Chronicles of Valdoria
Seven tales of a world shaped by gods, scarred by war, and defended by those who refuse to surrender.
Beneath the Ashen Sky
The oldest ruins are not empty; they remember who failed to return.
War spread without a single trumpet to announce its beginning. Orcish warbands raided settlements and strongholds. Cyclopes answered with weapons fashioned in their deep forges. Dragons descended from the heights, and the first great fires devoured forests and towers alike.
For an age, every victory became the reason for another war. Creatures fled below ground and fortified the mouths of caverns. In their crowded refuges old alliances failed, and battles continued beneath the earth even when the surface lay silent under ash.
Fardos and Uman were horrified by what the world had become. Uman tried to separate his own nature from the malice of Zathroth, but their shared existence resisted every spell. From the strain of that failed attempt emerged Kirok, a strange god of sharp insight and wild, inconvenient laughter: a reminder that even divine plans can produce unforeseen children.
The greatest horror came after the battles. Fields filled with the fallen, and death itself lacked a merciful guardian. Zathroth seized this opportunity and brought forth Urgith, who would not allow many bodies to rest. His undead wandered through shattered kingdoms, carrying the cruelty of battle long after the combatants had perished.
To answer this outrage, Uman brought Toth into being, a keeper of souls who guided the dead away from the living world. His work gave meaning to final rest, but it could not erase the armies already raised. A sword could fell an enemy; it could not undo a curse that refused to release the fallen.
The gods raised brave peoples to oppose the darkness. Many endured only a little while. Their abandoned temples, broken stairways and unreadable inscriptions survived them, scattered among the mountains and deserts for explorers of distant centuries to discover.
So passed the Age of Chaos: not a single battle, but countless lives consumed by wars they had not begun. Still, beneath the silence of ruined cities, Fardos held to an impossible thought. Somewhere there must be a people capable of choosing courage over fear.
An original Valdoria retelling inspired by the established creation mythology of Tibia. This text and its illustrations are newly created for Valdoria Next.
