The Conclave

CODEX

Compiled by the apprentices · kept by the archive

This is the Conclave's working record · the bestiary, the courts, the gates, and the rites by which an apprentice is made. Read carefully. What follows is what the Conclave knows; what waits at the threshold is for you to learn there.

The Conclave

A vast cathedral chamber with empty oak thrones bearing carved elemental sigils, a single hooded apprentice standing in a faded ritual circle in the foreground. — The chamber. The thrones. The apprentice.

The Conclave is the order that keeps the gates of the Verdant Crypts. Its work is precise, its records are complete, and its admission is earned in the only way the gates accept · descent and return. An apprentice arrives at the threshold. They survive the first rite. The sigil is bound. They are heard.

Five thrones stand in the chamber, one for each court. The Conclave's elders preside there, watching the records as they grow · the bestiary, the bound apprentices, the depth each one has walked. The chamber has been kept this way since the gates were first read, and the work continues exactly as it always has: the rites are observed, the gates open and close in their season, and the apprentice is made.

III

The Five Elements

The wyld runs along five rivers · five courts, each with its own temperament and its own kind of binding. The apprentice learns the courses early because every familiar belongs to one, and the courts hold their borders strictly. To bind across courts is the apprentice's choice; to confuse one for another is the apprentice's undoing.

Court of

Wyld

Spirits of the deep groves and the green hush.

What the Wyld court binds remembers the soil. Heals slow, hits steady, asks for patience.

21 familiars catalogued

Court of

Ember

Born of pyre, ash, and slow-burning ritual.

What the Ember court binds burns through the fight. Strikes hard and early, fades if the fight runs long.

22 familiars catalogued

Court of

Frost

Things that sleep where the cold sings.

What the Frost court binds slows what stands against it. Tempo, attrition, and the long chill.

23 familiars catalogued

Court of

Gloom

What was buried, and what would not stay buried.

What the Gloom court binds is already half-dead. Its strikes are slow, its wounds harder to mend.

22 familiars catalogued

Court of

Abyss

Wounds in the world. Names better left unspoken.

What the Abyss court binds was not invited. Strong, costly, and prone to demanding more than it gives.

22 familiars catalogued

The Fifteen Apprenticeships

Fifteen paths admit you to the Conclave. Each is a complete discipline · the Beastmaster commands familiars; the Wizard dictates cadence; the Sorceress calls the storm; the Necromancer rules what was already lost; the Vampire drinks what the line gives up; the Cleric holds the line; the Undead Priest carries the pall; the Scholar reads the wyld; the Stalker tracks from the dark; the Ambusher cuts first; the Warden takes the front; the Blood Mage pays in their own blood for what could not otherwise be commanded; the Berserker lets the wyld take them; the Duelist studies the blade more than the binding; the Champion pulls the line forward. Choose with care · the apprentice walks one path the whole of their training.

Apprenticeship

The Beastmaster

Apprentice of the Conclave who walks among bound familiars. Their voice steadies a pack mid-strike.

Passive · Bond

Bound familiars in your party fight harder and shrug off more · +20% attack and +10% defense.

Active · Rally Cry

Your party's attack surges by 30% for two rounds.

Apprenticeship

The Wizard

Scholar of the Conclave who reads the cadence of a fight. Their familiars move first, more often, and on cleaner lines.

Passive · Tempo

Studied patterns. Familiars in your party act sooner · +20% speed.

Active · Arcane Lance

A spear of ordered light strikes the lowest-HP foe for heavy damage.

Apprenticeship

The Sorceress

Conclave initiate who learned the elements early and pays no toll for splashing them across a battlefield. Fire, frost, and lightning answer her in the same breath.

Passive · Stormcalled

The storm hurries the strike · party speed +12% and party attack +10%.

Active · Maelstrom

Fire, frost, and lightning all at once · every living foe takes a wave of elemental damage.

Apprenticeship

The Necromancer

Shepherd of what should not have stayed buried. Their familiars endure where others would fall.

