beyond the Ironreach that doesn't like Friends. Secret: the golems guard, they do not dig.
- Quests: The Dawn Vigil, Light in the Greyhorn, The Pilgrim's Road, The Restless Crypt, Dawn Against the Hollow.
Gravesend and the Deadwood
- People: gravekeepers who have made peace with the dead; Warden Mira Thorne, Old Wick, Lantern-seller Pip. Architecture: dark cottages round a lamplit square, graves in rows. Clothing: mourning charcoal, bone-white, lantern purple. Food: bread and candles, the dark comes early. Music: Lanterns at Gravesend; the Deadwood's own.
- Belief: the Old Friend as the first to return. Fear: the third lantern on the old road after sunset. Tradition: lanterns lit on bone-oil, and waving at the fence on foggy nights.
- Old story: the Deadwood died in one night. Rumour: the Catacombs' bottom gallery has a door. Secret: the faceless statue, and whoever keeps its candle. Dungeon: the Deadwood Catacombs. Unique item: the Mourner's hood. Quest: Lanterns for the Dead.
- The Deadwood Maidens: a camp in the east of the wood, red on black; Matriarch Ysolde Thornveil and Wren of the Maidens. Belief: a standing stone. Quest: The Maidens' Truce.
Saltmarrow and Southshore
- People: fishers, Harbourmaster Brine, Nell Gutting, Sal Oilskin. Architecture: planked docks, oilskin and salt. Clothing: sou'westers, oilskin coats, sea capes. Food: sailfish, inkcrab, inkshark. Music: Saltmarrow Shanty.
- Belief: the sea is owed a tithe. Fear: the hut on the north quay. Tradition: the tithe, every season, forty years without a storm.
- Old story: the Gullwing sailed west and didn't come back. Rumour: a nameless grave on the little isle. Secret: the drowned pier. Dungeon: the sea cave. Quest: The Salt Tithe.
Hollyhock and the Thistle Vale
- People: gardeners; Mother Yarrow, Posy Wren. Architecture: a glasshouse, drying racks, herb beds in strips. Clothing: herbalists' hats, aprons, leaf-pinned capes. Food: everything grows twice as fast. Music: The Apothecary's Garden.
- Belief: the river. Fear: spiders in the hedges. Tradition: the still, and the first lesson at Yarrow's bench.
- Old story: the vale was planted on purpose, long ago. Rumour: an altar used as a fence post. Secret: wyrmtongue seeds crawl out of pots. Quest: The Apothecary's Errand.
Dyemoor
- People: dyers; Master Dyer Indigo Vell, Marigold Hem, Bolt. Clothing: indigo and madder, the loudest in the Realm. Music: Dyemoor. Occupation: colour.
- Old story: the river ran blue before the vats. Rumour: a cloak dyed for the Hollow King. Secret: the ancient stonework under the Thistle road. Quest: A Dye to Remember.
Tallgrass and The Wilds
- People: hunters; Huntmaster Fenn, Ash Quiverly, Lark. Architecture: tents and a long lodge. Clothing: grass greens, pelt capes. Music: Tallgrass Camp. Wildlife: boar, wolf, goat, thornback.
- Fear: the standing stones after dark. Old story: footprints beside a wolf's that weren't a wolf's or a man's. Secret: the game won't cross the stones. Quest: Tracks in the Tallgrass.
Cragmaw and Ironreach
- People: miners; Foreman Durga Pike, Gristle, Hearthkeeper Olwen, Brenna Anvilsong. Architecture: stone in a mountain pass. Clothing: fur hoods, greatcoats, red climbers' capes. Music: Cragmaw Hammers. Resource: the richest rock in the Realm; the only armoury that works rarite into plate.
- Fear: what woke in the deep mine. Old story: Pike's pickaxe and grudge. Secret: the seized mechanism the seam runs under. Dungeon: the deep mine. Quest: The Foreman's Shaft.
Quillhaven
- People: scholars; Archivist Perrin Quill, Scribe Nettle, Brother Folio. Architecture: a library three floors deep, standing stones in the garden. Clothing: blue robes, gold-tasselled caps. Music: Quillhaven Library.
- Belief: the Old Friend as symbol. Old story: the folio that shows a city where Ashfall is. Secret: the two fragments on opposite shelves. Quest: The Missing Folio.
Westmarch, the Drakespine and Ashfall
- People: nobody living but the Order of the Ember in its fortress, and Ember Tamsin at the edge; the Burned, the dead villagers of every build, walk the ash in faded red. Landmarks: the lonely house with nobody home, the burned farmhouse with three beds and a child's horse, the toppled watch-stones, the ruins of a city, the crater. Music: The Long Road West, The Drakespine, Ashfall.
- Old story: the Drakespine was a road to Ashfall when Ashfall was a city. Secret: what's under the crater is older than the drakes. Dungeon: the Wyrm's Lair. Quest: Embers in the Ash.
