The Vale of Velmarch · Road to Redemption

Apples lie in the long grass of a low orchard, and the fog has already reached the second row of trees.

From the coast the old low road climbs inland under a grey fog, past empty farms, and comes out of the fog into the sun. The Vale of Velmarch is the last green valley of a drowned kingdom, forty miles from the sea, and the last warm place on the climb. It opens the third act, the Ascent: Orrin ends the second act on the coast, and the next act sets out from a town in daylight (picked at Alex's request on 26 October 2026; where the other regions sit is a proposal, from the overview).

What you find

First the fog. The low road runs up the valley through grey-teal murk that does not lift at noon or move with the wind. Farms stand empty, lamps cold on their boundary stones. Then the fogline: a row of whitewashed stones across the valley, one row for each year, marking how far the grey has come. You cross them from the newest to the oldest, and the light comes back.

Golden afternoon. Hedgerows heavy with blackberry, orchards in rows down to the river, half-timbered villages with slate roofs and smoke going straight up from the chimneys. The river Lisle runs clear over stones, and children wade in it. Standing stones keep their circles on the high ground, older than Velmarch. On the hill above it all stands Hearthold, the town built in the hull of a royal ship, the act's hub.

What it tells you

What the board is for, from the side of the pieces nobody plays. The Hearthfolk farm the Vale: millers, orchard-keepers, shepherds, carters. They laugh loudly and often, dance at harvest, and argue about the words of the old songs. They watch the war without knowing it is one, and because nobody plays them, nothing sent to fight comes for them. Their towns stand. Their fear is the fog, and the shapes that walk out of it.

They have never seen anyone come up the low road. A fallen walking out of the fog is the strangest thing that has happened in the Vale in living memory.

What comes out of the fog

At dusk, Hollow Ghouls wade up the river out of the grey: the drowned of the coast, the coast's war spilling inland. Farmers who stay out too late in the low fields are found in the morning, sitting by the water, very calm and very wet.

Not everything comes from the west. The old shafts of Velmarch break the surface all over the kingdom, and the nearest to Hearthold is the Smoking Pit, a collapsed shaft that has breathed red smoke since the drowning. Wherever a shaft breaks the surface, Cavern Brutes can climb out of it.

How it plays

The climb's breath. After the deep and the drowned coast, a place worth saving: daylight, people, a market, and fights at its edges rather than in its heart.
The fogline is a front. Below it the fights are the coast's; above it, the Vale's own: a brute out of the Pit, ghouls up the river at dusk.
The act sets out from Hearthold's fire. North of the Vale the ground rises toward Harrowwood and the rest of the third act.

On the second climb

A century on, the fog has climbed the Vale. The whitewashed rows reach the foot of Hearthold's hill, the orchards you walked through are under it, and the children who watched you come up the low road are old, or raised. Nobody below knows it was you. See the second climb.

Its place in history

The Vale was the farmland of Velmarch, the green country behind the coast that fed Saltreach. On the Night of the Tide the sea came within forty miles of it and stopped. The Crowned Gull was carried inland on the flood and left keel-up on the hilltop, and the survivors gathered around it. See History.

In the game

The Vale is concept. The current build has no daylight and no surface. Hollow Ghouls are in the game from depth 1 of its caves.

Rumours

A farmer below the fogline still lights his lamp every night. Nobody has seen him in nine years, and the lamp is always lit.
The standing stones were raised to keep something in the ground, the old shepherds say. The Coalwrights say the stones are warm in winter.