Passive · Soul Thread

A thread anchors each familiar to your craft · +20% maximum hit points and +5% defense.

Active · Drain

Each foe loses life · half of the total drained mends the wizard.

Apprenticeship

The Vampire

An older priest of the funerary rites who walked further than the others · their wards drink, their blade drinks, and the wyld learns to fear what cannot stop drinking.

Passive · Sanguine Pact

Every drop returns · party HP +10% and party atk +5%. The line drinks with you.

Active · Crimson Feast

Drain every living foe · 75% of the total damage mends the wizard. The taste of an ended fight.

Apprenticeship

The Cleric

Mendicant of the Conclave who walks the wards between living things and harm. Their familiars hold longer because something else is holding them too.

Passive · Sanctified Ward

Every familiar in your party stands inside a kept ward · +30% defense.

Active · Mend & Aegis

Light pours over the line · each familiar mends 30% of its maximum, and the party stands behind a 25% ward for two rounds.

Apprenticeship

The Undead Priest

Servant of older funerary rites · keeps the dead and the dying on this side of the veil for as long as the work demands. Their wards taste of grave-soil.

Passive · Pall of the Sepulchre

A black pall settles over your line · +10% maximum hit points and +20% defense.

Active · Soulward

The pall thickens · each familiar mends 25% of its maximum, and the party gains 22% defence for two rounds.

Apprenticeship

The Scholar

Conclave scholar who reads the wyld in the margins of older books. The Scholar fights second, but the line they shape fights better for the reading.

Passive · Annotated Bestiary

The Scholar's notes shape every familiar in the line · party HP, attack and defence all +8%.

Active · Grand Notation

The Scholar reads aloud from the codex · the line's blows fall as if precisely choreographed. Party attack surges 50% for two rounds.

Apprenticeship

The Stalker

Conclave hunter who tracks the wyld with bow, snare, and sigil. The Stalker reads the cadence of a fight from one breath ahead · marks the weakest target, fells it before the others know it has been chosen.

Passive · Ranger's Eye

The Stalker's gaze sharpens the line · party speed +8% and party attack +8%.

Active · Hunter's Mark

The Stalker draws and looses on the lowest-HP foe · a marked arrow that strikes for heavy damage.

Apprenticeship

The Ambusher

Conclave initiate who works in the shadows between the lines · marks targets with a ritual-glyph and is gone before the line knows it was struck. The first cut wins.

Passive · First Cut

The party moves on the Ambusher's tempo · party speed +12% and party attack +5%.

Active · Throat Cut

The Ambusher closes on the lowest-HP foe and ends them with a single ritual-blade strike · executes for crushing damage.

Apprenticeship

The Warden

Conclave initiate who fights at the front of the line, not behind it. The Warden trades the wizard's distance for the iron-bound stance · holds the gate, breaks the charge, accepts the wound the line would otherwise eat.

Passive · Iron Brother

The Warden stands in the line with their familiars · party defence +20% and party HP +5%.

Active · Bulwark Cry

The Warden braces and shouts · each familiar mends 20% of its maximum, the line gains 30% defence for two rounds, and the impact ripples out to hurt every foe for 15% of their maximum.

Apprenticeship

The Blood Mage

Conclave outcast who learned that the loudest spell asks the loudest price · pays in their own blood for what could not otherwise be commanded.

Passive · Crimson Pact

The pact pays the line · party atk +18%. The blood is yours to spend.

Active · Hemorrhage

Open the pact · the lowest-HP foe takes a crushing strike. Costs the wizard 30 hp to fire (clamped so it never self-KOs).

Apprenticeship

The Berserker

Conclave initiate who let the wyld take them. The Berserker fights at the front of the line and asks no quarter · the ritual-scars catch fire when the blood is up.

Passive · Ritual Scars

The Berserker stands in the line and pulls the line forward · party attack +20%.

Active · Bloodfrenzy

The scars open and the line goes red · party attack surges 60% for three rounds.