- Order: the Ember, which serves no god but its brazier. Unique find: an ash heart, warm for days; the Order collects them. Rumour: each of the Burned carried a bronze token with a number that used to mean something.
The Pale Isles
- One ferry, one village-less pier, one nameless grave, and pearlweed.
The Rare Friends Ring
- People: the Ringmaster, fighters, and the creatures they pay to face. Architecture: a round building the shape of a Hoverer; a concourse of shops round an arena courtyard with a garden, a rock field and a little volcano. Currency: bloodmarks for matches, laurels for Friend Fights.
- Old story: the Ringmaker built it so the best fighters in the land could meet. Rumour: the ones who lose come out anyway. Secret: how. Unique item: the Ringbreaker, which throws what it hits back a step. Quest: The Ringmaster's Signet.
Deep Westmarch and the Free Marches
- People: Hollowmere's soldiers at Westwatch, the Regiment at its camps and checkpoint, the Federation's pickets, deserters; the Federation at Freehold and the FFF Fortress. Landmarks: the Stone Field where the first fighting was, a ruined tower, a hollow in the cliffs with one way in, the Spine Watch. Music: the border's own.
- Belief: the Federation answers to nobody, politely. Fear: the next writ. Important NPCs: Captain Wren Ashby, Lieutenant Dace Harrow, the Watcher of the Stones, Fellow Free, Gate-Warden Pip Quarrel, Archwizard Mab Ferrule, Captain Aurelle Vane.
- Old story: a statue nobody else knows is there, kept by an old Friend with flowers in one hand and a candle in the other. Rumour: the Federation came through with a device that milked the cows; the Regiment took it; the cows miss it. Quests: The Western Watch, Papers of Passage, The Gate Question, Fortunately, We Built a Solution, The Toaster Argument, Powder and Paper.
Raria and the Crownlands
- People: citizens in violet, the Regiment, the Royal Rangers, the offices. Architecture: a great walled city of towers, offices, markets and barracks round the palace, every house the same, one book in each. Clothing: violet, ivory and silver. Food: bread, one kind, at one price. Inns: the Seventh Prayer in the capital; the Obedient Hound at Lawgate, which pours exactly one measure.
- Belief: the Wise Friend's Law. Fear: a short page in the Ledger. Important NPCs: Queen Rara, King Pell, Prior Vesperine Caul, Colonel Severin Marsh, Clerk Ormond Lathe, Assessor Linnet Marrow, Chaplain Osric Vell, Governor Ancel Marrowby, Abbess Ilse Nocturne, Ranger-Warden Sable.
- Places: the capital, Lawgate on the eastern march, Candlemere's lake town in the Crownlands, the Order of Dusk's abbey at Vesperholm and the Rangers' Hold in the Vesperwold, the Silent Peaks and the Blind Shrine. Rumour: a citizen who prayed four times this week instead of seven. Secret: who closed the Wise Friend's eyes, and when, and what it was looking at. Quests: The Wise Friend's Law, The Ledger of Names, What the Dusk Lost, Eyes on the Federation, The Candlemere Tithe.
BarkReach, the Heartwood and the Greyfields
- People: loggers of Sawyer's Rest, hunters of the Stag's Rest, rangers of the Antler Lodge, Barkholm's elders, the trader at Wood's End. Wildlife: greatstags, and lurkers grown from fallen bark. Resource: redwood and ironbark, which an axe bounces off. Important NPCs: Foreman Greta Sawyer, Antler Jory, Ranger-Captain Holt Ashgrove, Elder Mossa Rootwell.
- Old story: the Ironbark Elder, the oldest tree in the wood, walks the Heartwood; the rangers leave it offerings and a wide path. Fear: the path in the Heartwood Holt Ashgrove won't walk again. The Greyfields: Fort Ordinance and the Federation's forward camp face each other across a battlefield, and the dead there don't remember whose side they were on. Quests: Whispers in BarkReach, The Ironbark Elder, Heartwood.
Your Friend, and the mark you leave
Friends speak. Not often, and not at random: a Friend remarks on where it is, what the sky is doing, what's near, what it has seen before. A Skeleton is dry; a Colossus says "Big."; a Hoverer wants to know what's over the hill; a Hollow Friend hears things hum. The family sets the manner. Presence sets how much there is to say: at 30 a Friend remembers (its first dragon, Hazel's arrows, the vigil at Dawnhold); at 50 its remarks lean the way you've lived (explorer, warrior, scholar, collector, crafter, faithful). The world keeps a name beside the token: #13530 is who a Friend is; the name is who it became.
Presence milestones, as the Realm sees them: 1 a stranger · 10 your Friend has habits · 20 people say "Back already?" · 30 your Friend remembers · 40 people use your name · 50 your Friend sounds like how you play · 60 towns treat you as theirs · 70 everyone here knows you · 80 your legacy comes up · 90 a known figure · 99 remembered.
Rumours are true, half-true or nonsense, and the game does not say which. Nothing on this page settles an argument. That is on purpose.