The world

This page tells the setting's premise and contains no story spoilers. The full history of Ardenmoor, including the campaign's events, is on its own page behind spoiler boxes.

This page describes the setting of Dawn of Embers: the world, its history before the game begins, and the arrival of magic. It covers the opening premise only. It does not describe the events of the Story campaign.

Kingdoms rise and fall like embers.

Overview

The world of Dawn of Embers is old and war-torn. Kingdoms flare up and are extinguished, never to be seen again, and no one alive remembers a time without war. The land the game's kingdoms fight over is called Ardenmoor: old forest and moor.

The setting turns on one event. Pillars of carved stone rose out of the earth, came to life, and sank back again, leaving embers behind them. From those embers, magic was born.

The Age of Iron

For as long as there have been kingdoms, war was waged with the tools of men: the spear, the sword, the bow and, at last, great siege engines built to break a field. Victory belonged to numbers, and to whatever cunning a commander could find on the day. There were no mages and no magic, and a storm was only weather.

This era is known as the Age of Iron.

The Pillars

Then a pillar rose out of the earth in a field. It was stone, taller than a mounted rider, and cut with carvings that no living hand had made and no living eye could read. It did nothing. Farmers walked around it, armies marched past it, and scholars copied its marks and argued over them.

Over the years more pillars surfaced: in a valley here, at a crossroads there, always where the ground had been fought over. Every kingdom found one on its land eventually, and every kingdom decided it was harmless.

In the game's systems a Pillar is also called a Point of Power. For how Pillars work in a match, see Pillars.

The Pillars wake

On one dark day, the Day of Ruin, the Pillars came to life. Two armies were fighting across a plain with a pillar between them when its carvings lit. Lightning fell from a clear sky, in storms fiercer than any in the old stories, and tore through the ranks of men in the middle of their charge. Fire followed the lightning out of the stone and into the towns behind the lines, where stone houses burned like thatch.

Both armies broke. People fled with fear in their hearts. When the storm had spent itself, the Pillars sank back into the earth as quietly as they had risen, and left behind drifts of ember-like sparks that did not cool.

The First Spark

From those embers, magic was born into the world. Nobody understands it and nobody made it. The sparks found people, or people found the sparks, and the first mages simply could. Magic is not described as a gift the Pillars give to the deserving, but as a wound they left in the world, which some people carry a piece of.

The Pillars have not finished. They still surface, still wake and still sink, and no one can say where or when. A kingdom that fights near one may be saved by it, or destroyed by it, on the same afternoon.

The First Dawn

The first age with magic in it is called the First Dawn, the "dawn of embers" that gives the game its name. Nobody in it agrees on what to do about magic.

The two paths

The setting poses one question to every kingdom, and to the player:

• The tried and true. Spears, swords, siege, numbers and cunning: the methods that have served people since there were people. Everything you can count and plan.
• The unknown force. Mages in the ranks, and the Pillars themselves for anyone who can reach one. It is power that can turn a lost battle in a heartbeat, and that has already burned the world once. A Pillar does not know whose side it is on.

Neither path is presented as the right answer.

Will your kingdom survive by the tried and true methods that have served men to this point, or walk the path of an unknown force, perhaps to your downfall? The choice is yours.

Ashmere

In the Story campaign the player serves as a captain in the army of Ashmere, a forest kingdom on the old iron roads, of grey stone and timber halls. In Skirmish and Multiplayer, kingdoms are given random names.

Callings and Disciplines in the world

No kingdom survives by trying to do everything: a kingdom that tries ends up with a thin granary, a short wall and a slow army. So a kingdom declares a Calling, the thing it will be better at than anyone, and its captain declares one with it. In the commander's words: "A kingdom that is good at everything is good at nothing."

A captain's Disciplines are the kingdom's attention: twenty standing orders about what to drill, fund and inspect first. Once given, they are not taken back in the middle of a war.

For the game rules behind both, see Callings and Disciplines.

What is not known

The game does not say what the Pillars are, who carved them, or why they wake. This wiki does not speculate on it.

See also

• Pillars
• Glossary
• Game modes
• The story on the official site