Apprenticeship

The Duelist

Conclave apprentice who studied the blade more than the binding. The Duelist acts first, picks a target, and the target falls before the line knows the fight has started.

Passive · The First Form

The Duelist's discipline sharpens the line · party speed +10% and party attack +10%.

Active · Riposte

The Duelist closes on the lowest-HP foe and ends them with a single precise thrust.

Apprenticeship

The Champion

Conclave officer who fights at the front and pulls the line forward. The Champion's discipline keeps the line bleeding less and rallying more · their familiars fight better because the Champion is on the field with them.

Passive · Rallying Presence

The Champion's presence binds the line · party attack +10%, party HP +5%, and every familiar mends 3% of their maximum at the end of each round.

Active · Rallying Charge

The Champion advances and the line surges with them · party attack +35% for two rounds.

The Verdant Crypts

A colossal moss-grown stone gateway carved with luminous green sigils, twin cobalt brazier-fires flanking it, an apprentice silhouetted at the top of stone steps descending into the dark. — The threshold. Below this, the work.

The first dungeon. The only dungeon, for those who descend with intent.

The Verdant Crypts descend through the rock in thirty tiers, each darker and meaner than the one above. Five gates punctuate the descent · one for each court, each gate guarded by an Elder Dragon who has slept there since the Crypts were carved. The upper tiers are walked and recorded by every apprentice. The lower tiers are walked by fewer, and bring back a heavier ledger.

What lives in the Crypts is older than the Conclave itself. The gates carry sigils, and the Conclave reads them · this codex is the work of generations of careful interpretation, kept current, kept correct, and handed forward as each new apprentice takes the first step down.

T1-T9The Ledger Tiers·Each tier teaches the descent itself. Common encounters, no boss.
T10The First Wall · The Pyrolith·First gate. The drake of the underforge keeps it.
T15The Verdant Gate·The grove's elder rises in a chamber wreathed in moss.
T20The Glaciwyrm Gate·Frost has its own kind of patience. The wyrm has learned all of them.
T25The Sablewyrm Gate·The dead halls open. Counted dead does not mean stayed dead.
T30The Hollowdrake Gate·The wrong places. The drake that came through them.
T35-T40The Lower Tiers·Recorded in fragments. The Bone Sovereign holds T35; the Dreadwing waits at the floor.

The World Beyond

The Verdant Crypts are not the only descent. They are the first one · the door the Conclave keeps open for everyone, the route in which the apprentice meets the full bestiary. But the rite admits five other paths beside it, one for each court, and the apprentice may walk any of them.

The Wyld Grove sleeps under a green hush in the deep groves. The Ember Caldera burns at the inner rim of an old fire-mountain. The Frost Shelf opens into the cold under the arctic sea. The Gloom Necropolis sinks slowly through black marshlight. The Abyss Rift is a tear in the rock that should not be a tear. Each holds its own elders, and admits only the familiars of its own court.

The hunter who walks a single court learns its grain · the apprentice's familiars, of the matching court, bind there more easily than they would in the open Crypts. The hunter who wants the full bestiary must walk every court · or descend the Verdant, where every door opens.

Open the World Map →

VII

The Faction Courts

Each kill the apprentice lands is recorded in the Conclave's ledger by the court of the slain. The longer they hunt a court, the more the court learns to recognise them · its familiars yield more readily to the bind, and the apprentice's line strikes truer when its quarry is of that court.

The five courts ladder is the same in all five: Untouched, Initiate, Veteran, Champion, Sovereign, and at last Mythic. Each rank confers the same kind of advantage · a sharper blade against that court's familiars, and a higher chance of binding when the hunt closes. The first rank is bought with twenty-five kills. The last requires a thousand. The Conclave keeps the tally exactly · the apprentice may choose to spread their hunt across the five courts or specialise in one.

Reputation accrues only against the killed; it does not lift and does not fall. What the apprentice has hunted, they have hunted · the ledger records it for as long as they hold a sigil in the chamber.

