Hadavi was once a paradise, a crater world born from the death of Ember, until it was reshaped into a land of ruin by terrible catastrophe.
In the Seventh Age, where lush forests, blue oceans, and diverse landscapes once painted the horizon, vast oceans of dunes now stretch across broken continents. The seas have become endless, slurried depths of silt, and the forests were either swept away by the torrent or left fossilized, mutated into something altogether alien. Yet not all is lost. As winds shift the sands, they uncover ruins of the buried ages, if only for a moment before they are swallowed once more. Hadavi is a world to be survived, where wondrous magic coexists with brutal savagery.
Ember, a god before gods, died and crashed into a moon, leaving behind a colossal crater saturated with the energies of pure creation. In its raw form, this energy is known as Shimmer: luminous, volatile, and lethal to the unprepared. Most are never able to wield Shimmer directly. Instead, they rely on relics created during the buried ages, artifacts that seal spellwork inside physical objects. These relics are traded, worshiped, and fought over, forming the backbone of power in the Seventh Age.
To understand the world as it is, one must first understand what it has endured.
Days of Judgement
The secrets of the buried ages lie lost beneath the dunes, but fragments of history remain. Stories tell that the Fifth Age marked the height of civilization, a time when magic was tamed and harnessed even for the mundane. That era ended when a cabal of the world’s most powerful sorcerers cast a collaborative spell meant to unite the world. Instead, it brought forth an apocalypse known as The Judge.
For nearly a thousand years, wind, sand, and volatile Shimmer ravaged Hadavi. The Judge spared none. Civilization collapsed. The surface was buried. Survival meant retreating underground or seeking shelter behind mountains, though even these refuges offered no true safety, as the latent magic draped over the world left nothing untouched.
After a millennia its strength has waned, but The Judge still rages at the heart of Hadavi. Its presence continues to shape the land and its inhabitants, as chaos and order twist in the sky to birth unpredictable storms. Between these tempests come periods of calm, when the dunes shift quietly. It was during these fragile lulls that the world’s survivors first ventured beyond their safe havens to explore the transformed landscape.
One of the first significant ventures was the exodus of Nandubar, a cultural fracture in which those who yearned to explore left behind those who clung to the walls that had kept them alive for the last millennium. Those who left became known as the Zaazulian people, and it was them who first discovered the 13 towers, proclaiming them the city of Za. This moment marked the beginning of the Seventh Age, a resurgence of civilization breathing tentative life into a dead world.
The Age of Ruin
Those who now leave their havens are not the same as those who once entered them. The Ancestors of the buried ages were human as we know them, but the Days of Judgement reshaped the world, sparing not it's inhabitants. Generation after generation of exposure to the latent Shimmer carried by The Judge gave rise to new races with extreme adaptations. Despite their altered forms, their ambitions remain unmistakably human.
As in ages past, power and influence belong to the strong and the clever, but in the Seventh Age it is the ruthless who are most often rewarded. At the top sit the Sandlords, each claiming dominion over a corner of the wasteland. Beneath them exist countless factions, from merchant fleets and trade barons to cults and warbands. On the fringes roam ghouls, cannibal tribes, and rogue groups like the Convicted, who survive beyond any semblance of order.
What defines the Seventh Age is not merely ruin, but motion: civilization rebuilding itself from tragedy by rediscovering what came before and wielding ancient power in an attempt to impose balance upon the thriving chaos.
Drifting the Dunes
The discovery of float stones occurred at the dawn of the Seventh Age. Seemingly born of The Judge’s magic, their true origin remains unknown. These magic-infused crystals cause sand to behave like water, an effect that extends to anyone holding a float stone or any object fitted with one. They are what make dune-sailing, known to Hadavians as drifting, possible. With their emergence, what were once perilous treks across the desert evolved into a culture of ships, surf, and moving cities, all assembled from the remnants of the old world.
Drift-ships serve as homes, trade vessels, and war machines, each culture with their own unique philosophy behind their design. But regardless of who builds them, wood is rarely used in their construction. Most trees perished during the Days of Judgement, and those that remain are fiercely guarded. Instead, ships are welded together from scrap metal manufactured during the Fifth Age and dredged from the oceans of silt. In an era defined by scarcity and danger, even the most benign vessels are armed with ballistas and harpoons, as survival depends on skill, reputation, and no small amount of superstition.
Drifting is dangerous business. Routes are contested by self-righteous fanatics, unscrupulous ghouls, and the utterly unhinged Convicted. However, regardless of faction, before every journey a crew pays homage to Vun Kuza, the god of fortune. Across all cultures, those who sail the dunes acknowledge the same truth: more often than not, luck decides who reaches the horizon, and who is swallowed by the sands.
Relic Hunting
If drifting is so perilous, what makes it worth the risk? The answer is simple: relics of the buried ages infused with shimmer. Most are uncovered when shifting sands reveal the ruins of the old world, but skilled crews can locate structures buried far deeper, using float stones to dive through the desert itself. Every relic pulled from the sand carries consequence, power, wealth, or death. Some enhance strength beyond mortal limits. Others grant unnatural longevity, or are said to animate weapons with ancient will.
In recent times, rumors have begun circulating among drifters of legendary artifacts of immense power. Relics capable of reversing time or drawing water from sand and other seemingly divine miracles. Whether truth or myth, the promise of such power is enough to drive entire fleets into the wasteland.g