Dunegrave

🏜️ Dunegrave – The Land of Sand and Sorrow

🌊 The Rivers of Dunegrave

The delta of Red Crest is born of two mighty tributaries:

  • Glory – the northernmost river, fast and narrow, prone to sudden floods that sweep entire caravans into Delirium Bay. Its waters once nourished orchards and fields before the land was cursed.
  • Dominion – the southern channel, wider and slower, winding through dunes and ruined villages. At its distant source rises one of the most dreaded wonders of the desert: a towering obsidian pyramid, visible for twenty miles across the sands.

No living soul has yet discovered how to enter the pyramid, though countless have died trying. Myths say it was the palace of Adon, the God-King, whose reign ended in betrayal.

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👑 The Legend of Adon and the Seven Ministers

In the earliest days, Dunegrave was a paradise. Adon ruled with such justice and purity that the Djinn themselves held council and blessed him with immortality, granting him power equal to a god.

But envy festers even in courts of splendor. His seven Ministers had long steeped themselves in ancient, forbidden magicks, twisting their minds. One night they bound Adon with sorcery and dismembered him into seven pieces. Each Minister fled with a piece, hiding it deep within the land so it could never be reunited.

With Adon destroyed, the Ministers unleashed their corruption. Black magicks saturated the land, filling it with ghosts, demons, and horrors bound to their will. Inevitably, their greed turned inward. The Ministers waged war against each other in a brutal seven-way conflict. Their final clash shattered the paradise into the cursed wasteland now called Dunegrave.


Though their bodies are gone, the Ministers endure, buried beneath the sands, whispering into the minds of the living. Each still seeks to claw their way back into dominion over the land.


The Seven Ministers

  1. Minister of Blades
  2. Minister of the Swarm
  3. Minister of the Frenzy
  4. Minister of Venom
  5. Minister of the Tomb
  6. Minister of the Yoke
  7. The Nameless Minister – whispered to be the true architect of Adon’s betrayal, leader of the revolt.

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🎭 The Sweet-Toothed Savages

One Minister has managed to corrupt a traveling carnival troupe. The performers, now called the Sweet-Toothed Savages, are possessed by spiritual servants of the buried Minister. Each murder they commit in Skalmarune feeds their dark patron, inching it closer to resurrection.


But the questions remain: which Minister stirs beneath the sands, and how many souls must fall before it awakens?

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🔮 Cults and Guardians

Throughout Dunegrave, cults rise and vanish like mirages. Many promise the return of the Ministers, but any group openly seeking to resurrect them disappears without a trace, their leaders never seen again.


One sect endures: the Custodians. They claim to have communed with a fragment of Adon himself. Their sworn mission is to prevent the Ministers’ return, even if it means destroying themselves and anyone who dares traffic with the old magicks.

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🏛️ Ruins of a Lost Nation

Scattered across the desert are the bones of the ancient kingdom that once thrived under Adon. Crumbling aqueducts, toppled ziggurats, and weather-worn statues mark the landscape, each haunted by the echoes of a paradise lost. The most feared is the obsidian pyramid at the source of Dominion—black, immaculate, and utterly impenetrable.

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🌆 Landmarks of Dunegrave

  • Red Crest – Delta city of vice and despair, its alleys crawling with revenants and smugglers.
  • Delirium Bay – Crimson waters that whisper with drowned voices.
  • The Sanded Spires – Jagged sandstone towers, possibly prisons for djinn.
  • The Necro-Market – A bazaar of bone, spirit, and steel.
  • The Bleak Flats – Ash deserts haunted by phantom armies.

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⚓ Culture of Dunegrave

  • The Sandborn – Survivors with sun-bleached skin and faintly glowing eyes, cursed half-spirits.
  • Trade – Measured in water, salt, shade, and cursed relics rather than coin.
  • Children of the Desert – Though rare, some are born here. Most do not survive, their essence consumed by the sands. Yet a handful reach adulthood, proof that life still claws stubbornly against extinction. Dunegrave’s population persists only through wanderers and refugees who arrive seeking a new life.
  • Faiths – Worship of the Undying Sun and omens in algae blooms.
  • Pirate Factions – From the sugar-mad Crimson Clippers to the half-wraith Dustbound, chaos is both creed and currency.

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📖 The Eternal Question

  • Dunegrave survives in shadow, its people balancing on the knife’s edge between survival and damnation.
  • Will Adon ever rise again, if his seven pieces are recovered?
  • Which Minister’s whispers move in the dark?
  • And when the sands burn red again, who will rule the Land of Sand and Sorrow?