VIII

The Elder Dragons

Five elders sleep below the gates · the powers the gates were built to contain. The Conclave records each elder's first waking, its preferred court, and the depth at which it rests. Their names are taught early; the apprentice meets them in order.

Court of Wyld

The Verdant

Primordial of the green hush. Where it sleeps, the forest grows for a thousand years.

Court of Ember

The Pyrolith

Primordial drake of the underforge. The mountains' bones are its scales; the rivers below their lifeblood.

Court of Frost

The Glaciwyrm

Primordial of the long winter. Its breath is the silence between the snowfalls.

Court of Gloom

The Sablewyrm

Primordial of the dead halls. It does not eat, but every grave grows warmer when it passes.

Court of Abyss

The Hollowdrake

Primordial of the wrong places. It is here because something else made the room.

A sixth elder is recorded in the lower archive. The full entry opens for those who reach the floor of the descent.

The Bestiary

110 familiars are catalogued, plus the elders. Each is bound by the rite of meeting · the apprentice survives the encounter, the familiar accepts the sigil, and the binding is recorded in the bestiary as the apprentice's own.

Each bestiary entry is its own page in the archive · kept on its own card, illustrated by the Conclave's painters, and updated when an apprentice returns with fresh observation. The bestiary grows with every descent.

21 Wyld22 Ember23 Frost22 Gloom22 Abyss7 elders

Walk the Bestiary →

The Tactic Cadence

Every fight runs in rounds, and every round the apprentice draws on a small reserve of Aether · the order's word for the arcane breath that every wizard learns to keep at hand. Aether rises by one each round, capped at ten; it refills as it grows. From it the apprentice spends their tactic cards.

A tactic card is a single, paid-for working · a Bolt to the softest foe, a Mend on the most-wounded ally, a Flare across the line, a Hymn for the whole party, a Surge that lifts the line's strikes for two rounds, an Arcane Lance that reaches deep when the breath has been kept long enough to spend. The deck is shared at first · the Conclave teaches the same six openings to every apprentice. The hunter learns more in time.

Two cards in one round is the cadence the Conclave calls a combo. The line catches the rhythm and strikes harder for the round in which they were played · a small lift to all the line's blows. Holding the rhythm is the apprentice's craft; the cards are only the instrument.

Sigils, Tinctures & Caches

The apprentice carries three categories of relic into the descent. Each is kept on the person, prepared in advance, and accounted for at the gate before the rite begins.

Sigil

Bound charms that shape a familiar's behaviour. Each carries the intent of a court · vigor, wrath, the slow tide. A familiar wears one at a time, and the binding holds for as long as the apprentice keeps the charm clean and sealed.

The Elixir of the Hunt · a hawk-shaped hand-blown glass vial filled with molten orange fluid.

Tincture

Drinks of focused intent · vital, arcane, of the hunt or the loom. They burn fast in the body and burn well · the apprentice prepares them before the descent so the moment of need finds the dose ready.

Cache

Sealed coffers awarded for service. The Conclave selects the contents; the apprentice opens the wax. The Apprentice cache rewards a first descent · the Master cache rewards the work of a season, and changes the season's plan when it is opened.

XII

The Daily Rite

The Conclave's calendar moves in days. The first descent of a day is the rite; every descent that follows is practice. The apprentice carries gold and bound familiars back from each descent; the streak is what is offered up at dawn.

Hold the rite seven days running and the streak is recognised in the archive. Hold it longer and the records keep your name beside it. The streak is what the Conclave measures · the apprentice who can keep one can keep anything else they choose.

A sigil bound on a day the rite is kept counts twice on the apprentice's record. The Conclave keeps this practice exactly as it was first set · the archive shows it has always been so, and so it remains.

The work continues

Embark

The threshold opens for those who arrive at it.

XIII

The Sealed Pages

The Conclave keeps a deeper layer of records for each chapter of the descent. The pages remain sealed until an apprentice has read them by closing the chapter at the gate. Bring a chapter to its end and the page that follows opens for you here.